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I'd hardly call these innovators, adventurers, (also in some cases profiteers) and dreamers idiots. They may be making all kinds of mistaken assumptions and "ov

I'd hardly call these innovators, adventurers, (also in some cases profiteers) and dreamers idiots. They may be making all kinds of mistaken assumptions and "overindulging" in optimism, but they're not stupid. They just dream of bigger things and wider horizons with what's at least feasibly reachable, even if right now, some of us, particularly those with a scarcity of imagination, can't conceive the same without dismissing them as stupid. What a miserly way to look at the world when you yourself live in it benefiting from centuries of similarly flexible-minded people working towards similarly extreme ideas for their time. There's nothing innately wrong with the idea of colonizing these worlds. It's just a hard thing to do for the time being, like so much else was that's now not only accepted but so routine as to be a fundamental part of daily civilization.

OfSanguineFire 3y ago
> There's nothing innately wrong with the idea of colonizing these worlds. That is a subject of disagreement. Kim Stanley Robinson depicted a coming clash between proponents of Mars colonization and keep-it-untouched environmentalists in his Mars trilogy. (And from his later novel Aurora, one wonders if KSR has actually gone over to the anti-human-expansion side.) Thirty years ago, that might have seemed fanciful, but not today when environmentalism has made wider inroads, especially among younger generations. It is easy to find rhetoric now about the future of humanity where the writer talks about the need for degrowth, humanity as a virus, etc.
- southernplaces7 3y ago
  There's still nothing innately wrong with the idea of colonizing these worlds. Just because certain groups of people have beliefs about the "wrongness" of something, doesn't mean that they're in the least bit rational or need to be given weight. The uh space, beyond the Earth is literally a blasted wasteland created from ancient formation violence. Nothing we do in that sterile, radioactive, chemically toxic vastness of planets, rocks, ice and open void would by any sane definition be comparable to some sort of ecocide on earth, where extremely precious flora and fauna are destroyed. The philosophy of degrowth is entirely a subjective moral view, no more morally valid than a philosophy of more growth, and humanity is emphatically not a virus, it just is, like any other complex species on Earth.
TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
It's not just far harder than any previous wave of colonisation. The rewards aren't obvious. A radio telescope on the far side of the Moon would be nice. But there are no slaves or spices, and no gold or other metals at prices that make the economics even remotely sane. We'd be going for the sake of going - a good enough reason mythologically, but a very tough sell economically. IMO we'd be better off clawing back the physics PhDs who work in finance and applying them to a blue sky search for new physics. With current tech there's a serious risk of a(nother) Space Winter when the initial wave either fails or doesn't generate any rewards.
- southernplaces7 3y ago
  >But there are no slaves or spices, and no gold or other metals at prices that make the economics even remotely sane. Very much untrue, at least in part. The solar system, including the asteroids, moon and other bodies, is absolutely, insanely loaded with valuable minerals and materials to a degree that makes what the old colonial powers sought in the New World and Africa pale in comparison, it's just extremely difficult and expensive to reach, for now, so on the second part of your comment, you're correct. However, it's worth noting that the technology for extraction absolutely would scale down in cost over time to the point of space mining being as routinely profitable and practical as mining on earth. I don't like comparing space exploration to the fundamentally cruel and exploitative schemes of Earth's governments during the colonial periods but even they at first had to deal with high costs and little benefit, until they developed scale. Humanity could do the same thing beyond the earth, and without all the grotesque moral failures of destroying whole human cultures in the process.

OfSanguineFire 3y ago

> There's nothing innately wrong with the idea of colonizing these worlds. That is a subject of disagreement. Kim Stanley Robinson depicted a coming clash between proponents of Mars colonization and keep-it-untouched environmentalists in his Mars trilogy. (And from his later novel Aurora, one wonders if KSR has actually gone over to the anti-human-expansion side.) Thirty years ago, that might have seemed fanciful, but not today when environmentalism has made wider inroads, especially among younger generations. It is easy to find rhetoric now about the future of humanity where the writer talks about the need for degrowth, humanity as a virus, etc.

southernplaces7 3y ago
There's still nothing innately wrong with the idea of colonizing these worlds. Just because certain groups of people have beliefs about the "wrongness" of something, doesn't mean that they're in the least bit rational or need to be given weight. The uh space, beyond the Earth is literally a blasted wasteland created from ancient formation violence. Nothing we do in that sterile, radioactive, chemically toxic vastness of planets, rocks, ice and open void would by any sane definition be comparable to some sort of ecocide on earth, where extremely precious flora and fauna are destroyed. The philosophy of degrowth is entirely a subjective moral view, no more morally valid than a philosophy of more growth, and humanity is emphatically not a virus, it just is, like any other complex species on Earth.

TheOtherHobbes 3y ago

It's not just far harder than any previous wave of colonisation. The rewards aren't obvious. A radio telescope on the far side of the Moon would be nice. But there are no slaves or spices, and no gold or other metals at prices that make the economics even remotely sane. We'd be going for the sake of going - a good enough reason mythologically, but a very tough sell economically. IMO we'd be better off clawing back the physics PhDs who work in finance and applying them to a blue sky search for new physics. With current tech there's a serious risk of a(nother) Space Winter when the initial wave either fails or doesn't generate any rewards.

southernplaces7 3y ago
>But there are no slaves or spices, and no gold or other metals at prices that make the economics even remotely sane. Very much untrue, at least in part. The solar system, including the asteroids, moon and other bodies, is absolutely, insanely loaded with valuable minerals and materials to a degree that makes what the old colonial powers sought in the New World and Africa pale in comparison, it's just extremely difficult and expensive to reach, for now, so on the second part of your comment, you're correct. However, it's worth noting that the technology for extraction absolutely would scale down in cost over time to the point of space mining being as routinely profitable and practical as mining on earth. I don't like comparing space exploration to the fundamentally cruel and exploitative schemes of Earth's governments during the colonial periods but even they at first had to deal with high costs and little benefit, until they developed scale. Humanity could do the same thing beyond the earth, and without all the grotesque moral failures of destroying whole human cultures in the process.