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Congress Wants a New U.S. Military Branch, a ‘Space Corps’
- ivanbakel 9y agoIt's not an appealing thought to imagine that we'd start consistent space travel without first dealing with the problems of war on our own planet. This kind of policy is putting our worst collective foot forward.
- adventured 9y ago> without first dealing with the problems of war on our own planet Problems of food & water security. Problems of air pollution. Problems of equality. Problems of disease. Problems of enough toys at Christmas. You could always insert a new problem on Earth - of strictly subjective seriousness - to use to prevent that leap. Conceptually it's the: eventually you have to launch, problem. There will never be a shortage of serious problems to solve on this planet.
- geofft 9y ago> Conceptually it's the: eventually you have to launch, problem. Why do you have to launch? If we can't solve our serious problems on Earth, what do we expect to gain by going into space?
- pjc50 9y agoAnd don't we just risk taking them with us? (Theme of counless scifi, e.g. Clarke's Songs of Distant Earth)
- justinpombrio 9y ago> If we can't solve our serious problems on Earth, what do we expect to gain by going into space? A colony on Mars! I'm sorry, I really don't get the question.
- ivanbakel 9y agoGP was asking why GGP said we had to launch. This isn't a software project with a management deadline - space travel is an active human decision. What requires that we start launching at all?
- justinpombrio 9y agoA colony on Mars! Don't you want a colony on Mars? I still don't get the question.
- geofft 9y agoI don't want a colony on Mars. What would I do with it? Why do you want one?
- stale2002 9y agoUhh, there are lots of valuable resources in space. If we can mine 1 asteroid, we can get more valuable metals from that than have ever been mined on earth.
- friedman23 9y agoDo you honestly believe we will achieve post scarcity society without leaving Earth?
- vacri 9y agoHow is having a small dependent colony of tunnel-dwellers on Mars going to give us a post-scarcity society?
- dwaltrip 9y agoThe same way Columbus gave us our massive modern international shipping infrastructure. It's a small step in a large process. You don't just jump from A to B. In this case, getting nearer to post-scarcity will undoubtedly involve capturing a much larger portion of the Sun's energy output (only one billionth reaches Earth), which will require significantly more developed space industries. Or if fusion becomes viable, we will need to harvest some of the more efficient inputs, such as He3 from the moon. The technologies we develop to accomplish these endeavors will provide enormous benefits to all humans, including those still living on Earth.
- friedman23 9y agoMars has nothing to do with it. We simply do not have enough resources on this planet to provide everyone with everything they desire without destroying the planet in the process..
- tptacek 9y agoMalthusians have been making and being embarrassed by that argument for hundreds of years. Meanwhile, the standard of living for all people on the planet increases, and the link between that increase and resource consumption is not linear. Given the history of the argument, it seems forgivable to assume that the people who make it in the context of space travel are simply besotted by the romance of space travel.
- geofft 9y agoAnd do we have the resources on two planets to provide everyone with everything they desire? Or ten, or a hundred? If you know what the bound is on the resources needed to satisfy people's desires, and that's a finite number of planets greater than one, sure. But if you don't have a bound, it's going to be far more effective to adjust people's desires. (And if you do have a bound, and it's slightly greater than one, it may still be more efficient to adjust people's desires to get it to less than one than to expend the engineering work needed to build a multi-planet civilization.)
- olegkikin 9y agoWhy didn't you sell your computer to donate to the starving children? Why did you even buy it in the first place?
- geofft 9y agoOne, because donating money to starving children is not a sustainable solution, and I believe that I can generate more long-term benefit for humanity from using my computer than from selling it. Two, I literally bought this computer from a charity auction. (Are you actually genuinely unclear on why "sell everything you have" is not an ethical imperative, or are you trolling?)
- Balbazac 9y agoPeter Singer would like to have a word with you. Disclosure: I strongly disagree with his (Singer's) thoughts on this matter.
- johncolanduoni 9y agoThere's a lot of reasons to go to space other than trying to fix problems or run away from them. If the latter is your thing you're much better off with a forest than space.
- prawn 9y agoHaving a second basket for our eggs?
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- ori_b 9y agoHistorically, the research needed for moonshot projects has increased the quality of life for everyone. Think of all the improvements to mundane parts of lives that we can attribute to satellites. Improvements in weather prediction increasing crop yields. Improvements in geolocation with GPS inproving search and rescue efforts. Improvements in fabrication technology making all consumer products cheaper. The list goes on and on. I just wish that the kind of funding that would go to a space corps was instead directed at NASA for fundamental research.
- ivanbakel 9y agoTrue, but I've always seen that as a side-effect of the sheer amount of money that flows through the military, which ends up sponsoring so many of these projects in the first place. If the major take-away from this is "money can improve our lives", then why are we spending so much of it on military programs in the first place? A fraction of the money dedicated to human lethality is capable of producing ARPANET or GPS - what can the rest of it do?
- ori_b 9y ago> "money can improve our lives" No. The takeaway is that trying to achieve something that we don't know how to do has knock on effects which improve the things we think we know how to do.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- SkyMarshal 9y agoHumans will never solve war unless we genetically re-engineer our entire species (which carries its own risks of annhilation/extinction causing consequences). Thus in the interest of increasing our species odds of survival and reducing our dependence on a single planet, we should pursue space travel as soon as possible, regardless what other problems remain unsolved. But better than space travel is space commercialization. Make space a profit center rather than a cost center. If space can be made economically viable sooner than later, for example via JPL's recent KISS study, so much the better. There's quadrillions of dollars of value in the asteroid belt, enough to forestall earth-based resource wars for generations at least. But the human race will always be messy, and attempting to focus on fixing that unfixable problem is not a good reason to postpone forward progress.
- rbanffy 9y ago> Humans will never solve war We can't say that for sure. A lot of conflict come from the fear of scarcity and, if we solve that, we will be largely without conflict. What will be really complicated is a transition from current economies driven by scarcity to economies based on abundant resources and perfect distribution. A lot of people would rather die before allowing others to have the same they feel entitled to have.
- rayiner 9y agoViolent confrontation is a mode of interaction between all creatures cabable of it. It'll exist as long as there are entities with conflicting interests. A society without "war" is an unstable state. If nobody is willing to use violence, then whatever entity arises that is willing to use violence will be able to capture all the resources/enslave everyone else.
- ivanbakel 9y agoI cannot agree. >It'll exist as long as there are entities with conflicting interests. I meet people whose interests conflict with mine on almost a daily basis. It's a pretty basic part of social interaction to be able to move past those conflicts without violence. I cannot see how war is unavoidable in that sense. >If nobody is willing to use violence This is not the same as working to end war. Self-defence can still be justified without dragging war into it. That argument reminds me of the kind of points brought against conscientious objectors who didn't participate in the draft - not all violence is equal.
- rayiner 9y ago> I meet people whose interests conflict with mine on almost a daily basis. It's a pretty basic part of social interaction to be able to move past those conflicts without violence. I cannot see how war is unavoidable in that sense. The violence hasn't been eliminated, it's just been pushed one level higher. There is a state that uses violence to enforce the results of artificial dispute resolution mechanisms.
- thinkfurther 9y agoI have very amicable interactions with the people who have their own firm grounding. They don't like people and cooperation because the state enforces shit, they go the proverbial extra mile to say the least. With others, non-violence indeed is hardly an achievement considering all the sophistry to wade through; violence is, other than a form of coercion, a method of censorship, and we often have much "better" ways to either shut people up, or let them talk and insulate ourselves. Big whoop, yay for civilization. But I still don't accept that as a human feature, it's a potential human dysfunction. Those who say it has to be that way are simply saying they cannot even imagine the life I live and the people I see for decades, and that's even before the pseudo-scientific explanations like "it's genetic". Let's grant that it "is genetic", whatever that means: we can still compete by being the funniest, friendliest, smartest, bravest, the best lovers and parents and friends and whatever would impress a partner. There's your competition. Like, in that circle of friends or colleagues, where nobody gets trampled on? The witty person gets to talk a bit more than the dork, that's it. The pretty person gets looked at more than the ugly person. But nobody glares at the dork like "why are you even talking", nobody tells the ugly person to gtfo. You'd still have competition -- but no, you don't have humans tearing each others to shreds and making castes because their parents didn't (or couldn't!) allow them to develop a full blown and trusting personality so that they are always afraid and assume so is everybody else.
- jonahrd 9y ago“If I had more money,” Wilson said, “I would put it into lethality, not bureaucracy.” What a terrifying quotation
- godzillabrennus 9y agoWhat a terrifying job.
- andrewflnr 9y agoSpecifically, his job is to be terrifying. His job is to be lethal, so this quote translates to "I want to do well at my job". You can argue that it's a job that shouldn't exist but, while this may not be what GP intended, it's unreasonable to ask that he do it badly (unless he's sabotaging it, which he still wouldn't state publicly).
- thinkfurther 9y agoVery generally speaking, no matter how I slice it, at best military defends against military. I know you can't just dismantle unilaterally overnight, but the question whether it fulfills a useful function in the big scheme of things, much less one that would excuse the atrocities, is an open one to me, to say the least. I tend to think "no". Though it's absolutely not on to just blame the military for the military, civilian society elects the politicians that send soldiers into wars, civilian society ignores issues like this and elects the politicians that allow them to fester. If this actual person didn't do their job because they considered it immoral, everything else being the same, someone else would be found for the job. If "everything else" changed, and the person would be the same (assuming for the thought experiment he's a horrible monster), they would still not get to do the job of lord space death or whatever. So indeed the finger pointing at soldiers or generals is way too easy, and not productive. As skeptical and critical I may be of them, it's between themselves and their friends if they meet their responsibilities as human beings, just like it's for all of us. That person is much less interesting than the wider questions, and it's positively diabolical to spend more energy on demonizing people working within our (incentive) structures, than examining our potential propping up of those structures. Not that anyone is doing that, just generally speaking. All that said, bleh to the militarization of space, there is no excuse for allowing it. Occupy Cape Canaveral!
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- MichaelBurge 9y agoIt makes sense: The Chinese could easily cause nationwide trouble by shooting down US satellites used for GPS and internet. Unfortunately, the military is run so inefficiently I tend to say "no" to any idea that gives them more money. Wikipedia says there's 1.3 million active personnel. They could probably cut that to 100k and move the rest into reserve, and free up a lot of money for the space wars.
- knz 9y agoIs the solution to threats against satellite technology to militarize space or to build more robust systems that utilize ground, airborne, and space infrastructure? Do we need the ability to destroy earth from space when we already have MAD (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction), the nuclear triad (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_triad https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_triad), and are currently engaged in proxy/brushfire wars like Afghanistan that have been leaching resources for over 16 years now?
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- EpicEng 9y agoWe have > 300k members deployed outside the US alone, so I don't think we could trim down to < 10% of what we have today. You're talking about more than a trimming; this would represent a major shift in US foreign policy (ignoring the fact that such a proposal wouldn't get a single vote and whoever proposed it would likely lose their next election.)
- remarkEon 9y ago>It makes sense: The Chinese could easily cause nationwide trouble by shooting down US satellites used for GPS and internet. This is basically the premise to the book Ghost Fleet, and the inefficiency of the DoD is a significant plot point. https://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Fleet-Novel-Next-World/dp/0544142845 https://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Fleet-Novel-Next-World/dp/05441...
- pjc50 9y agohttps://www.state.gov/t/isn/5181.htm https://www.state.gov/t/isn/5181.htm : existing treaties against the further militarisation of space. Once the US militarises space, Russia, China and arguably India will feel they have to as well. We cannot, after all, allow a missile gap.
- trsohmers 9y ago"Mr. President, we must not allow a mineshaft gap!"
- krastanov 9y agoAt least currently the idea behind the "Space Corps" seems to be to reorganize who takes care of GSP and similar space assets, not about putting weapons in space.
- PeterisP 9y agoThe published news doesn't involve starting to do anything new in space or breaking these treaties. Space is relevant to military use even without putting weapons in space as we've agreed not to do. This is just organizing these things in a separate branch of the military, in the same way that Russians/USSR have always done - the existence of Russian Space Forces is within the bounds of these treaties, and the same would be for USA.
- KekDemaga 9y agoRussians already have I thought: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TP-82 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TP-82
- nickhalfasleep 9y agoTomorrow's headline: Oil discovered on Mars!
- craigvn 9y agoWe would have people on Mars by the end of the year if that were the case!
- LarryPage 9y agoWhen you can't spend money fast enough
- vacri 9y agoGood to see the 'fiscal conservative' party is really serious about being fiscally conservative.
- Zorlag 9y agoWasn't space warfare outlawed by an international agreement?
- krastanov 9y agoThe "Space Corps" idea is more about reorganizing who takes care of GPS and other space assets, not about putting weapons in space. It seems the main argument against it is that the bureaucratic reshuffling does not serve much of a practical purpose.
- brennankreiman 9y agoThough imagine if we spend what we did on the F-35 on space missions/exploration.
- jlennon99 9y agoImagine if we stopped sending money to Israel for weapons and instead spent it on space missions.
- ridgeguy 9y agoGuess they need a customer for the SLS (Senate Launch System).
- Caveman_Coder 9y agoIt will primarily be used to funnel tax dollars to a few mega corps (Raytheon, Boeing, General Dynamics, ect...) that will lobby the hell out of Congress. Its not about anything else really, just a bunch of corps looking for their next government contract.
- hungerstrike 9y agoWe might already have one. Hacker Gary McKinnon 'claims that while going through U.S. Navy files he also stumbled upon files detailing “fleet-to-fleet” cargo transfer records of “off-world” space stations manned by “non-terrestrial officers” of the U.S. military. He also accessed a file listing 30 “non-terrestrial officers” and their ranks.' - http://www.inquisitr.com/2619406/hacker-gary-mckinnon-may-have-found-evidence-nasa-edits-out-alien-ufos-from-space-images-video/ http://www.inquisitr.com/2619406/hacker-gary-mckinnon-may-ha...
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- hungerstrike 9y agoJeez, I didn't say I believed the guy. Tough crowd here.
- ozzmotik 9y agoyou know, I'm probably wrong about this, but I was pretty sure that was what the SMDC (https://smdc.army.mil https://smdc.army.mil) was for.