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What about mega-scale engineering projects? E.g., a space craft to Alpha Centauri, to study another star close up? It's 4 years at the speed of light, and it'll

What about mega-scale engineering projects? E.g., a space craft to Alpha Centauri, to study another star close up? It's 4 years at the speed of light, and it'll likely take us much longer. Or what if the planet there orbiting Proxima Centauri b in the habitable zone is capable of sustaining life, and it could be our first stepping stone off of Earth? For that matter, what if a megaproject is required for a space faring race, and democracy is the great filter?

oblio 8y ago
There's mega-scale engineering projects happening every day, all across the world. Just look around. Or on Youtube :)
moreira 8y ago
Amusingly, I suppose that war, and the urge to beat the Soviet Union, is what even got people to the moon in the first place. Without it, I sincerely believe we still wouldn't have been there. If the Cold War was still raging and Russia decided -today- to colonise Mars, it'd immediately go from a "someday/maybe" to "within the next 5-10 years".
rayiner 8y ago
We spent a trillion dollars sending a man to the moon. We can do megaprojects if the exigency exists. But the bar for exigency is much higher now and that's a good thing. Notre Dame, by contrast, never did a damn thing for the French peasants that were taxed to pay for it.
- deathanatos 8y ago
  The type of megaprojects being discussed in this thread are those that span lifetimes. Getting a man to the moon — without dismissing its huge impact, it was definitely a great work of mankind — was still done within a single lifetime. I posed Proxima Centauri simply b/c it wasn't religious, and perhaps palatable as something humanity should undertake, but not feasible within a lifetime, as a counter-example to show that not all lifetime-spanning projects are worthless.
mikeash 8y ago
Let’s say we started a project to send a probe to Alpha Centauri. With the entire world dedicated to the task, the probe could probably be launched in a decade or two, and would reach its destination in maybe 30,000 years. Or we could forget about the probe and focus on developing better propulsion technology. That would have immediate applications, but could also allow the probe to reach its destination orders of magnitude sooner. I don’t see any reasonable motivation for generations-long megaprojects until technology has well and truly stagnated.

oblio 8y ago

There's mega-scale engineering projects happening every day, all across the world. Just look around. Or on Youtube :)

moreira 8y ago

Amusingly, I suppose that war, and the urge to beat the Soviet Union, is what even got people to the moon in the first place. Without it, I sincerely believe we still wouldn't have been there. If the Cold War was still raging and Russia decided -today- to colonise Mars, it'd immediately go from a "someday/maybe" to "within the next 5-10 years".

rayiner 8y ago

We spent a trillion dollars sending a man to the moon. We can do megaprojects if the exigency exists. But the bar for exigency is much higher now and that's a good thing. Notre Dame, by contrast, never did a damn thing for the French peasants that were taxed to pay for it.

deathanatos 8y ago
The type of megaprojects being discussed in this thread are those that span lifetimes. Getting a man to the moon — without dismissing its huge impact, it was definitely a great work of mankind — was still done within a single lifetime. I posed Proxima Centauri simply b/c it wasn't religious, and perhaps palatable as something humanity should undertake, but not feasible within a lifetime, as a counter-example to show that not all lifetime-spanning projects are worthless.

mikeash 8y ago

Let’s say we started a project to send a probe to Alpha Centauri. With the entire world dedicated to the task, the probe could probably be launched in a decade or two, and would reach its destination in maybe 30,000 years. Or we could forget about the probe and focus on developing better propulsion technology. That would have immediate applications, but could also allow the probe to reach its destination orders of magnitude sooner. I don’t see any reasonable motivation for generations-long megaprojects until technology has well and truly stagnated.