Okay, if you had infinite time, what would you build?”

If you’ll indulge me, here’s my list of potential projects, with light editorializing.

Energy supply

Synthetic fuel.

Better polysilicon production tech. The Siemens process feels paleolithic.

Flexible silicon solar arrays, ground mounted and ultra cheap (<$30k/MW).

Radioactivity applications. “Make rock hot boil water” seems mid.

Weather control.

Accelerated weathering for carbon capture.

Atmospheric sulfur injection.

Fusion.

Room temperature superconductors.

Cheap energy applications

Synthetic liquid fuels.

Low carbon low cost metal production. Steel and light metals.

Lower impact chemical synthesis. Electrocatalysis of everything.

River-scale desalination.

Ecological restoration at industrial scale. Eg. restore Owens Lake, Aral Sea.

Health

Immortality.

Artificial wombs.

Transport

Drop in replacement electric power trains for cars.

Drop in replacement electric power trains for small planes.

Electric VTOL.

Better electric unicycles.

Long range electric flight.

Solar electric flight.

Flying cars.

Space planes.

Supersonic electric flight.

Cheaper supersonics.

Better drones.

Zero carbon aviation fuel. Abundance aviation mind set.

Zeppelins.

Electric boats.

Manufacturing

Atomic 3D printing.

Deep crust zero impact mining with giant tunnel boring machines and in-situ refining.

Atomic recycling.

Compact manufacturing (small factories).

Compact manufacturing (rapid prototyping).

Compact manufacturing (full stack mass production with far fewer people).

Fix the housing shortage.

Awesome buildings that create excitement about the future.

Space

Starship applications.

Starlink atmospheric tomography.

Moon city applications.

Mars city applications

.
- Solar farm.
- Air miner.
- Water miner.
- Rock miner.
- Fuel plant.
- Life support.
- Heavy machinery telerobotics.
- Pressure structures.
- Space suits.

Mars terraforming.

Nuclear fission propulsion.

Nuclear fusion propulsion.

Antimatter propulsion.

Warp drive.

Time travel.

Ground penetrating radar at the physical limit.

Ground penetrating imaging with gamma radiation.

Computing

Better AI. First non-human consciousness since Neanderthals.

One trillion AIs with legal personhood.

Brain-machine interface. Or better VR.

Feral robots.

Brownian dust (microscopic free flying robots).

Autonomous dynamic lift transoceanic gliders.

Fast custom ASICs.

If you are working on these and want me to link to your business, let me know. If I have missed any obvious items on the tech tree, let me know.

“That seems like a lot.”

The scope and importance of these projects runs to the limits of a human lifespan. Very few, if any, will occur without you making them happen. No product will be the last word in engineering, but it might be the first.

You Should Be Working On Hardware