Something doesn't need to be a blocker in the small to be blocker at large.
I.e. anything that introduces more friction, or is less efficient, for making progress could hamper technological accumulation.
Clearly for general life on Earth, water was a tremendous enabler - although surely other forms of life without water must be possible - but perhaps much less likely.
Likewise for technology, fire is a tremendous enabler. So much of chemistry and material structure is temperature dependent. Not having a similarly flexible way to adjust heat over a wide range would make vast categories of advances too costly to be immediately beneficial, and therefore much less likely to be explored.
Something doesn't need to be a blocker in the small to be blocker at large.
I.e. anything that introduces more friction, or is less efficient, for making progress could hamper technological accumulation.
Clearly for general life on Earth, water was a tremendous enabler - although surely other forms of life without water must be possible - but perhaps much less likely.
Likewise for technology, fire is a tremendous enabler. So much of chemistry and material structure is temperature dependent. Not having a similarly flexible way to adjust heat over a wide range would make vast categories of advances too costly to be immediately beneficial, and therefore much less likely to be explored.