Startling New Technology

When I reconsidered all this is I wondered what an O'Neillite would say
if, somehow or another, in the next 20 years a startling scientific
revelation was made and a new technology was developed that meant everything
to human life off the planet Earth. A technology that, for example,
encouraged people who wanted to start Moon tourism to simply convert an old
sea-liner into a spacecraft and 'lift it off' into orbit, as that would be
the most reliable method to start such an industry. It would make FTL a
distinct reality, and nanotechnologies would be developed that allowed us to
make fine adjustments in planetary biospheres, or even a machine that had
the ability to make any planet's gravity match Earth's. Even a miracle
energy source that was based off of the compression of vacuum would be a
result of this technology; etc. Here's my take on this. In addition to "The High Frontier", O'Neill wrote another very good book that far fewer people know about, "2081: A Hopeful View of the Human Future". Before he set out to predict the world of 2081, he did a very sensible thing.O'Neill looked at prophets of theprevious 100 years, and tried to draw lessons from where they hit the mark, and where they missed it. What he found was this: Where the prophets went widest of the mark is where they imagined radically new technolgies like antigravity and whatnot. When in truth, the kinds of things which did reshape the entire world in the decades which came later, things like radar, jet engines, etc., were based not on new physics, but on physics which was quite well known to the prophet at the time. Thus O'Neill chose to predicate his predictions on the advancement of technologies based on physics already pretty well understood, such as magnetic flight, energy beaming, and orbital habitats. O'Neill's comments on the disadvantages of being at the bottom ofa gravity well and the advantages of continuous solar power will probably still be as valid a century from now as today. I don't lose a lot of sleep worrying that the invention of antigravity or zero point energy will overturn these points any time in the forseeable future. Some say that nanotechnology will makeHigh Frontier irrelevant, or that we will enter into a post-human future before we enter a future of space settlement. I agree with those who say that nanotech would only result in bigger and better O'Neill habitats, and better space transportation systems for flying out to them. In a post-human future, I think O'Neill's points about gravity wells and access to solar power will be just as relevant to them, although I would expect their orbital platforms to be less Earthlike than we suppose will be the case for our kind of human being. A machine-based human being would probably have even less of an attachment to the planetary concept than we present biological humans do.
Regards,