SpaceX will have massive impact in the next decade

Not quite sure that part about a tungsten rod being equivalent to a nuclear weapon is correct.

Earth orbital velocity is 7.8km/s. so if all the mass in a starship launch went into one tungsten rod then that rod would have an energy of 0.5 * 100000 * 7800^2  = 3 terajoules, or 3/4 of a kiloton of TNT. Nuclear weapons are tens of kilotons at a minimum and single digit megatons often, so I don't think this is a fair comparison.

This actually makes a great deal of sense if you think about it for a little bit. The energy that the tungsten rod has is given to it by the fuel in the starship. So if a nuclear bomb can have a yield in tons of TNT that is much greater than the mass of the starship, then you should be suspicious of claims that it can impart more energy than it has fuel.

I would argue further that a tungsten rod might just disappear into the ground unlike a nuclear airburst, but that's just conjecture on my part.

When Tungsten rods are dropped from space onto earth they manage to store a lot of kinetic energy because they have a very high boiling point. Dropping tungsten rods from space can release as much energy as nuclear weapons without the nuclear fallout.

Doesn't that energy ultimately come from the propellant used to get the rods to orbit? Wouldn't it be more cost effective to just use the propellant itself as the explosive?

Is the advantage of the rod that it's easier to get it to the target than it would be to get the propellant there?

Asteroid mining has been an interest of mine for a little while, but I hadn't checked in on the progress for a while now.

Heartbreak. There were a handful of companies working on the problem, but it looks like in the last two years they all went through some combination of acquired, pivoted, and defunct. There is no one left focusing on the problem specifically. Planetary Resources got acquired and then went defunct, stuff auctioned off in the summer. Deep Space Industries pivoted to small satellites and then got acquired. 

Though it does seem that a bunch of the people from Planetary Resources founded a new company, First Mode, which is participating in NASA's Psyche project for prospecting asteroids. They're an engineering services company, but it would not surprise me if they were to make a pivot towards asteroid mining.

Tangentially related, I found this paper about the political economy of large space projects from 1999. It describes the difficulty of raising a huge amount of money for a very long-term payoff. Note to self: I have a summary [LW · GW] to finish, about precisely that.

There's also the potential for military uses of starship, outlined here [LW · GW].

Also, along with asteroid mining comes the possibility of using asteroids as WMD's.

And of course, a colony on Mars will make humanity somewhat more robust to nuclear war, supervolcanoes, etc.

All that being said, and as a SpaceX fanboy myself, I don't think any of these very exciting effects will change anything really important. I think what the future is like depends on how AGI goes, and I have somewhat short timelines (median 2032ish), and I don't think any of these effects will noticeably influence how AGI goes. :/

I'm going to take the contrarian view.  I don't think cheaper access to space will have significant effect on the majority of the humans alive over the next 10 years.  Cheaper satellites will mean better and more scientific information about climate and human activity will be available, and obviously it makes low latency/high bandwidth ISPs like Starlink feasible.  This is an improvement as it brings internet access to the 'last 10%' - but it isn't a society-changing one.

Furthermore, it saturates in scale.  Once SpaceX grows large enough, they saturate the market for satellite ISPs - they have enough capacity to fill the skies - and saturate the market for billionaire tourist trips to space.  Asteroid mining is questionable.  

Autonomous cars and all of the robotic problems that the same class of motion solvers can solve - I expect to have an enormous impact because their saturation point is at which half of all present jobs have been automated, and exponential numbers of robotic systems have been deployed.

One other possibility which has been discussed is sub-orbital inter-continental travel. I think SpaceX have mentioned this in the past but not for a few years.

I think it would be really helpful if you could operationalise these possibilities into elicit predictions to give an idea of how likely you think each are.

When it costs 20$ to transport a kg to low-earth orbit we might find a way to to mine palladium that can be sold for $34,115 per kg on earth or gold that can be sold for $60,882 per kg.

It would be interesting to see some kind of analysis of what the effect of asteroid mining could be on the prices of these commodities. For example, the global supply of palladium is just over 200 tonnes, so if asteroid mining could match that the price could fall quite dramatically.

Dropping tungsten rods from space can release as much energy as nuclear weapons without the nuclear fallout.

What kind of rods are you thinking about?

There is also Starlink of course.

And earth to earth, if it happens it could reduce long range travel times by an order of magnitude.

Main expected effect : not being able to see unpolluted night sky any more.