6 ms·
Space: A sudden light
- perseusprime11 10y agoIn Elon Musk, we trust!
- viach 10y agoWhat problem do space flights solve?
- hossbeast 10y agoLong term continuity of the human race, by backing up to another physical medium, I.e. planet
- JoshTriplett 10y agoAs well as a massive motivating research goal with incredibly hard problems that tend to have practical applications on Earth. And a means of inspiring billions.
- viach 10y agoLatest news show (imho) that Earth's ecosystem tend to be ruined in current century. We'll just fly to Mars then, right?
- erikpukinskis 10y agoAnyone looking to invest in the long term continuity of the human race would be foolish to invest in space travel. There are practically limitless terrestrial investments which would offer much better ROI. I have yet to see anyone describe a single scenario of even low probability where Mars is more habitable than the entirety of Earth.
- viach 10y agoCan't agree more. Again, what's in "continuity of human race" for ordinary people, like me and the most over here?
- tokipin 10y agoThe idea is to have our eggs in more than one basket so that the next mass extinction event doesn't take us all out or set us back hundreds of years. Whether life on mars is fun or not is a separate question. (I do agree with you. We can barely manage to live in Antarctica. Mars will be much more difficult.) And in becoming multiplanetary, we can start gaining the tools that could help us avoid some of those extinction events.
- erikpukinskis 10y agoI get the idea. I'm saying we're better served by improving our Earth baskets than trying to add a Mars one. Moving 1% of your net worth out of your home currency doesn't make any sense if 99% of your money is invested in a Ponzi scheme. You want to move some of it to a safer investment before worrying about outlandish economic collapse scenarios. Not all diversification is created equal. Not sure what you mean by extinction avoiding tools or why you think developing them on Mars will be easier than on Earth.
- Rhapso 10y agoDifferent fundamental goal. Putting 1% in another market is an amazing way to increase the odds somebody survives. In terms of optimizing for "maximum likelihood of humanity's future existence" local improvement are marginal, versus colonization which essentially ORs the odds of survival together. The ideal is to have as many people as possible living sustainably in poverty in the asteroid belt as soon as possible.
- SubiculumCode 10y agoSpace-based mining may solve dwindling availability of rare elements useful in industrial processes made profitable by realized cost reductions in space travel.
- mikeash 10y agoOff the top of my head: monitoring weather, providing communications, and allowing devices to precisely locate themselves.
- viach 10y agoTrue. But by space flights I mainly mean traveling to other planets and solar systems
- api 10y agoThis is notable because The Economist penned this a few years ago: http://www.economist.com/node/18897425 http://www.economist.com/node/18897425 Of course economists are on par with Ouija board users at predicting the future.
- nickff 10y agoMost people (especially pundits) are terrible at predicting the future. If you want to get better, you should read "Superforecasting" by Tetlock. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_Political_Judgment:_How_Good_Is_It https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_Political_Judgment:_How... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superforecasting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superforecasting
- blackbagboys 10y agoThe typical Economist staff writer is probably a 25-30 year old journalist with a B.A. and a prestigious-sounding alma mater, not an actual economist.
- rcarmo 10y agoAnd an Oxford Dictionary on a hair-trigger.
- SubiculumCode 10y agoReads like a big PR release for a budding industry....but since I am a huge fan of space exploration... I'm totally cool with it.
- chris_va 10y agoThe real problem with the space economy is that there are really very few business plans: - Space Tourism - Imagery Acquisition - Communications - Science - Astroid Mining (pending) ... And it turns out that none so far have been good businesses, and the small sat form factor is really limited. I really really love space stuff, but I don't see any of these creating explosive growth in the short term. Eventually the costs will come down, but it will probably take a long time. *EDIT (as pointed out by pjungwir): - Zero G manufacturing
- nickff 10y agoThere is only one business plan for the 'air industry', "transportation", which was totally unforeseen in 1905, yet it seems to be quite large.
- chris_va 10y agoDon't get me wrong, it will get there eventually, but the current market economics aren't exactly primed for explosive growth.
- mikeash 10y agoTourism hasn't really paid off. Imagery seems to be doing OK, but is a fairly small business. Science isn't doing much for business at the moment, and asteroid mining is still theoretical, so I generally agree on those. But communications? There are how many hundreds of commercially operated communications satellites in orbit right now? From a quick perusal of SpaceX's launch history, communications makes up nearly half of their business so far. Seems like pretty good business to me.
- chris_va 10y agoThe problem with communication satellites is that the technology isn't as good (throughput, latency, cost) as a ground based system, except for handling coverage gaps. Coverage gaps on the ground are slowly going away, so eventually this business will likely decline.
- falconman 10y agoWhat's so interesting to me is that the more we want to do and further we want to go in space the more unity and collaboration we seem to need at the planetary level