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But why? The universe is so vast and under-populated it's hard to make a case why growth would be constrained.

coldtea 7y ago
We don't live in the universe at large, we live on Earth. Until someone takes us there or shows us how to go practically, and bring stuff back practically (not with e.g. "generation ships" and not with hand-waving about what we could or could not do with "ingenuity" in 100 years), we should not use a mere wish as a permission to not respect the hard present limits. (That's not something said against the idea of space exploration. In the contrary, not respecting those limits might be the very reason why we never reach the universe -- e.g. because we collapse before we have a chance. Same in this regard as our playing with nukes and other careless follies).
- allendoerfer 7y ago
  To do that, we need more research, more production, better technologies, better energy usage, which turns out to be growth.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    No, we could do that with limited growth (of general commerce economy) and just having more resources given to science. Even as a matter of political will (tons of resources in the US e.g. are given to the military which could be use for NASA programs). We went to space with an 1/10th the economy of today. We had not been to the moon for 40+ years, despite the economy growing ever stronger.
    - allendoerfer 7y ago
      What got America to the moon was taking the leftovers of an beyond-imagination evil dictatorship, designed to take over the world, and applying it to win a race against another dictatorship. During that whole process millions of people experienced horror or lost their lifes in the cruelest ways imaginable. While I acknowledge, that economic growth has problems, it does not seem all that bad to me. I imagine going to the moon just is not a priority right now. The superrich already want to spend their money on space projects. Let's wait what regular people want to buy, after health, etc. is solved.

We don't live in the universe at large, we live on Earth. Until someone takes us there or shows us how to go practically, and bring stuff back practically (not with e.g. "generation ships" and not with hand-waving about what we could or could not do with "ingenuity" in 100 years), we should not use a mere wish as a permission to not respect the hard present limits. (That's not something said against the idea of space exploration. In the contrary, not respecting those limits might be the very reason why we never reach the universe -- e.g. because we collapse before we have a chance. Same in this regard as our playing with nukes and other careless follies).

allendoerfer 7y ago
To do that, we need more research, more production, better technologies, better energy usage, which turns out to be growth.
- coldtea 7y ago
  No, we could do that with limited growth (of general commerce economy) and just having more resources given to science. Even as a matter of political will (tons of resources in the US e.g. are given to the military which could be use for NASA programs). We went to space with an 1/10th the economy of today. We had not been to the moon for 40+ years, despite the economy growing ever stronger.
  - allendoerfer 7y ago
    What got America to the moon was taking the leftovers of an beyond-imagination evil dictatorship, designed to take over the world, and applying it to win a race against another dictatorship. During that whole process millions of people experienced horror or lost their lifes in the cruelest ways imaginable. While I acknowledge, that economic growth has problems, it does not seem all that bad to me. I imagine going to the moon just is not a priority right now. The superrich already want to spend their money on space projects. Let's wait what regular people want to buy, after health, etc. is solved.