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Your question has been answered, see below. And perhaps you would be glad to hear that the "narcissistic exploration of space" has actually lead to greater care

Your question has been answered, see below. And perhaps you would be glad to hear that the "narcissistic exploration of space" has actually lead to greater care and concern for the planet than we had before we started the endeavor. https://lettersofnote.com/2012/08/06/why-explore-space/ https://lettersofnote.com/2012/08/06/why-explore-space/ >However, I believe, like many of my friends, that travelling to the Moon and eventually to Mars and to other planets is a venture which we should undertake now, and I even believe that this project, in the long run, will contribute more to the solution of these grave problems we are facing here on Earth than many other potential projects of help which are debated and discussed year after year, and which are so extremely slow in yielding tangible results. >Besides the need for new technologies, there is a continuing great need for new basic knowledge in the sciences if we wish to improve the conditions of human life on Earth. We need more knowledge in physics and chemistry, in biology and physiology, and very particularly in medicine to cope with all these problems which threaten man’s life: hunger, disease, contamination of food and water, pollution of the environment. >Of all the many wonderful results of the space program so far, this picture may be the most important one. It opened our eyes to the fact that our Earth is a beautiful and most precious island in an unlimited void, and that there is no other place for us to live but the thin surface layer of our planet, bordered by the bleak nothingness of space. Never before did so many people recognize how limited our Earth really is, and how perilous it would be to tamper with its ecological balance. Ever since this picture was first published, voices have become louder and louder warning of the grave problems that confront man in our times: pollution, hunger, poverty, urban living, food production, water control, overpopulation. It is certainly not by accident that we begin to see the tremendous tasks waiting for us at a time when the young space age has provided us the first good look at our own planet.

pizza234 3y ago
> great need for new basic knowledge in the sciences if we wish to improve the conditions of human life on Earth. We need more knowledge in physics and chemistry, in biology and physiology, and very particularly in medicine to cope with all these problems which threaten man’s life: hunger, disease, contamination of food and water, pollution of the environment. This take is strikingly similar to the movie "Don't Look Up": > And when these treasures from heaven [asteroid fragments] are claimed, poverty as we know it, social injustice, lose of biodiversity, all these multitudes of problems will become relics of the past and humanity will stride through the pillars of Boaz and Jachin, naked into the glory of a golden age which... is a satire. We need to stop (over) polluting the environment, not to find better ways to clean the environment. Finding better ways to clean the environment will only lead humanity to pollute more. Ernst Stuhlinger obviously never took a stroll nearby a chemical plant.
- themaninthedark 3y ago
  I am sure that the associate director of science at NASA never visited a chemical plant. /s We pollute the environment by just living. After you eat a meal and digest it, you take a crap. After you drink some water you take a piss. That is pollution, but it is low level. You get 100 people all taking craps and pissing in one area, that causes huge problems for the local area. Also breeds disease. Your solution in this case would be what? Because you say not to find a way to clean, just stop over polluting. What you and the writer's of "Don't Look Up" don't seem to get is that, by pressing humanity into space and solving challenging problems we get new tools to deal with existing problems. Not that "All the problems will cease to exist once we do the thing." You get a new tool, how you use that tool is up to you and those around you. In 1920, someone developed a pesticide that was great for killing louse, fumigating ships and warehouses. This was great and saved many people. Then in 1942, someone decided to use it to systematically murder a race of people. This does not mean that we should never make or use pesticides again, it means that we need to bring people closer together and get them to stop trying to kill each other over slight differences.
  - pizza234 3y ago
    > I am sure that the associate director of science at NASA never visited a chemical plant. /s You haven't read the text attentively. "Visiting a chemical plant" is different from "taking a stroll nearby" it, that is, seeing the effects of it in the environment. > We pollute the environment by just living. After you eat a meal and digest it, you take a crap. After you drink some water you take a piss. That is pollution, but it is low level. This is radically disconnected to what's being done to the environment now, which is not just a matter of overpopulation. Currently, as a popoluation, we are: - wasting massive amount of resources (to observe two simple examples, just go to a restaurant, or notice huge cars in tiny towns) - producing unmanageable amounts of waste in general (especially as consequence of the previous point) - most importantly, producing unmanageable types of pollutants (read HN more attentively, and you'll find recent talks of microplastics) Cleaning up after polluting is at best considerably more expensive, at worst, impossible to perform, than not polluting in the first place. And keep in mind that I'm talking about regulating (that is, at least reducing) pollution, not abolishing it (that is, going Amish).
superultra 3y ago
My proposition here is not that space exploration is zero-sum but rather that space travel is wildly inefficient for solving problems here on earth. The trouble with your suggestion (and, prior, mine) is that we don't really know what could have been done with the same resources had there been a moonshot to, say, solving the climate crisis. As a huge lover of space travel, I have shared that very letter from Ernst Stuhlinger. What it really only proves is that if you throw enough money at something, you will get some returns. The rest of the arugment is borderline religious in nature; that through some mysterious process if we just get into space we'll suddenly realize oh, we should fix that planet, simply because we can see ourselves as one small planet. Peak space travel was arguably right when this letter was written. If it were at all true, we would not in the position we're in now. Instead, the opposite has happened, and it's not because we're not travelling in space - it's because we continue to ignore the problems we alone are causing. Running away from those problems into space will not somehow, magically, solve them.

pizza234 3y ago

> great need for new basic knowledge in the sciences if we wish to improve the conditions of human life on Earth. We need more knowledge in physics and chemistry, in biology and physiology, and very particularly in medicine to cope with all these problems which threaten man’s life: hunger, disease, contamination of food and water, pollution of the environment. This take is strikingly similar to the movie "Don't Look Up": > And when these treasures from heaven [asteroid fragments] are claimed, poverty as we know it, social injustice, lose of biodiversity, all these multitudes of problems will become relics of the past and humanity will stride through the pillars of Boaz and Jachin, naked into the glory of a golden age which... is a satire. We need to stop (over) polluting the environment, not to find better ways to clean the environment. Finding better ways to clean the environment will only lead humanity to pollute more. Ernst Stuhlinger obviously never took a stroll nearby a chemical plant.

themaninthedark 3y ago
I am sure that the associate director of science at NASA never visited a chemical plant. /s We pollute the environment by just living. After you eat a meal and digest it, you take a crap. After you drink some water you take a piss. That is pollution, but it is low level. You get 100 people all taking craps and pissing in one area, that causes huge problems for the local area. Also breeds disease. Your solution in this case would be what? Because you say not to find a way to clean, just stop over polluting. What you and the writer's of "Don't Look Up" don't seem to get is that, by pressing humanity into space and solving challenging problems we get new tools to deal with existing problems. Not that "All the problems will cease to exist once we do the thing." You get a new tool, how you use that tool is up to you and those around you. In 1920, someone developed a pesticide that was great for killing louse, fumigating ships and warehouses. This was great and saved many people. Then in 1942, someone decided to use it to systematically murder a race of people. This does not mean that we should never make or use pesticides again, it means that we need to bring people closer together and get them to stop trying to kill each other over slight differences.
- pizza234 3y ago
  > I am sure that the associate director of science at NASA never visited a chemical plant. /s You haven't read the text attentively. "Visiting a chemical plant" is different from "taking a stroll nearby" it, that is, seeing the effects of it in the environment. > We pollute the environment by just living. After you eat a meal and digest it, you take a crap. After you drink some water you take a piss. That is pollution, but it is low level. This is radically disconnected to what's being done to the environment now, which is not just a matter of overpopulation. Currently, as a popoluation, we are: - wasting massive amount of resources (to observe two simple examples, just go to a restaurant, or notice huge cars in tiny towns) - producing unmanageable amounts of waste in general (especially as consequence of the previous point) - most importantly, producing unmanageable types of pollutants (read HN more attentively, and you'll find recent talks of microplastics) Cleaning up after polluting is at best considerably more expensive, at worst, impossible to perform, than not polluting in the first place. And keep in mind that I'm talking about regulating (that is, at least reducing) pollution, not abolishing it (that is, going Amish).

superultra 3y ago

My proposition here is not that space exploration is zero-sum but rather that space travel is wildly inefficient for solving problems here on earth. The trouble with your suggestion (and, prior, mine) is that we don't really know what could have been done with the same resources had there been a moonshot to, say, solving the climate crisis. As a huge lover of space travel, I have shared that very letter from Ernst Stuhlinger. What it really only proves is that if you throw enough money at something, you will get some returns. The rest of the arugment is borderline religious in nature; that through some mysterious process if we just get into space we'll suddenly realize oh, we should fix that planet, simply because we can see ourselves as one small planet. Peak space travel was arguably right when this letter was written. If it were at all true, we would not in the position we're in now. Instead, the opposite has happened, and it's not because we're not travelling in space - it's because we continue to ignore the problems we alone are causing. Running away from those problems into space will not somehow, magically, solve them.