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> I could write a long essay on why we're not on the verge of expanding beyond our home planet The reason that essay would be long is because you'd have to exp

• lapcat 4y ago
  "progress" We have a handful of humans living temporarily in Earth orbit. We have precisely zero humans living permanently off planet. That's not much progress toward a self-sustaining space colony millions of miles away in an extremely hostile environment. We don't even know whether the human body can survive long term in the much lower gravity of Mars. Life on Earth didn't evolve for that. The whole idea could be doomed from the start. Launching rockets is the "easy" part. That's not progress. The hard part is living in space. Not to mention, even if we could live in space, we're going to bring our own nasty instincts along with us to any other planet. The instincts that are causing us to destroy our ecosystem here and fight amongst each other. If we can't live on Earth with peace, harmony, and sustainability, in an environment that was practically made for us, then what makes you think we can live in another environment that's totally hostile to all life? We'd be sending a clown car to Mars. In general, we have too many people filled with visions they've got from science fiction, and not enough of a dose of science fact. Perhaps the most realistic bit from science fiction is the part of "Contact" where they're debating whether to send a Christian or an Atheist on the mission. Then extremists blew it up anyway. That's our human reality.
  • friend_and_foe 4y ago
    I'd call going from nobody ever having been to space to a handful people living in space seasonally for work progress. Define progress?