Item — HN Reader

There is a fair amount of thought that has gone in to that, often referred to as the Wait Calculation.

An interesting example was "Interstellar Travel - The Wait Calculation and the Incentive Trap of Progress"¹, which somehow isn't on libgen [yet?].

1. http://www.jbis.org.uk/paper.php?p=2006.59.239 - The incentive trap of linking to a £5 download for fifteen year old paper is another paper entirely.

2 comments

The "incentive trap" has also been referred to as the "incessant obsolescence postulate", in this paper from 2011 titled "Energy, incessant obsolescence, and the first interstellar missions":

https://arxiv.org/abs/1101.1066

The author also uploaded that paper to Researchgate, where it's available for free:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260275150_Interstel...

(edit: I presume the downvotes are for linking to Researchgate? I know they're not held in high regard like Arxiv, they're more like a sleazy Linkedin for academics, but if there's valuable content there why not use it?)