On Meso-Space-Mountains and the Space Lifeboat Strategy

A few months ago I had a vision of a twisting structure of four widebase towers reaching up into space in a mountain shape, capped by a greenery-filled geodesic dome. This post will serve as a placeholder for early notes, problem descriptions, and sketches about this structure. I call this structure a Meso-Space-Mountain.

I should be explicit that this post is firmly intended to be a technical and visionary description, and that there are no (or very limited, and explicitly called out if so) layered meanings to anything I am writing in this essay.

I believe that a megastructure of the type I am describing can enable all people on Earth to reach a multi-planetary civilization both faster and with fewer dangers of war breaking out. I believe collaboratively working on these structures can also generate trillions of dollars of economic flow across all segments of the Earth (and soon space) economy, which further minimizes the dangers of war breaking out.

I created the name Meso-Space-Mountain after I had the initial sketches and purpose and problems that may be resolved by this structure. The naming came together while researching feasibility and initial engineering considerations. Meso for the mesosphere, which is my current sense for the range of atmosphere the structure should reach into, Space because the structure is intended to reach into the edge of space (and enable a lifeboat system to construct, stage, populate, test, upgrade, and release O'neill cylinders into space), and Mountain because the final structure most resembles a mountain that would be nearly impossible to topple (instead of a tower).

The United States and China and a few other countries should align around building Meso-Space-Mountain structures, so it is fitting that I am writing most of this outline on September 24th 2026 when President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping and their entourages are meeting in Washington DC. The idea first occurred to me earlier this year, and I’ve made periodic notes and sketches since then. Last week I had a few more sketches and notes emerge while thinking of how best to explain this structure to someone at the Pentagon. Thinking about how I would present this to the Pentagon or to another major corporate or government team from the US or China or another major economy helps with generating new insights into the structure.

I understand the scale of this vision may be daunting, and I understand there are many architects and materials scientists that may read this post already balking at ideas that seem unrealistic or impossible to them. I do not care, because there are many geopolitical and economic problems that building such structures would resolve, and I am convinced that the materials and construction problems are all solvable (and that this building will also prepare us for future megastructure engineering challenges when we will need to collaboratively settle other planets in our solar system and beyond).

How did I start thinking about such a large space structures?

One of the problems I have been considering for the last year is that the current global system of constant air flight enables three persistent dangers:
1) another 9/11 style attack on any nation state
2) the excuse for nations to maintain and expand missile technologies of all kinds (including those that can deliver atomic weapons), in both an offensive and a defensive frame
3) human trafficking in the airport borderlands of nation states, which also can exacerbate human trafficking within nation states

The development of re-landable rockets is an incredible accomplishment, but building a space economy entirely dependent on re-landable and re-usable rockets that launch from nation states is incredibly stupid on the long-term (though it makes some sense on the near-term). The simple reason is that any single accident (or intentional attack) that results in a rocket landing on a populated area would cause the entire space economy to halt (and that includes the wider manufacturing and service economy that would be dependent on space transit, mining, construction, and more). There are other problems with transit to space that I address in my framework of a Space Territories Crossing Alliance (which might make sense just to call Space Territories Alliance with a longer term view, even though the need for the alliance begins with an understanding that transfer to space is a public good that all nations should benefit from) that I will outline in another post, but it is worth at least mentioning here.

My first intuition last year after thinking through the problems with the current airport system was that, in the name of stabilization of war between countries, plane traffic should immediately be minimized in favor of boat and train traffic. That direction is much easier to declare as a goal than to shift into an operated reality when so much of the global economy depends on rapid transit between cities. Then, earlier this year I began intuiting visions of large scale structures twisting up into space that in some ways reminded me of the structure described in Alastair Reynold’s Terminal World and in other ways reminded me of the mountains I saw in Japan and Alaska and Switzerland.

I should write on this in another essay, but creativity around architecture is not new for me (although it is new to share more publicly), and nor is intuitive vision (although I have had more of these intuitions in the last year or two since praying more and since learning more about the space of Christian mysticism with Hans urs van Balthasar and Adrienne Speyer as two inspirations, and then further inspiration from indigenous cultures from many global regions). I have picked up flashes of creative intuition more intensely since beginning to write music and poetry in middle and high school. And I’ve had an obsession with architecture since elementary school at Cambridge Academy, when I went to a dress-up-as-a-famous-person day as Frank Lloyd Wright (which I have Steve to thank for helping me assemble). I also built large structures with K’nex and Legos when I was very young. Before becoming a product and company and culture creator, I wanted to be an architect. I still occasionally get flashes of home or building designs (I designed a sustainable mountain home centered around a kind of water vortex generator a few years ago). I considered but did not attend architecture school, but I have always taken inspiration from reading about, looking at and visiting the incredible structures that other architects create. I have described some challenging buildings to my teams when leading at technology companies, because it helps them to envision the importance of attention to detail in the technology products we were building. It may surprise some readers to see me expound on architectural designs, but they have very much been a part of my reflection space for a very long time. I should also give a shoutout to Adam Friedman, whose mountain and dimension-bending work I became obsessed with in the 2010s, and who graciously let me buy a work called Space and Time, which has been a centerpiece for many of my creativity-enabling offices or environments since I acquired the piece. I have passed by it a few times as I write this essay. Another related memory (since I think these are important to note and other creative-intuitive types will understand!), is that I had a photographer visit to image the artwork for a snowboard after I acquired the original, and I was able to ride one of these snowboards down an actual mountain a few years later. I take inspiration from so many sources including fashion and architecture and music and film and even just traffic flow and friendly conversations. I am grateful to so many people and places in my life for the inspiration they provide. I’ve also articulated (but not completed) and shared with a few colleagues a theory of creativity in interdividual and individual formations, and principles for how memory and what you might call pre-memory work (this is my theory of reflection-ability and reflection space).

I share all of these notes to emphasize for readers that the creative and intuition process is so much more of a dialogue than most want to admit (which Girard covers well in all his works!), and so I find it important to add notes like this one in the middle of essays like this. It is strange how these experiences and people and art that I encountered pre-empt and feel linked with this structure I am envisioning and describing. I view the articulation of the structures in this essay to be a collective work, with my brain as a kind of hand that shapes the flow of information. But I also see a responsibility to articulate synthesis and leading responsibility of synthesis of these categories and theories, because derivative works are expected to emerge (which is not a bad thing) and further the imitative flow that Girard was so aware of and describes so well could result in distortions or counter-mimetic movements that are different than my hopes. I will work to correct any misunderstandings or mistakes, and I take full responsibility for these (which is again, why I am being so explicit about this generative process, and not just the structure). Finally, I articulate this because I hope others that one day work on big problems can join me in feeling an immense gratitude to all the people in their lives who help them find breakthroughs to major problems (even if those people may not understand the work immediately).

A Thought Experiment about Floods and Boats
I wrote this description sometime in May 2026 as an initial pitch for why a steady build up into space is better than faster up and down rockets on the longterm.

Consider for a moment that you were told that it is a certainty that a great flood of actual water (not violence or pathogens or disinformation or births) would wash over the earth within 50 years. How would we survive? One solution is to build giant boats. But these boats will need fuel to steer and move, and may accidentally hit a mountain if thrown off course. Another solution is to build underground cities. If we develop the technology and living habits of living underground today, then there will be fewer issues if we are forced to go there in the future. Should this be done on land? In a mountain? The problem with this is that the city would not be able to be regularly stress tested with water. What about out in the ocean far undersea? The problem with this is that delivering people and tools to the location is extremely costly. And any problems occurring with the facility face extreme risks in rescue and survival.

So instead, what if we built a city underwater extending directly from the coast of a rocky and stable land area such as X (northern area of Main?) The city could run deep, but with multiple connections onto land, emergency situations and regular building activity can be better sustained. The system could be tested through minor floods and even tsunamis, and can be tested with docking of submarines or ocean lining ships. This build out makes far more sense than the isolated underground facility. In combination with dockable large boats or submarines, this approach may reach an even more resilient mix.

If this seems obvious as a better solution, great. Lets change the scenario slightly though. Instead of a flood of water, imagine an exploding sun, or an astroid hitting the earth. Both of these scenarios have higher plausibility than a water flood scenario (and many others have cited this far before me), yet we are not building fast enough to get off planet. And, at present, we are only building habitats that fit the deep underwater equivalent scenario. What if instead, we built up into the sky until our buildings were floating in zero-G and no atmosphere, anchored to a base? What if each of these floating anchored buildings could be a spaceship itself, a kind of lifeboat, if an emergency were to happen on Earth?

Further, what if building in this way could dramatically lower the tensions of warfare on the Earth? How? a floating (and especially if fast moving) boat or rocket can deliver not just people, but also weapons. But an anchored and slow moving (or not moving) ship cannot (at least not quickly; and not without being quickly detected). I believe that rockets like those from Space X and Blue Origin are important, but now that we have them, they should be commoditized and put into a larger frame. On the longterm, they should be reserved for planets where there isnt a possibility of building more permanent structures. \

Can you imagine a major city in the US without paved roads, a highway or a subway train? Why not?

On a 10-20 year time horizon, there are only a few scenarios where this path won’t be taken:

1. A global government exists, which will prevent any war breaking out from misused SpaceX or Blue Origin or other nation’s rockets. But even in this scenario, there may be future revolutions when rockets could be used intentionally or accidentally for destruction. So the gobal government is incentivized to build the space-mountain-to-anchor-lifeboat-ships scenario for longerterm stability of the same governments control.
2. We’ve made at least one or two landings on Mars, and suddenly, face a catastrophe of an asteroid heading towards Earth. So we get a small group of people off planet quickly.
3. We’re all dead from some other issue.

The first critique I will likely get about this statement is: “well, what if we just cannot build it.” Bullshit. I do not believe that the world’s governments are inefficient and entirely stagnant. I believe that the different agencies and parts of governments and companies have other priorities, which too many times has involved tracking or attacking or defending against another nation state or another corporation.

So I have very high expectations of current governments and corporations both.

Which goes back to why not simply just work through building stations with rockets. Stations can fall out of the sky or be attacked. There is a logic of escalations in moves and countermoves with satellites and stations that becomes problematic when taken to the extreme.

Meso-Space-Mountain Structures

So if we’re going to build these things, how do we build them and where?

I’ve thought more about the where than I have the precise how. And that is because, in consideration of economic stimulus and the geopolitical climate, and the persistent problem of danger from rocket technology and atomic bombs (and now drones; which thankfully are a bit more slow moving in many cases), the idea of an ability to get out into space without the need to depend only on fast-moving rockets has more and more appeal. So the short answer is, let’s all work together to figure it out!

You have to remember that rockets were originally designed and promoted by those dreaming about getting into outer space, rather than those people that have subsequently used rockets to deliver bombs. There is a paper from a Russian Konstantin Tsiolkovsky called Exploration of Outer Space by Means of Rocket Devices. This was written and published in 1903 it seems about six months prior to the Wright brother’s flight in North Carolina (I am writing parts of this work in North Carolina now!).

So directionally, we are starting with the points that:

1. Rockets were designed or desired as transportation, not weapons.
2. Space mountain structures and some kind of space trains or space elevators, combined with lifeboats, is a more resilient (and economically stimulating) path to developing ships that could be pushed out into space (in emergency or in non-emergency situations).
3. The earliest developments of other space flight technologies started with just a few papers and ideas and experiments in multiple parts of the world.

Great! We’re off to a great start.

Let’s start first with some thinking on structure, and then talk about locations.

My intuition is that these structures have four huge bases that each slope up and each level spirals around somewhat.

I have seen some work by BIG architects and Zaha Hadid architects that have spiral movements that could be considered similar, although the scale is much bigger. Also, in my intuitions each level rotates around. You could think of this as a quarter point or chunk of a pyramid split in four from the top. Then trace the pointed line of the slope from the base of the pyramid up to the point. Then take each layer of blocks making the pyramid and take this slope point and shift it right with each layer. The result is a kind of chunky and wavy looking pyramid type movement. My current intuitions as to why this is important are that 1) the chunkiness of this prevents any objects from being dropped and slopping quickly down the surface of this overall structure and 2) the chunkiness of this for some reason makes building, maintaining, and repairing the structure layer by layer much easier and 3) the chunkiness easily enables both bridging and segmentation of different levels in the event of fires or other emergencies.

My current intuition is that there is a kind of plus-sign looking interior space in between each of these 4 bases, and that the interiors are much more vertical, but with regular intervals of bridges between the 4. 

I also currently envision that the elevators in these structures would NOT be straight up and down. They should be built to have regular change-overs and intervals. That means that the movement of resources up and down the structure is slower and staggered. This again gets to why I am calling it a Mountain and not simply a space elevator or space train.

Another question at this point is, is this structure somehow occupied or is it hollow? My current intuition is that it is occupied or semi-occupied. It could be possible to build a more open design (almost like the Eiffel tower), but my sense is that there are major problems with windflow and transportation if it is entirely open. My current intuition is that some kind of open channels at regular intervals between bridge points stabilizes the overall structure from problems with air flow, and especially in the event of a fire or other emergency, segmenting spaces would become important.

At this point, it’s also worth mentioning that I understand that building such large structures would result in weather changes in the surrounding areas. Most nation states are already experimenting with weather modification anyways, and rockets and airplanes are used in existing weather modification. I think the firmness of this mountain structure is a much better grounds for two or three or more nation states to work on weather modification agreements than the problems of a rocket or airplane that could secretly deploy chemicals.

For energy, I think there are solar and wind and gravity-based power schemes to power any individual chunk of the mountain structure.

For water and air, building this structure would already give reason to test self-sustaining and self-contained water and air systems. Think of each layer as having a small contained water tower or container of its own, with filtering tools. The air composition in the mesosphere is similar to lower atmosphere, but is much thinner. That is one advantage of building to this level is that theoretically you could still harvest oxygen

It is possible that in one of these mountain structures, that each of the 4 structures is actually built and maintained by a different nation state, and that the materials could even vary slightly. That would encourage collaboration between different nations, and would encourage co-development, especially if these structures are built near borders of current countries.

Another reason to build this structure in a mountain shape instead of a straight tower is the stability. Any kind of disaster or problem at higher levels, if using a mountain structure, would not cause collapse in lower-levels. And because of the staggering structure that I am envisioning, I believe that problems in different chunks or layers of the mountain could be rapidly contained.

So in short, this structure would be intended to reach up into the sky (I know, I know… Tower of Babel this, and Icarus that) as a persistent structure with many failsafes, while minimizing any kind of danger of collapse.

That is not no collapse, but an extremely minimized danger of collapse.

But Jeremy, what material is this going to be built out of? I don’t know. But I am confident that the drive to build a permanent structure reaching into space, for the reasons I outlined, will provide the answers.

I’ve read a statistic that China consumed more concrete in just a few years of the 2010s than the US used in all of the 20th century. I also know that China has a major issue with ghost cities and phantom banking (as it seems some other countries may also have issues with).

So before you criticize my vision for materials issues or financing problems, keep in mind that there are already major projects in China and the USA that are basically being built with no or with limited buyers. Take that same engine, and let’s point it to space.

This drive to build such a large and permanent structure is also good reason to drive a much FASTER and STRONGER volume of rocket flow to harvest resources on asteroids.

The important point as we think through this, is that every ounce of building and design energy that is happening towards this type of structure, is energy that is not energy that is going to build more weapons.

So take a 100 year time horizon. 500 year time horizon. Do you really imagine that we never build large structures of this type (on or off planet)? Do you really imagine that we never build large-scale space ships that move between planets?

Maybe another way to view this structure is a large-scale spaceship that is permanently grounded to the earth. Or as a city reaching up into space instead of sprawling only outward or into the ground. So you get testing of life support and energy and water and all the other factors that will have to be managed in any spaceships (and at large scale), while still having lots of room for recovery.

But Jeremy, I need to pay my rent and I want to live in a city with friends, not stuck on one layer of a big weird mountain thing. What do you think living in a space habitat is going to be like? If we can get to O'Neill cylinders, then great — we might be able to create a closer semblance to life on Earth. But until that happens in a stable way, something like this structure will be closer to what living in space will be like. There will be limitations, but we need to already be preparing for those.

And as for rent and income. My job is to think about the biggest problems affecting this planet. One of the biggest ones, beyond stabilization of basic political problems and governance structures and health and philosophy issues, is the problem of longterm economic drives. The adtech economy can only go so far. At some point, we MUST start building large scale ships and large scale habitats off planet. The economic stimulus from this will be enormous.

That is one reason why the SpaceX IPO was the largest in history. But there is a critical problem with SpaceX, and with all rocket companies, which is that the instant there is just one single rocket explosion (and there is BOUND to be one on a long enough time horizon), whether accidental or intentional, then the entire rocket economy comes to a halt. From an economics lens, that is a terrifying thought. From a city stabilization and country governance perspective, that is also a terrifying thought. What if the damage from a single rocket explosion is so large that politically citizens simply refuse to work on or allow any more rockets to launch? Then you’re talking civil war and possibly country-to-country war.

So my thinking on this Meso-Space-Mountain is that the building of such a large structure, which might take decades, will itself be a major economic stimulus. Further, the existence of the project, despite slow and subject to problems of corruption and all the other issues of building anything, will give more confidence about the problem of the eventual accidental rocket explosion. The rockets are not our only solution. They are just the beginning of an entire interplanetary (and eventually inter-galaxy) space economy.

One final point about my vision of the structure is that the top of this structure should be a large geodesic-style dome full of greenery. Maintaining natural life at the top of this structure, and in other geodesic type domes periodically up the summit, could be a way to cycle and maintain air, water, and food in a more self-sustainable way.

The challenge of maintaining a large-scale structure like this and a biodome on the top of it is enormous, but all of this challenges is the same one that we face already if settling new planets or if building self-sustaining ecosystems in spaceships. Not just the technologies, but also the legal and political and human rights questions that emerge from building and living in such a structure will already prepare us for the work ahead in outerspace territories and other planetary territories.

Where should these Meso-Space-Mountains be built?

My current intuition is in the upper and lower hemispheres, as far north and south as possible without creating further engineering issues. My intuition is that 3 or 4 can be built in the upper hemisphere and 3 or 4 can be built in the lower hemisphere, across the continents.

A few candidate locations in upper hemisphere:

• The edge of Alaska and the Yukon Territory Canada
• Greenland
• The edge of Finland and Russia
• Near the intersection of China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, and Russia
• one of the islands north of Japan
 A few candidate locations in lower hemisphere:
• Western or Southern Australia
• The edge of South Africa and Namibia
• The edge of Argentina and Chile, or perhaps Uruguay

I like the idea of these existing at the edges of current countries, and also somewhat close to existing mountain ranges. Building in these areas would drive more inter-country collaboration, and would also be more predictable from a weather effects perspective.

Building and revising and repairing and scaling just one of these structures may take one or two decades. Add in the first anchor and the first O'Neill cylinder construction, and that might be another decade. But after the first of each has been figured out, my intuition is that the pace of construction will pick up dramatically. First one decade and then just 5 years to construction of a Meso-Space-Mountain. Same for the O'Neill cylinders. Then what if we could manufacture O'Neill cylinders from these locations, and release them so that one can float into orbit around the Moon or Mars, serving as a base of operations while a first settlement on the ground also gets started.

This vision of space settlement expansion feels far more sustainable and real to me than the vision of simply launching rockets and landing them on a far away planet or on the moon.

When building all of these structures, there will be demand for human workers and robot workers, for scientists and architects, for maintenance and service workers of all types, for mining and natural resources work, for religious and philosophy and the arts, and demand for all the other culture and services and technology we have today to continue growing steadily so that the work on these can continue.

These mountain structures could eventually be connected to each other as well, and if done so, then you could quickly and dramatically reduce terrestrial air flight and revert instead to more sustainable and eco-friendly high-speed trains. And you could engineer extremely high-speeds because the direction and movement of the trains is so predictable (by both civilian engineers and geopolitical strategists) that development would not need to be slowed. So I imagine a kind of lower ring and upper ring connecting these Meso-Space-Mountains. That again may seem absurd to some people, but the natural ecosystem of Earth (not to mention existing cities and local politics) is such that I expect it to be strangely easier to build and manage something of this scale way up in the Mesosphere instead of on the ground.


O’Neill Cylinder Space Lifeboats

My intuition is that building space-mountain-anchored O'Neill cylinders is a better solution for testing and development of space habitats than the faster-moving, disconnected orbital structures like our current space stations.

I know there are tons of problems with this idea. I’ve researched the speed at which an object needs to move to stay in Lower Earth Orbit. It’s fast. 7.8km/s. So the idea of anchoring an object seems impossible on first read, but my intuition is still that this is the right path (especially if the objective is to get current nation states to align on building these structures sooner rather than later).

An O'Neill cylinder structure is a well-known structure among space enthusiasts that consists of rotating cylinders. The movie Interstellar has one at the very end of the movie. Another structure common in movies and popular culture is a Stanford torus. It is possible that a rotating anchored Stanford torus could be built out in space directly above the mountain structure, but for some reason my intuition is that multiple O’Neill cylinders all floating from one mountain structure is the better configuration. Perhaps that is because the Stanford torus, in a failure case, could drop directly on the mountain structure, where multiple O’Neill cylinders would likely be extended further out (and with movement could fail into movement away from Earth instead of towards it). I am making very loose assumptions here. Part of the exercise of this essay is to create space to see both new problems and solutions, rather than finding every perfect solution today.

If the rotational speed to keep an anchored O’Neill cylinder in orbit is too high, maybe that means there needs to be some kind of steady propulsion built into the anchor structure. If you can imagine temporary but steady and extremely precise rocket propulsion, you can also imagine a kind of semi-autonomous but anchored platform that has constant or semi-constant propulsion. The O'Neill cylinder could then attach to this. There is already a need for a bridge connection to exist between the Meso-Space-Mountain structure and the lifeboats. There’s a lot of existing thinking on space elevators that can be applied here.

I like the idea of these objects, and potentially even some satellite launches, happening from a much higher plane of atmosphere instead of happening from the ground via rockets. Using this approach means that anything that is detected visibly or by radar beneath this level would instantly be assumed by all parties (nation state institutions and corporations) to be a problem. That alone already opens the door for much easier de-escalation of munitions between countries.

Further, just as I am typing this section on Wednesday September 30th 2026, it clearly occurred to me that the mountain structures would serve as the city to house all the workers that would be needed to assemble and launch the O’Neill cylinders. This sounds like a stupidly obvious point, but it is not. Maybe that point would have occurred quicker to someone else reading my essay, but it did not initially occur to me and I am explaining this point to better attest to the reality of the intuitive and faithful nature of explorations like this.

Avoiding War and Negative Use Cases

Gunther Anders talked of the inability to imagine the effects of our creations. This section, I am attempting to do precisely that and imagine the problems that could emerge from the creation of these structures.

The worst case scenario in building the Meso Space Mountains and Lifeboats is a catastrophic event causing the partial or total collapse of this structure, with massive loss of life and which in turn causes a massive destructive event of the natural ecosystems surrounding this area or the area nearby.

The strange thing about this scenario, is that even the worst case scenario of my analysis of a Meso-Space-Mountain failure is still far better than the outcome of global or regional thermo-nuclear war.

There is the question of a nuclear device going off at one of these structures, but that is actually no different from a nuclear device going off anywhere else and triggering a global thermonuclear exchange.

The quicker we can get to fewer missiles and fewer nuclear bombs, and more mountain structures and Oneill cylinders, the better.

A secondary worst case scenario is a war being fought over control of the Meso-Space-Mountain structures. That is why I am suggesting for these to be built at the intersections of several current countries. This problem is also a problem with existing rocket and other advanced manufacturing technology. All countries of the world will benefit economically from the development of these structures and from jumpstarting the wider space economy.

Another worst case scenario is the introduction of some kind of weapon from the building used to fire on another city, or to fire against another one of the meso-space-mountains. This scenarios is true of all other current structures and cities today. The good news about the meso-space-mountain is that it is extremely large and easy to observe. That means that countries could orient their warfare or defense budgets towards surveillance and mitigation of any problems emerging from these structures. I would gladly take defense budgets oriented in this way, instead of defense budgets that are incentivized to drop bombs on helpless civilians or point weapons at other countries. This also has the added strange benefit that if there were a catastrophic destruction event, the countries would already be watching and ready to minimize damage to the wider populations. And again, I would gladly take any of this budget spend, which at least is still oriented towards getting all of us into outer space and settling other planets, over the budget spend to harden or weaponize existing technologies or companies.

All of this leads us to the path of attempting to disarm nuclear weapons and missiles across all countries. That is a bad scenario where, despite everything seeming like it is moving in the right direction of disarmament, a country launches some kind of surprise attack using hidden missiles at the same time that others are disarming. It is true that there is no way to know precisely if a country truly disarms entirely or not. It is also true that submarines and other mobile vehicles could be used to launch weapons. These all can be minimized over time where the only accepted mobile vehicles with weapons are out in space (but preferably not even that).

This could lead to more and more incentive for missiles to be hidden, but again, I will always take a world where most of the obvious and suspected missile sites and vehicles are reduced dramatically even if they might not be entirely eliminated.

I will add other scenarios to this section as I think of them, but at present almost all scenarios I am seeing show this being a very expensive and very politically challenging, but at least clear, path to move away from the current nuclear missile standoff between countries while stimulating all economies globally and enabling humanity to finally extend civilization into the stars.