4 ms·
such a nihilistic view has little ground in reality > been outside of low earth orbit we stopped pushing that frontier because we've been there and found it d
by avereveard 6y ago
such a nihilistic view has little ground in reality
> been outside of low earth orbit
we stopped pushing that frontier because we've been there and found it dull and empty, as a matter of fact, we decided zero g experiment were more important than playing with regolith, and build a freaking human habitat in the void to support that endeavor. beside, we've got regolith here on earth now, we can experiment on it in the commodity of our backyard if needed be.
> mach 3 flight
except the routine space launches that ship scientist back and forth from the space station, going through literal plasma on the descent leg.
> Roman concrete
this has just been widely romanticized, we don't use that because it's incompatible with fast building processes requirements, is too heavy for large structures and it's hard to dismantle when a structure is no longer needed or need renovation.
sure, some other stuff one can cite as having reached an apparent sub-optimal minima, like average speed of travel, but that's not because we're backward, it's because we're learning to take care of our own environment. slowly, but we're getting there. just because the tradeoff are different it doesn't mean that a golf id3 is just worse than a bugatti eb110 or a recess from peak technology.
- Griffinsauce 6y agoYour last point resonated with me. An extremely boring electric car that makes some significant leap in affordability, efficiency or whatever can be the thing that brings our entire society forward and literally saves it. If anything you can argue that the latest Bugatti with a slightly larger engine is moving us backwards by the waste of resources (in design, production and use). Peak technology right now is not the big sexy machine, it's whatever makes the good stuff boring for the masses.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y agoThe primary purpose of ISS is to be a jobs program, not scientific experimentation. The Russians are involved specifically to keep their engineers from going to work for hostile states.
- avereveard 6y agoBut still, we're to the point where not a state, not a government entity, but a rich, bored dude is sending people into space as a viable business model Thinking our space tech is going backwards is severely myopic
- Kye 6y agoThey're learning all kinds of things by seeing how plants grow in microgravity and more recently how 3D printers work in the same. It didn't need to cost a trillion dollars for that, but now that it's there, we might just get over a trillion dollars worth of science out of it.