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I can’t be enthusiastic about anything related to space knowing that many people - especially in the USA - are homeless or are living poverty and have nothing t
by louwrentius 3y ago
I can’t be enthusiastic about anything related to space knowing that many people - especially in the USA - are homeless or are living poverty and have nothing to look forward to, and no death doesn’t count.
I’m done with all those rich people vanity projects, we have enough issues here on the ground.
- andromeduck 3y agoDon't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
- louwrentius 3y agoThere's nothing good about space stuff.
- andromeduck 3y agoThat "space stuff" is why crop failures are no longer a routine occurrence.
- louwrentius 3y agoI’m not talking about weather satellites or GPS. I’m obviously talking about the space stuff that doesn’t matter.
- ben_w 3y agoSo all the things we've actually made in space are good and all of the things that we haven't made but which inspired the people who made the real things are bad?
- kraftman 3y agoWe can do both, they aren't mutually exclusive.
- louwrentius 3y agoWe shouldn't, if people are not housed or fed.
- ben_w 3y agoPay the poor people to build the vanity projects, solve two challenges at the same time.
- louwrentius 3y agoDon’t build polluting vanity projects that serve no purpose and pay poor people anyway.
- ben_w 3y agoGood luck convincing the rich to do that, at this level they often change the rules they play by to pay less taxes.
- switchbak 3y agoYou can use such a justification to argue against any far flung efforts of humanity - and many have for a very long time. This sounds like: we must solve the disparity between rich and poor before we invest any efforts elsewhere. Since that's clearly not happening, doesn't that imply that we can't make progress in science and space? I find it interesting that often those making such a claim don't devote their lives to fixing the problem in the way that they're asking for. Sounds like a recipe for cynicism and despair.
- louwrentius 3y agoI answer with yes. People first.
- switchbak 3y agoAnd I answer with both. Let's do both.
- philipswood 3y agoDo you feel the same way about sport: > Sports-related costs for the Summer Games since 1960 is on average $5.2 billion (USD) and for the Winter Games $393.1 million dollars. The highest recorded total cost was the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, costing approximately US$55 billion. Or entertainment: > Whereas the average Hollywood film costs around $100 million to produce, the expenditures of the top 11 most expensive movies exceeded a whopping $300 million, adjusted for inflation. ?
- louwrentius 3y agoNo
- ben_w 3y agoI do feel that way about sports — negatively, that they're a waste of time and resources that encourage the worst tribal instincts. But big sports make people happy and they're only expensive compared to individuals, not compared to economies, so I don't try to campaign against what (sometimes little) joy other people can get in their lives. Films are kinda weird now Starship — a billionaire's vanity project that doesn't have any current reasonable economic purpose (given SpaceX is already 75% of total planet-wide tonnage to orbit not just US) — is getting close to the point that Moon (2009) could reasonably be filmed on the actual Moon for the film's original ($5m) budget.