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> is there any reason [...] which justifies the price THIS kind of thinking is our problem imho - we are living in rich times and we should start behaving as s

by nnq 9y ago

> is there any reason [...] which justifies the price THIS kind of thinking is our problem imho - we are living in rich times and we should start behaving as such! We have more of everything than we need. Yeah, there are children starving or dying of preventable diseases somewhere in the world, but guess what, even if we'd be 10x richer there will still be. Or we'll whip out a world war or some runaway next gen bioweapons instead to ramp up the killing that way. That's who we (Homo Sapiens) fking are! A space race would be a pretty awesome way to encourage competition and progress on a scale similar to that encouraged by the last "world" war. But no, instead we'll go for the "mass-surveillance-technology supremacy race" or "best AIs for trading race" or the "let's pretend energy is scarce and price-war on in while talking about solving climate-change race"... GROWTH and EXPANSION are our only reasons of being and our own authentic good motivations as human beings, and infecting as much of the cosmos as possible with ourselves, aka "space technology" development should be our core drive as a species!!!

ThomPete 9y ago
As much as I want to agree with you I think it's a very naive way of thinking about this problem (which can sometimes be good so don't get me wrong). I personally believe in what I call natural next steps. I.e steps that are naturally extending previous ones. To me, the next step is making the space station much more robust. And focusing on AI might actually be a much smarter move as it might allow us to build a secure and stable moonbase before we could do it using humans. So it's a very complex discussion where priorities might sometimes look like they are ignoring something like a space station on the moon, but actually end up being a better choice because it will allow us to get there quicker.
- nnq 9y ago
  > natural next steps This never works... People need to be forced into developing solution by creating more problems while solving existing one. Like "shit, the mars colony got wiped out by a diseases, no more humans to repair the stuff there, quick, figure out how to make robots that make more robots themselves, nothing else fits the budget". Or "shit, we underestimated the effects or magnitude of cosmic radiation on colonists, gotta accelerate work on those cures for cancer or we're fucked". And "alternative priority" things like AI or, dunno, cancer-research, will never compete for the same money bucket as space exploration. They'll likely end up receiving significantly more money since space exploration will just increase their value by orders of magnitude. Economy is never a zero some game like "spend money on this vs. that" if you play it on a large enough scale since most stuff is either in excess of "creatable". Only real finite resource is "space you can practically reach to fast enough". Too bad some people have started to actually believe the made up rules of our "economy game". Hmmm... now that I think about it, maybe our "economical game" is the problem: we've developed it so much, with manufactured needs and manufactured scarcities for the purpose of "hacking people into working the hardest they can", but now it's kind of turned against us. Maybe we need some serious rewrite of the code of global economy to start making the things that are technically possible actually possible...
  - ThomPete 9y ago
    The economic game is what makes it all make sense.
    - nnq 9y ago
      > makes it all make sense Yeah, I know this kind of thinking... To many people have it. Hopefully I can try to "cure" at least a few from the "need for things to make sense" and to teach them to think more from the first principles of physics and the givens of biology. That's the only thing that needs to make sense.
conanbatt 9y ago
> Yeah, there are children starving or dying of preventable diseases ~~somewhere in the world~~ in America Fixed that for you. I love space much as the next guy, but i dont see why the government has to spend considerable sums for it. The only purpose for space is science, either aplicable to science in general or to the military, but im sure its not cost-efficient for all the science there is to be made. So if people love the space, they should pay for the things they want to be done out there. No reason for Nasa to not crowdfund or SpaceX to get private money to build something. The people that want to go to space or get space stuff get what they pay for, and the people that dont, dont. I dont find it reasonable to think someone making very little money has to pay taxes that somehow fund Elon Musk's journey to Mars.
- nnq 9y ago
  > The only purpose for space is science No, it's not. Fuck science, it's just a tool. The goal is GROWTH and MULTIPLICATION and CONQUEST! We should learn to be proud of our "viral" nature and start acting more like it. If we could do the same with "magic" or religion or whatever, then we'd do it using that...

by nnq 9y ago

ThomPete 9y ago

As much as I want to agree with you I think it's a very naive way of thinking about this problem (which can sometimes be good so don't get me wrong). I personally believe in what I call natural next steps. I.e steps that are naturally extending previous ones. To me, the next step is making the space station much more robust. And focusing on AI might actually be a much smarter move as it might allow us to build a secure and stable moonbase before we could do it using humans. So it's a very complex discussion where priorities might sometimes look like they are ignoring something like a space station on the moon, but actually end up being a better choice because it will allow us to get there quicker.

nnq 9y ago
> natural next steps This never works... People need to be forced into developing solution by creating more problems while solving existing one. Like "shit, the mars colony got wiped out by a diseases, no more humans to repair the stuff there, quick, figure out how to make robots that make more robots themselves, nothing else fits the budget". Or "shit, we underestimated the effects or magnitude of cosmic radiation on colonists, gotta accelerate work on those cures for cancer or we're fucked". And "alternative priority" things like AI or, dunno, cancer-research, will never compete for the same money bucket as space exploration. They'll likely end up receiving significantly more money since space exploration will just increase their value by orders of magnitude. Economy is never a zero some game like "spend money on this vs. that" if you play it on a large enough scale since most stuff is either in excess of "creatable". Only real finite resource is "space you can practically reach to fast enough". Too bad some people have started to actually believe the made up rules of our "economy game". Hmmm... now that I think about it, maybe our "economical game" is the problem: we've developed it so much, with manufactured needs and manufactured scarcities for the purpose of "hacking people into working the hardest they can", but now it's kind of turned against us. Maybe we need some serious rewrite of the code of global economy to start making the things that are technically possible actually possible...
- ThomPete 9y ago
  The economic game is what makes it all make sense.
  - nnq 9y ago
    > makes it all make sense Yeah, I know this kind of thinking... To many people have it. Hopefully I can try to "cure" at least a few from the "need for things to make sense" and to teach them to think more from the first principles of physics and the givens of biology. That's the only thing that needs to make sense.

conanbatt 9y ago

> Yeah, there are children starving or dying of preventable diseases ~~somewhere in the world~~ in America Fixed that for you. I love space much as the next guy, but i dont see why the government has to spend considerable sums for it. The only purpose for space is science, either aplicable to science in general or to the military, but im sure its not cost-efficient for all the science there is to be made. So if people love the space, they should pay for the things they want to be done out there. No reason for Nasa to not crowdfund or SpaceX to get private money to build something. The people that want to go to space or get space stuff get what they pay for, and the people that dont, dont. I dont find it reasonable to think someone making very little money has to pay taxes that somehow fund Elon Musk's journey to Mars.

nnq 9y ago
> The only purpose for space is science No, it's not. Fuck science, it's just a tool. The goal is GROWTH and MULTIPLICATION and CONQUEST! We should learn to be proud of our "viral" nature and start acting more like it. If we could do the same with "magic" or religion or whatever, then we'd do it using that...