Anglofuturism

In this episode, we are visited in our thatched space station by a wunderkind economist who wants to turn a portion of the North Sea into a Wales-sized island. Duncan McClements is that economist, and you can find his blog, co-authored with Jason Hausenloy, below.

https://modelthinking.substack.com/p/a-new-atlantis

Editing by Calum Drysdale and Aeron Laffere. Our thanks to Cherie Chun for her help with the cover art.

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The cost of getting mass into space is tumbling. The economic opportunities of being in space are multiplying. Where does this leave Britain?

Alas, our country holds the ignominious record of being the only country to get rid of a vertical-launch space programme. But we're turning the situation around – and could take advantage of the changing circumstance by embarking on an exciting megaproject.

Our second guest, Peter Hague, is a leading space blogger. His idea? Building a super spaceport – one that's big enough to accommodate Starship, which is SpaceX's gamechanging flagship.

We discuss the practicalities of the super spaceport, and what its construction could do for Britain.

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It's widely felt that the British buildings and townscapes have, since the Second World War, become uglier and of lower quality.

From their tasteful half-timbered space station, Tom and Calum ask Samuel Hughes, an academic and aestheticist, about the causes of those complaints. We discuss the inherent characteristics of architectural beauty, the divergence of taste between architecture students and the rest of us, and the future of the British built environment. Are natural materials making a comeback? What about robotically-crafted ornament? And with what level of ferocity should we crush the Nimbys?

We also prevail on Samuel to tell us what Britain can learn from arresting built enviroments of fiction.

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You are currently directly above an energy source that is clean, available all day long, and – at least at our current Kardashev level – all but limitless. Naturally, the British government has approximately zero interest in it. But they will soon, because transformational geothermal energy is getting closer.

The main obstacle, currently, is the difficulty of harnessing the extreme heat that one finds several miles below the Earth's surface. It melts electronics and resists the creation of pipework, meaning that it's very difficult to sustainably pump fluid in and out.

Our latest guest is John Clegg, a technologist and geothermal expert who is making progress in developing high-heat electronics. John joins us in our orbital space pub to tell us about the new frontiers in geothermal, the best way of making it work for Britain, and the most mind-boggling engineering feat in the history of Dorset.

Learn more about Hephae Energy Technology, of which John is CTO, via their website, or subscribe to their monthly newsletter here.

https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/hephae-energy-technology-7076836521588207616/

https://www.hephaeet.com/

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The Victorians carpeted Britain in rail, went on majestic sprees of housebuilding, pioneered underground rail and coal power stations, and built magnificent subterranean sewerage. Their ancestors cancelled most of HS2, haven't built a reservoir for thirty years, lets Nimbyism run amok, and can't even electrify all our trains, let alone swap them for maglev.

How can we redress this generational embarrassment? Sam Dumitriu, of the think-tank Britain Remade, believes it's possible to revive the Victorian spirit and turn Britain back into a nation of doers. He joins us in the King Charles III Space Station to discuss his ideas.

Grab your trowels – we're going building.

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