7 ms·
It'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
by ivanbakel 9y ago
It'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?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- 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.