5 ms·

Politics and religion slowed down our space exploration by many thousands of years.

thriftwy 2y ago
I... Don't think so? Soviet Union as a materially poor country will not pour so much money into exploring space if it wasn't so important politically at the moment. The US was much wealthier, but also skipped space spendings the first moment politics no longer persuaded space exploration. Stuff like GPS and especially Glonass were also borne out of political goals. Same for ISS. If anything, the only way we may get to explore solar system is via political push.
- Fremololni 2y ago
  NASA asks for money and politicians say no.
  - hunter-gatherer 2y ago
    NASA often asks for money and politicians say yes.
    - Fremololni 2y ago
      Yes but that's not the criticism. It's the no saying
jazzsouff 2y ago
The post WW2 cold war is what pushed our understanding of space. So actually modern politics helped with that.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  But once the space race to the moon was won - and all major powers had proven they are capable of producing ICBMs - it feels like the energy and financing just went out of it. There's no more political or military gain to be had from space exploration so governments only put in a token amount, and there's only limited commercial gain from e.g. telecom, mapping and navigation, but that's all focused on earth itself. There's no major financial incentive go to the moon or mars, other than would-be space tourists or colonists that are willing and able to pay for their own trip. The only way spacefaring could be commercialised is with asteroid mining, and that's a long way away still. The eye-popping "this asteroid could be worth a hundred trillian dollars!!1" kind of headlines are sensationalised to attract investors to fund exploration missions to figure out if the theory matches the practice, but even if it was worth that amount, getting any material back to Earth is currently cost- and engineering-prohibitive. It may become viable in our lifetime, for example if they can get a Starship sized craft there, fill the hold with titanium and return all of it to Earth, but that's a long way away still.
  - Amezarak 2y ago
    > There's no major financial incentive go to the moon or mars, other than would-be space tourists or colonists that are willing and able to pay for their own trip. I don't think there's any incentive at all. What reason is there for anyone to go to Mars other than to say they did, at enormous expense and technical effort? Best case scenario, after spending tens of trillions of dollars, we're able to build a base that needs continual resupply from Earth and in which you're basically living in a box - you'll never be able to set foot outside except in a suit, worse even than our Antarctic bases. And even then, we can expect long-term health effects. Well, you can live in a box on Earth. The reason there isn't major funding for space is because most people don't care all that much. It's a nice thing to have, and I wish more people did support increasing this sort of funding, but it's perfectly understandable why most people don't want to contribute significant percentages of GDP to a scifi dream.
    - AlecSchueler 2y ago
      We're not talking about a vanity Mars visit, we're talking about building an X-ray observatory. The JWST has already been phenomenal, it feels like it's delivering an almost daily barrage of discoveries, many of which are already affecting long standing understandings of the universe. The benefit of these projects is that they actually help us to answer the basic questions of existence in a way nothing else does.
      - Amezarak 2y ago
        Yes, as I said, I wish projects like this did have better funding, but the comment I was replying to mentioned going to the Moon or Mars.
    - ziddoap 2y ago
      While I mostly agree with what you've said in respect to a Mars base -- I think you are leaving out a critical benefit of these types of endeavors. The technology invented and/or adapted to facilitate these enormous space projects is very often applicable in other fields or daily life. Some examples from the past include metallic glass (now used in power plants), translucent polycrystalline alumina (now used in invisible braces), water purification technologies, the coatings used on launch pads was adapted for use in coating steel for high-rise building projects, etc. The list is quite long. There are hundreds of spin-off technologies, many of which are used daily, which originated from various ambitious space projects.
iraqmtpizza 2y ago
science is just a spinoff of philosophy which was religiously motivated. what kind of drug-induced state do you have to be in to think that the Romans would have been flying around the Earth if only everyone thousands of years prior was magically a self-absorbed nihilist
- shigawire 2y ago
  Rude phrasing, you shouldn't do that.
  - iraqmtpizza 2y ago
    I thought that atheists believed that politics and religion have caused most if not all wars in history? Guess what was the impetus for developing technology? War. i.e. politics by other means. Guess that Stalin developed technology for the love of the game, though. Not for war or politics or anything. Or are we saying that religion and politics have moderated the impulse to war? i.e. in an ancient atheist world, war would have been much more furious and necessary for survival, so the pressure to develop technology would have been much greater than it was with all those pacifist monks running around spoiling everyone's armed conflict fun with their woo-woo? -- Maybe ICBMs should have been invented around the time that Byzantium was founded
olddustytrail 2y ago
Indeed, if they hadn't made the pyramids so heavy they could have been spaceships!

I... Don't think so? Soviet Union as a materially poor country will not pour so much money into exploring space if it wasn't so important politically at the moment. The US was much wealthier, but also skipped space spendings the first moment politics no longer persuaded space exploration. Stuff like GPS and especially Glonass were also borne out of political goals. Same for ISS. If anything, the only way we may get to explore solar system is via political push.

Fremololni 2y ago
NASA asks for money and politicians say no.
- hunter-gatherer 2y ago
  NASA often asks for money and politicians say yes.
  - Fremololni 2y ago
    Yes but that's not the criticism. It's the no saying

jazzsouff 2y ago

The post WW2 cold war is what pushed our understanding of space. So actually modern politics helped with that.

Cthulhu_ 2y ago
But once the space race to the moon was won - and all major powers had proven they are capable of producing ICBMs - it feels like the energy and financing just went out of it. There's no more political or military gain to be had from space exploration so governments only put in a token amount, and there's only limited commercial gain from e.g. telecom, mapping and navigation, but that's all focused on earth itself. There's no major financial incentive go to the moon or mars, other than would-be space tourists or colonists that are willing and able to pay for their own trip. The only way spacefaring could be commercialised is with asteroid mining, and that's a long way away still. The eye-popping "this asteroid could be worth a hundred trillian dollars!!1" kind of headlines are sensationalised to attract investors to fund exploration missions to figure out if the theory matches the practice, but even if it was worth that amount, getting any material back to Earth is currently cost- and engineering-prohibitive. It may become viable in our lifetime, for example if they can get a Starship sized craft there, fill the hold with titanium and return all of it to Earth, but that's a long way away still.
- Amezarak 2y ago
  > There's no major financial incentive go to the moon or mars, other than would-be space tourists or colonists that are willing and able to pay for their own trip. I don't think there's any incentive at all. What reason is there for anyone to go to Mars other than to say they did, at enormous expense and technical effort? Best case scenario, after spending tens of trillions of dollars, we're able to build a base that needs continual resupply from Earth and in which you're basically living in a box - you'll never be able to set foot outside except in a suit, worse even than our Antarctic bases. And even then, we can expect long-term health effects. Well, you can live in a box on Earth. The reason there isn't major funding for space is because most people don't care all that much. It's a nice thing to have, and I wish more people did support increasing this sort of funding, but it's perfectly understandable why most people don't want to contribute significant percentages of GDP to a scifi dream.
  - AlecSchueler 2y ago
    We're not talking about a vanity Mars visit, we're talking about building an X-ray observatory. The JWST has already been phenomenal, it feels like it's delivering an almost daily barrage of discoveries, many of which are already affecting long standing understandings of the universe. The benefit of these projects is that they actually help us to answer the basic questions of existence in a way nothing else does.
    - Amezarak 2y ago
      Yes, as I said, I wish projects like this did have better funding, but the comment I was replying to mentioned going to the Moon or Mars.
  - ziddoap 2y ago
    While I mostly agree with what you've said in respect to a Mars base -- I think you are leaving out a critical benefit of these types of endeavors. The technology invented and/or adapted to facilitate these enormous space projects is very often applicable in other fields or daily life. Some examples from the past include metallic glass (now used in power plants), translucent polycrystalline alumina (now used in invisible braces), water purification technologies, the coatings used on launch pads was adapted for use in coating steel for high-rise building projects, etc. The list is quite long. There are hundreds of spin-off technologies, many of which are used daily, which originated from various ambitious space projects.

iraqmtpizza 2y ago

science is just a spinoff of philosophy which was religiously motivated. what kind of drug-induced state do you have to be in to think that the Romans would have been flying around the Earth if only everyone thousands of years prior was magically a self-absorbed nihilist

shigawire 2y ago
Rude phrasing, you shouldn't do that.
- iraqmtpizza 2y ago
  I thought that atheists believed that politics and religion have caused most if not all wars in history? Guess what was the impetus for developing technology? War. i.e. politics by other means. Guess that Stalin developed technology for the love of the game, though. Not for war or politics or anything. Or are we saying that religion and politics have moderated the impulse to war? i.e. in an ancient atheist world, war would have been much more furious and necessary for survival, so the pressure to develop technology would have been much greater than it was with all those pacifist monks running around spoiling everyone's armed conflict fun with their woo-woo? -- Maybe ICBMs should have been invented around the time that Byzantium was founded

olddustytrail 2y ago

Indeed, if they hadn't made the pyramids so heavy they could have been spaceships!