The most exciting answer to your question about applications is that "We don't know yet, it's a platform."
The inventors of the internal combustion engines likely didn't imaging interstate systems and long distance freight shipping - and the economic boom they allow.
The original ARPANET engineers didn't imagine everything the internet could become - from this very site to youtube to Bittorrent.
No one at Apple thought of all of the things that would be built in the iPhone App store.
When prices become cheap enough, it unlocks other peoples creativity. By providing ever cheaper access to space, Space X (and hopefully soon competitors) is providing a new arena where entrepreneurs and engineers can invite entirely new things.
> ...but I do not see the actual details of what this will enable besides allowing Musk et al to hollow out planets for mining operations for their own gain.
Resources mined are useless if they aren't used for something; if asteroid mining makes money, it's because someone else is buying those resources so Musk isn't the only person benefiting. If there is large scale mining in space, there's probably broad economic benefit to that.
The inventors of the internal combustion engines likely didn't imaging interstate systems and long distance freight shipping - and the economic boom they allow.
The original ARPANET engineers didn't imagine everything the internet could become - from this very site to youtube to Bittorrent.
No one at Apple thought of all of the things that would be built in the iPhone App store.
When prices become cheap enough, it unlocks other peoples creativity. By providing ever cheaper access to space, Space X (and hopefully soon competitors) is providing a new arena where entrepreneurs and engineers can invite entirely new things.
> ...but I do not see the actual details of what this will enable besides allowing Musk et al to hollow out planets for mining operations for their own gain.
Resources mined are useless if they aren't used for something; if asteroid mining makes money, it's because someone else is buying those resources so Musk isn't the only person benefiting. If there is large scale mining in space, there's probably broad economic benefit to that.