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First, I favor space exploration and think we, as a society, should spend more money on it than we do now. Second, calling this 'realistic' is nonsense: >It's

First, I favor space exploration and think we, as a society, should spend more money on it than we do now. Second, calling this 'realistic' is nonsense: >It's not pessimistic, it's realistic. [...] on a 100,000 year time horizon. It has been 65 years since Sputnik was launched, so you are projecting out 1,565x that duration into the future. I'm sure you picked a nice, big, round number, but I think it's really important to grapple with how immediate all of space travel has been against how long our horizon is as a species is. The first record we have of homo sapiens is from 300,000 years ago[1] - so 3x your time horizon. The founding of civilization could be pegged around 4,000 years ago with the founding of Babylon[2]. 100,000 years is about 25x the duration of the existence of civilization. So I agree that space exploration must come at some point, but I actually think the most "realistic" approach would be to *ban* space exploration until climate change is under control. Fixing our impact on our own climate has fewer technical barriers and is a larger limiting factor to human survival than space. If the time horizon is really 100,000 or 10,000 years, then addressing climate change would be a blip on that timeline. [1] https://theconversation.com/when-did-we-become-fully-human-what-fossils-and-dna-tell-us-about-the-evolution-of-modern-intelligence-143717 https://theconversation.com/when-did-we-become-fully-human-w... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon Edit: accidentally a word

gameman144 5y ago
> I actually think the most "realistic" approach would be to ban space exploration until climate change is under control. Talk about cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. If we're going down this road, why not take it all the way: * Ban climate change research until hunger is under control * Ban efforts to curb hunger until war is under control * Ban efforts to stop war until disease is under control
- aeturnum 5y ago
  > If we're going down this road, why not take it all the way Hunger and war and disease all have the potential to make furthering space exploration impossible. For example, we just had a pandemic that impacted a lot of people? However, in general, all of those problems have existed for the entire span of human history. I am not concerned about any of them[1] damaging the earth's ability to be a base for launching humanity as an interstellar species. Climate change is different. It's especially different because of our inability to face it so far. If we had done the sensible thing and reacted to projections in the 70s by ramping down fossil fuel use, I'd consider is less severe. But we have not. [1] save nuclear way ofc
ncallaway 5y ago
> If the time horizon is really 100,000 or 10,000 years, then addressing climate change would be a blip on that timeline. I agree about the time-horizons. Dealing with climate change is an immediate and urgent priority, whereas the time-horizon for becoming multi-planetary and (eventually) multi-stellar are much longer. That being said, it's all probabilistic, so it's not like there's a bright line when we need to be multi-planetary. A planet-killer could hit earth tomorrow, and the human race would be extinct. So, if we delay becoming a (self-sufficient) multi-planetary species by 200 years we increase the window of risk by that much time. And there will always be current challenges that we face on earth that we could address before investing resources in becoming multi-planetary. And becoming multi-planetary itself will take a long time.
- aeturnum 5y ago
  > there will always be current challenges that we face on earth To me, climate change seems more existential than our other challenges. The reason we can use earth as a base for interplanetary exploration is because the environment is favorable to us. We are putting that at risk. The only other problem that feels similarly serious is nuclear way.

gameman144 5y ago

> I actually think the most "realistic" approach would be to ban space exploration until climate change is under control. Talk about cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. If we're going down this road, why not take it all the way: * Ban climate change research until hunger is under control * Ban efforts to curb hunger until war is under control * Ban efforts to stop war until disease is under control

aeturnum 5y ago
> If we're going down this road, why not take it all the way Hunger and war and disease all have the potential to make furthering space exploration impossible. For example, we just had a pandemic that impacted a lot of people? However, in general, all of those problems have existed for the entire span of human history. I am not concerned about any of them[1] damaging the earth's ability to be a base for launching humanity as an interstellar species. Climate change is different. It's especially different because of our inability to face it so far. If we had done the sensible thing and reacted to projections in the 70s by ramping down fossil fuel use, I'd consider is less severe. But we have not. [1] save nuclear way ofc

ncallaway 5y ago

> If the time horizon is really 100,000 or 10,000 years, then addressing climate change would be a blip on that timeline. I agree about the time-horizons. Dealing with climate change is an immediate and urgent priority, whereas the time-horizon for becoming multi-planetary and (eventually) multi-stellar are much longer. That being said, it's all probabilistic, so it's not like there's a bright line when we need to be multi-planetary. A planet-killer could hit earth tomorrow, and the human race would be extinct. So, if we delay becoming a (self-sufficient) multi-planetary species by 200 years we increase the window of risk by that much time. And there will always be current challenges that we face on earth that we could address before investing resources in becoming multi-planetary. And becoming multi-planetary itself will take a long time.

aeturnum 5y ago
> there will always be current challenges that we face on earth To me, climate change seems more existential than our other challenges. The reason we can use earth as a base for interplanetary exploration is because the environment is favorable to us. We are putting that at risk. The only other problem that feels similarly serious is nuclear way.