What effect would easy solar system travel have?

What would be the impact on modern civilisation be if a benevolent inventor gave the world the ability to travel around the solar system quickly and cheaply.

If over the next five years this technology was built and tested by the likes of Space X and proven to work, meaning that with a powerplant the size of a small car, it became possible to transfer loads from the surface of one planet to any other in the solar system in a matter of days / weeks.

The technology is open sourced, relatively simple to build, even by technically proficient, moderately funded amateurs

Limitations

For whatever technical limitation, the maximum carrying capacity of the powerplant is 50 tonnes. Including the vessel. It is not possible to use the powerplants as a group to improve that limit.

While it is clearly capable of impressive speed, it has a very limited range, which just happens to be about the size of the solar system. i.e. its thrust is time constrained, at maximum speed its fuel quickly degrades, meaning it wouldn't be able to stop if further travel were attempted

What are the economic, political and social changes that this technology would produce over the next ten years.

Edit

The idea behind the weight limit is to make it akin to a small truck / coach. It could either move a bunch of stuff, or a bunch of people. But would make large scale mining operations etc less likely. There would also be a 'there and back' usability. So you could jump in your space craft on the back streets on Birmingham, take a trip to Neptune, and make it back home again.

posted about 8 years ago

Michael B‭

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