Fighter Jets Can’t Go To Space

Fighter jets are a technological marvel. Capable of traveling at several times the speed of sound and flying miles above the surface of the earth. From our spot on the ground, it’s easy to look up and blown away by the power and speed on display and think ‘Wow, that thing is unstoppable.’

But no matter how much you upgrade it, no matter what you do to make it faster and more powerful, that fighter jet is never going to reach escape velocity and travel to space. It is impossible. Fighter jets need oxygen to burn fuel and they need air under their wings to provide lift. Neither of those exist in or near the edge of space. We can keep pushing that fighter jet higher and faster but eventually it’s going to reach the limit of it’s technological capabilities, well before it’s on the way to Mars. It’s fundamentally not the right tool for the job.

LLMs are that fighter jet, and space travel is AGI (Artificial General Intelligence). You can make them more powerful and faster, capable of “remembering” information in larger contexts, but fundamentally the technology is never going to be more than a LLM. As time goes on and we put more power into them, each improvement will get smaller and smaller until we hit that limit where they can go no further. It has been proven that LLMs are incredible tools and we absolutely should be making use of the technology to better our lives and be more productive.

But if our goal is to go to space, fighter jets aren’t going to get us there.