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Given such a scientifically interesting object so close to us, I can't imagine any other reality than massive world-scale spending to not just "get there first"

Given such a scientifically interesting object so close to us, I can't imagine any other reality than massive world-scale spending to not just "get there first", but first to perform other low-hanging publicity stuns (think first space walk, first moon landing). The fact you _can't_ even land there is a massive accessibility boost. The thought is so exciting. The understanding of physics would be destined to leapfrog, distinctively changing humanity, and nature. Can anyone imagine something concrete?

ClumsyPilot 3y ago
First man to die by black hole?
- yellowapple 3y ago
  "First human to experience spaghettification firsthand" would be quite the honor, I suppose.
  - jncfhnb 3y ago
    Some say he’s still experiencing it…
dpe82 3y ago
Related; it's instructive to learn that a significant motivation behind the Apollo program was its national defense implications: https://youtu.be/xZFnTBSRKcg?t=137 https://youtu.be/xZFnTBSRKcg?t=137
jncfhnb 3y ago
The majority of people would say it was dumb and wasteful much like they did for the moon landing and they would be pretty clearly correct.
- eru 3y ago
  The moon landings were widely popular at the time, weren't they? Even the Soviets didn't say they were dumb and wasteful. (I tend to be a bit milder, and just say that the moon landings should be thought of as spending on entertainment, not on science. Manned space flight in general is very cost-ineffective, if you care about scientific bang for your buck.)
  - jncfhnb 3y ago
    Nope! Majority of Americans thought the Apollo program was a waste of money if you look at polls. This changed after it was successful and now we have retconned our history to say that everybody thought it was a great idea from the start. I don’t think it’s hypocritical to say that the moon landing was worth it but gearing up to go to a distant black hole is not*
groby_b 3y ago
Nope. We can't even make asteroid mining happen, and that * Is also shiny and has movies * It's cheaper by a good number of orders of magnitude * It has massive commercial value (bringing home piles of gold. Well, platinum metals) * It has actual military implications, which is the main motivator for any government progrem * It gets to call the military research "planetary defense", and there are more cool movies about that. No government is getting its act together on that. A distant black hole is right out.
- eru 3y ago
  We have sent probes to asteroids. So we should be able to get our act together to send probes to the hypothetical black hole.
- Yizahi 3y ago
  Outside of mining unobtanium, or fossilized unicorns, or HP ink, almost anything else is not commercially viable to mine in space and bring down to Earth. And it will be so even if Starship is ready, and even if that Starship would indeed cost 1-2 mil to launch as advertised. It is always cheaper to mine stuff on Earth, ever rare elements. That's why nobody is seriously doing anything in that direction. Mining asteroid for a local asteroid settlement would be profitable, but there are no asteroids settlements.
  - groby_b 3y ago
    Note that, as we cling to geographic borders, some metals might well become unobtainium for some countries. But yes, agreed, it's way too expensive. And so we're not even going to make that happen. That was the point - it's more attractive than neighboring black holes along several different axes, and it's still not worth it.
  - OkayPhysicist 3y ago
    What you'd want to do is de-orbit an asteroid made up mostly of precious metals, say, platinum, using something like an Orion drive. Then use the moon as a catcher's mitt (even better if you can use Earth, but K-Ting ourselves is going to be a hard sell at the shareholder meeting). Refine / cut up your asteroid on the lunar surface, then you need a relatively small amount of dV to put your payloads into a decaying orbit around earth (~1/4 the dV to get into low earth orbit from the surface). Enough heat shielding, and you'll be able to crash your payload into the ocean somewhere for recovery. Frankly, the biggest issue is that you'd end up flooding the market.

ClumsyPilot 3y ago

First man to die by black hole?

yellowapple 3y ago
"First human to experience spaghettification firsthand" would be quite the honor, I suppose.
- jncfhnb 3y ago
  Some say he’s still experiencing it…

dpe82 3y ago

Related; it's instructive to learn that a significant motivation behind the Apollo program was its national defense implications: https://youtu.be/xZFnTBSRKcg?t=137 https://youtu.be/xZFnTBSRKcg?t=137

jncfhnb 3y ago

The majority of people would say it was dumb and wasteful much like they did for the moon landing and they would be pretty clearly correct.

eru 3y ago
The moon landings were widely popular at the time, weren't they? Even the Soviets didn't say they were dumb and wasteful. (I tend to be a bit milder, and just say that the moon landings should be thought of as spending on entertainment, not on science. Manned space flight in general is very cost-ineffective, if you care about scientific bang for your buck.)
- jncfhnb 3y ago
  Nope! Majority of Americans thought the Apollo program was a waste of money if you look at polls. This changed after it was successful and now we have retconned our history to say that everybody thought it was a great idea from the start. I don’t think it’s hypocritical to say that the moon landing was worth it but gearing up to go to a distant black hole is not*

groby_b 3y ago

Nope. We can't even make asteroid mining happen, and that * Is also shiny and has movies * It's cheaper by a good number of orders of magnitude * It has massive commercial value (bringing home piles of gold. Well, platinum metals) * It has actual military implications, which is the main motivator for any government progrem * It gets to call the military research "planetary defense", and there are more cool movies about that. No government is getting its act together on that. A distant black hole is right out.

eru 3y ago
We have sent probes to asteroids. So we should be able to get our act together to send probes to the hypothetical black hole.
Yizahi 3y ago
Outside of mining unobtanium, or fossilized unicorns, or HP ink, almost anything else is not commercially viable to mine in space and bring down to Earth. And it will be so even if Starship is ready, and even if that Starship would indeed cost 1-2 mil to launch as advertised. It is always cheaper to mine stuff on Earth, ever rare elements. That's why nobody is seriously doing anything in that direction. Mining asteroid for a local asteroid settlement would be profitable, but there are no asteroids settlements.
- groby_b 3y ago
  Note that, as we cling to geographic borders, some metals might well become unobtainium for some countries. But yes, agreed, it's way too expensive. And so we're not even going to make that happen. That was the point - it's more attractive than neighboring black holes along several different axes, and it's still not worth it.
- OkayPhysicist 3y ago
  What you'd want to do is de-orbit an asteroid made up mostly of precious metals, say, platinum, using something like an Orion drive. Then use the moon as a catcher's mitt (even better if you can use Earth, but K-Ting ourselves is going to be a hard sell at the shareholder meeting). Refine / cut up your asteroid on the lunar surface, then you need a relatively small amount of dV to put your payloads into a decaying orbit around earth (~1/4 the dV to get into low earth orbit from the surface). Enough heat shielding, and you'll be able to crash your payload into the ocean somewhere for recovery. Frankly, the biggest issue is that you'd end up flooding the market.