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Imagine we go to space and get access to infinite energy and infinite natural resources. Does it solve world hunger ? Don't we already have more than enough fo

Imagine we go to space and get access to infinite energy and infinite natural resources. Does it solve world hunger ? Don't we already have more than enough food ? Does it solve cancer ? .. Does it solve the economical crisis we are in ? Its mostly due to lack of political organization and lack of education. I think the argument that Neil Degrasse Tyson makes - about inspiring the young - it can be done by trying to solve world hunger, cancer, etc. We do not need to burn more fossil fuels to try to figure out how to mine the moon. The biggest argument would be that we already have infinite resources here on earth. Space mining doesn't make much sense when you can much more cheaply extract resources from earth. I think the biggest issues in society is education and healthcare. And the free market seems to direct us towards that anyway. Healthy and educated people are inspiring - space mining seems to be trying to solve the wrong problem for the right reasons.

deleted 10y ago
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bad_user 10y ago
> The biggest argument would be that we already have infinite resources here on earth. Earth's resources are very much finite and that's a fact. It's only a matter of a couple of decades before fossil fuels become extinct, our oceans are dying due to overfishing and pollution, rainforests are cut to make room for more agricultural land, existing agricultural land is acidified due to overuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, potable water sources are vanishing, those solar panels that people keep talking about and the iPhone in your pocket need rare metals to be mined, etc, etc. Also have you seen how open pit mining looks like, have you seen what it leaves behind? Earth mining is cheap only because the costs are subsidized by the environment. But of course, our children will pay the real bills.
- wrong_variable 10y ago
  > our oceans are dying due to overfishing and pollution, rainforests are cut to make room for more agricultural land, existing agricultural land is acidified due to overuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, potable water sources are vanishing So you think rain-forests and clean water exists on space ?? We can solve those problems withing sending more rockets to space - which ends up burning more fossil fuel. Remember, every day that you are alive ( assuming you are living a developed country ) you are emitting huge amount of carbon. Just keeping you alive is making the earth more inhospitable - dont talk about sending rockets to space ( with other people's money ) as a method to combat climate change and solving the resource constraint on planet earth.
  - ethbro 10y ago
    > So you think rain-forests and clean water exists on space ?? The point was that they (in the "all around us" / Earth sense) do not, so it is therefore more difficult to pollute them via space industry. There's something to be said for an environment where you can run an unshielded nuclear reactor without causing any particular damage around your craft...
  - konart 10y ago
    >water in space Very much yes.
    - tremon 10y ago
      In fact, the water in space is so clean, it will kill you.
  - bad_user 10y ago
    I can't parse this opinion. You're disagreeing, but I don't understand how. You also went on a tangent, avoiding my main point. Are you aware that advancements made for space exploration have helped the medical field? Things like NASA's digital image processing of the moon helping with MRIs and CAT scans. Or LVAD leading to artificial heart pumps. NASA is basically able to claim at least partial credit for things like ear thermometers, automatic insulin pumps, implantable heart defibrillators, improvements in digital mammography technology, programmable pacemakers, LEDs, etc. The discussion is about mining and I see no reason for why space mining colonies couldn't be self-sustainable. If they cannot be, then space mining isn't feasible or too costly. And if they are self sustainable, then the fossil fuel mined and burned on earth would be worth it. If this was meant for me to feel shame of being alive and consuming carbon, take note that this is reductionist thinking, the same reason for why we find ourselves in the current predicament. Carbon emissions are only important as long as we have an impending global warming phenomenon potentially pushing us over a dangerous threshold. And while that's certainly a potential catastrophe, it's reductionist thinking in the sense that carbon emission isn't the real problem, just a reaction in a long chain of reactions and focusing just on carbon emissions will spell our doom. But going back to your first question, we'd have plenty of water if we wouldn't pollute it, I don't see the need for mining decreasing, quite the contrary, so instead of dynamiting mountains and filling the area with cyanide for extracting gold or whatever, I'd rather have all of this happen in space, instead of our backyard. Mining on earth is only cheap because the costs are subsidized, being implicit in the damage to the environment, a cost that we'll pay sooner or later. If we'd factor in the real cost, if space mining is possible, I don't think it will look that expensive.
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ajuc 10y ago
It doesn't solve any of these problems. But it solves the problem of "ups, something destroyed humankind".
- bovermyer 10y ago
  This. Something that gnaws at the back of my mind is that the survival of our species is contingent on absolutely nothing catastrophic happening to the single planet we inhabit. All of our eggs are in one basket, so to speak. Until we have a viable network of colonies offworld, we will continue to have this problem.
- xemoka 10y ago
  Absolutely. Ultimately we must leave this place. Not now—and certainly not in the near future—but eventually "we" (or whatever we become) will have to leave this place in order to ensure the survival of our descendants.
informatimago 10y ago
If we get access to infinite energy and resources, then the answer to all your questions is YES. But space.time is not infinite, far from it. We can easily imagine, eg. computational problems (ie. computer programs that can easily be written) that would require more memory than the number of particule in the universe would allow, or more time than the life expectancy of the universe would allow. So unless we are able within this space.time left to invent a way to create new universe or survive a big crunch/big bang event, or a cold death, no, there's no infinite energy and no infinite resources to be taped, and therefore: - world hunger is not a problem of resources, but a political problem. The question is whether we're ready to gather in a concentration camp the psychopaths of the world, and exterminate them once for all. - yes, we have already more than enough food. - all hints are that cancer is a man-made illness. Once you've removed the psychopaths who build poluting processes to earn more $money or more power, we should revert to a more natural and canceless world. - nope. It is not an economical crisis, it is an economical system set up by those psychopaths to keep accumulating money and power. They already own 99% of the money and of the power, but they still need to acrrue it at a significant percentage each year. I should also mention, that assuming a population growth such as we double the population every 20 years, going to space would not solve any "overpopulation" problem if it was any more real than human-made climate change, since that would just mean that you would have to colonize new planets every 20 years. Very soon, the whole galaxy would be "overpopulated", and then soon enough the whole universe. So going to space, offers no solution to "we". However, having a space ship, and being able to leave this planet of psychopaths, crazy people, and savages, would solve "MY" problem! I would at least escape from this asylum-prison! And there's hope the galaxy is big enough that if you escape, the US government and the banksters won't be able to catch you up to make you pay taxes and interests on the debt. Healthy and educated people are looking for a way out, space mining serves only to build bigger, faster and better space ships to go farther, until we can get out of the reach of the psychopaths. And THIS would be the BEST solution, if you don't like the concentration camp/final solution.
- iansane 10y ago
  Cancer isn't man made. It arises from a natural process, but man made activities can accelerate it.
wjagodfrey 10y ago
Good god, that's a painfully narrow minded comment
Wintamute 10y ago
Think about the explosion in scientific understanding, world commerce and enlightenment values that came with the expansion of the British empire. Then think about the explosion of world commerce and related technological advances that came from colonising North America. We're still feeling those benefits wash over us as a species. Then think about what happens when we reach a tipping point where exploiting and colonising near Earth space becomes commercially viable. Like war, rapid expansion into virgin territories can be at once chaotic, uncontrollable and radically socially, technologically and economically invigorating.
jerf 10y ago
There's a wide variety of ways that easy access to space could help the ecology. Battery technology at the moment needs a lot of rare earths, which could be obtained in space. Mining activities in space are mining activities not occuring on Earth's surface. Solar power may be augmentable using space technologies. Any high-pollution industry that can be moved to space is either polluting something already clinically sterile (remember pollution is not "intrinsically bad", that's a cognitive shortcut that works on a planet with life in every cubic centimeter, pollution is bad because of what it does to life; really, if there's no "life", there's no "pollution"), or "polluting" into something that will just be blown away on the solar wind, which makes it irrelevant. Easy access to space also enables some ways of controlling climate change; I've always preferred the space mirror approach to manipulating the climate because it's so fantastically controllable, unlike almost all other proposals to try to fix it here on Earth. (If you get it wrong, you can stop.) Also, before you trot out the tired old "oh, we never thought we'd finish polluting the ocean"... first, run the math, it's very different, and second, the universe is already terminally polluted, in the sense that nothing much can live there until we go out and clean some space out. There's no life out there, not within anywhere we can get in your lifetime. It can't get any more uninhabitable than it already is.
EGreg 10y ago
The problem is even if we discover and obtain 100x more resources, that wouldn't solve the pollution problem. Life continues forward but creates entropy around it. Non biodegradable byproducts and all that carbon being released from the ground are the greatest threat to life on Earth!

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

bad_user 10y ago

> The biggest argument would be that we already have infinite resources here on earth. Earth's resources are very much finite and that's a fact. It's only a matter of a couple of decades before fossil fuels become extinct, our oceans are dying due to overfishing and pollution, rainforests are cut to make room for more agricultural land, existing agricultural land is acidified due to overuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, potable water sources are vanishing, those solar panels that people keep talking about and the iPhone in your pocket need rare metals to be mined, etc, etc. Also have you seen how open pit mining looks like, have you seen what it leaves behind? Earth mining is cheap only because the costs are subsidized by the environment. But of course, our children will pay the real bills.

wrong_variable 10y ago
> our oceans are dying due to overfishing and pollution, rainforests are cut to make room for more agricultural land, existing agricultural land is acidified due to overuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, potable water sources are vanishing So you think rain-forests and clean water exists on space ?? We can solve those problems withing sending more rockets to space - which ends up burning more fossil fuel. Remember, every day that you are alive ( assuming you are living a developed country ) you are emitting huge amount of carbon. Just keeping you alive is making the earth more inhospitable - dont talk about sending rockets to space ( with other people's money ) as a method to combat climate change and solving the resource constraint on planet earth.
- ethbro 10y ago
  > So you think rain-forests and clean water exists on space ?? The point was that they (in the "all around us" / Earth sense) do not, so it is therefore more difficult to pollute them via space industry. There's something to be said for an environment where you can run an unshielded nuclear reactor without causing any particular damage around your craft...
- konart 10y ago
  >water in space Very much yes.
  - tremon 10y ago
    In fact, the water in space is so clean, it will kill you.
- bad_user 10y ago
  I can't parse this opinion. You're disagreeing, but I don't understand how. You also went on a tangent, avoiding my main point. Are you aware that advancements made for space exploration have helped the medical field? Things like NASA's digital image processing of the moon helping with MRIs and CAT scans. Or LVAD leading to artificial heart pumps. NASA is basically able to claim at least partial credit for things like ear thermometers, automatic insulin pumps, implantable heart defibrillators, improvements in digital mammography technology, programmable pacemakers, LEDs, etc. The discussion is about mining and I see no reason for why space mining colonies couldn't be self-sustainable. If they cannot be, then space mining isn't feasible or too costly. And if they are self sustainable, then the fossil fuel mined and burned on earth would be worth it. If this was meant for me to feel shame of being alive and consuming carbon, take note that this is reductionist thinking, the same reason for why we find ourselves in the current predicament. Carbon emissions are only important as long as we have an impending global warming phenomenon potentially pushing us over a dangerous threshold. And while that's certainly a potential catastrophe, it's reductionist thinking in the sense that carbon emission isn't the real problem, just a reaction in a long chain of reactions and focusing just on carbon emissions will spell our doom. But going back to your first question, we'd have plenty of water if we wouldn't pollute it, I don't see the need for mining decreasing, quite the contrary, so instead of dynamiting mountains and filling the area with cyanide for extracting gold or whatever, I'd rather have all of this happen in space, instead of our backyard. Mining on earth is only cheap because the costs are subsidized, being implicit in the damage to the environment, a cost that we'll pay sooner or later. If we'd factor in the real cost, if space mining is possible, I don't think it will look that expensive.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

ajuc 10y ago

It doesn't solve any of these problems. But it solves the problem of "ups, something destroyed humankind".

bovermyer 10y ago
This. Something that gnaws at the back of my mind is that the survival of our species is contingent on absolutely nothing catastrophic happening to the single planet we inhabit. All of our eggs are in one basket, so to speak. Until we have a viable network of colonies offworld, we will continue to have this problem.
xemoka 10y ago
Absolutely. Ultimately we must leave this place. Not now—and certainly not in the near future—but eventually "we" (or whatever we become) will have to leave this place in order to ensure the survival of our descendants.

informatimago 10y ago

If we get access to infinite energy and resources, then the answer to all your questions is YES. But space.time is not infinite, far from it. We can easily imagine, eg. computational problems (ie. computer programs that can easily be written) that would require more memory than the number of particule in the universe would allow, or more time than the life expectancy of the universe would allow. So unless we are able within this space.time left to invent a way to create new universe or survive a big crunch/big bang event, or a cold death, no, there's no infinite energy and no infinite resources to be taped, and therefore: - world hunger is not a problem of resources, but a political problem. The question is whether we're ready to gather in a concentration camp the psychopaths of the world, and exterminate them once for all. - yes, we have already more than enough food. - all hints are that cancer is a man-made illness. Once you've removed the psychopaths who build poluting processes to earn more $money or more power, we should revert to a more natural and canceless world. - nope. It is not an economical crisis, it is an economical system set up by those psychopaths to keep accumulating money and power. They already own 99% of the money and of the power, but they still need to acrrue it at a significant percentage each year. I should also mention, that assuming a population growth such as we double the population every 20 years, going to space would not solve any "overpopulation" problem if it was any more real than human-made climate change, since that would just mean that you would have to colonize new planets every 20 years. Very soon, the whole galaxy would be "overpopulated", and then soon enough the whole universe. So going to space, offers no solution to "we". However, having a space ship, and being able to leave this planet of psychopaths, crazy people, and savages, would solve "MY" problem! I would at least escape from this asylum-prison! And there's hope the galaxy is big enough that if you escape, the US government and the banksters won't be able to catch you up to make you pay taxes and interests on the debt. Healthy and educated people are looking for a way out, space mining serves only to build bigger, faster and better space ships to go farther, until we can get out of the reach of the psychopaths. And THIS would be the BEST solution, if you don't like the concentration camp/final solution.

iansane 10y ago
Cancer isn't man made. It arises from a natural process, but man made activities can accelerate it.

wjagodfrey 10y ago

Good god, that's a painfully narrow minded comment

Wintamute 10y ago

Think about the explosion in scientific understanding, world commerce and enlightenment values that came with the expansion of the British empire. Then think about the explosion of world commerce and related technological advances that came from colonising North America. We're still feeling those benefits wash over us as a species. Then think about what happens when we reach a tipping point where exploiting and colonising near Earth space becomes commercially viable. Like war, rapid expansion into virgin territories can be at once chaotic, uncontrollable and radically socially, technologically and economically invigorating.

jerf 10y ago

There's a wide variety of ways that easy access to space could help the ecology. Battery technology at the moment needs a lot of rare earths, which could be obtained in space. Mining activities in space are mining activities not occuring on Earth's surface. Solar power may be augmentable using space technologies. Any high-pollution industry that can be moved to space is either polluting something already clinically sterile (remember pollution is not "intrinsically bad", that's a cognitive shortcut that works on a planet with life in every cubic centimeter, pollution is bad because of what it does to life; really, if there's no "life", there's no "pollution"), or "polluting" into something that will just be blown away on the solar wind, which makes it irrelevant. Easy access to space also enables some ways of controlling climate change; I've always preferred the space mirror approach to manipulating the climate because it's so fantastically controllable, unlike almost all other proposals to try to fix it here on Earth. (If you get it wrong, you can stop.) Also, before you trot out the tired old "oh, we never thought we'd finish polluting the ocean"... first, run the math, it's very different, and second, the universe is already terminally polluted, in the sense that nothing much can live there until we go out and clean some space out. There's no life out there, not within anywhere we can get in your lifetime. It can't get any more uninhabitable than it already is.

EGreg 10y ago

The problem is even if we discover and obtain 100x more resources, that wouldn't solve the pollution problem. Life continues forward but creates entropy around it. Non biodegradable byproducts and all that carbon being released from the ground are the greatest threat to life on Earth!