It is some time in our future. Humans have just come into contact with intelligent alien life living on a planet some reachable distance away. Any voyage to the alien planet would be dangerous and expensive. For some time now, human space travel has been an activity almost solely conducted by private actors — commercial spaceflight companies and their clients, or the personal, luxury spacecraft of eccentric billionaires. 

The nations of the world have spent the past few decades preoccupied with increasing the weak growth rate of the global economy, mitigating the serious impacts of climate change, and squabbling amongst themselves. They are generally unwilling to send out a ship to the alien planet without more information and more time to deliberate.

The term ‘heavenbanning’ refers to the hypothetical practice of banishing a user from a platform causing everyone that they speak with online to be replaced by AI models that constantly agree with and praise them. For e.g., a platform like Reddit or Twitter might ‘heavenban’ someone deemed a troll by slowly limiting their ability to interact with other users and slowly replacing those users with bots (‘angels’) that praise and encourage the troll’s posts and perspective. Some AI researchers believe heavenbanning is now technically feasible.

The ‘Transhuman Olympics’ is a hypothetical sporting competition that would be similar in format to the current Olympics, but have:
no drug testing of any kind, and
no restrictions on equipment (for e.g., the Nike Alphafly shoe or the LZR Racer swimsuit).

Price gouging occurs when a seller increases the prices of goods, services, or commodities to a level much higher than is considered reasonable or fair. Usually, this event occurs after a demand or supply shock. Common examples include price increases of basic necessities after natural disasters. Many jurisdictions have enacted legislation against price-gouging. Typically, these laws are defined in terms of these three criteria:

Period of emergency: the laws apply only to price shifts during a declared state of emergency or disaster.
Necessary items: the laws apply exclusively to items essential to survival, such as food, water, and ice.
Price ceilings: the laws limit the maximum price that can be charged for given goods.