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> Most of the rest is also incestuous stuff aimed at supporting the useless-in-the-first-place goal of putting humans in space. useless I guess if you're fine

> Most of the rest is also incestuous stuff aimed at supporting the useless-in-the-first-place goal of putting humans in space. useless I guess if you're fine with humanity dying off entirely. One way or another, if humanity is going to survive it has to get into space and out of our solar system because we only have so long before our sun dies and takes all life on Earth with it. That's already assuming that we don't kill ourselves first, or that something else doesn't. Since we have no idea how long we really have, it seems very smart to take what steps we can and develop the technology we know we'll need. Maybe you just don't care since you can assume you'll already be long dead before it happens, but it's still a fact that we're up against an uncertain deadline.

asdff 3y ago
By the time the sun dies enough time will have passed where there won't even be humans, we will probably have speciated into something else entirely. We are talking like two billion years here, more time than going from the first eukaryote to the first human.
- autoexec 3y ago
  True there's no telling what we'll be like by the time that happens, but whatever we become I'm sure we'll want to get well away from here. I think we'd be lucky to survive in any form here on Earth for that long.
- nullindividual 3y ago
  Earth has 200 million more years of habitability. Not too far off!
- pfdietz 3y ago
  The Earth becomes a Venus-like hellball long before the Sun dies.
woopsn 3y ago
The toilet on the ISS cost $20,000,000+. One of them. "I guess you're fine with the whole species dying" is extremely unfair (and ridiculous) rhetoric. Rather, the assumption that we won't kill ourselves first is completely unjustified, and to many people merits more concern and immediate action than the ultimate death of the sun.
- autoexec 3y ago
  > Rather, the assumption that we won't kill ourselves first is completely unjustified, and to many people merits more concern and immediate action than the ultimate death of the sun. All the more reason to get off the planet and spread out really. While I'd also put my money on us doing ourselves in, there are a lot of threats to our existence from space. Giant rocks, solar flares, supernova/gamma ray bursts, alien invasion, etc. We'd likely never see them coming. As for the cost of the toilet, if you can design and build one for less that works just as well for men and women while in microgravity, pre-processes urine so that astronauts can drink it later, stays clean and prevents smells from stinking up the place, all while not being more unhealthy or uncomfortable to use NASA would likely pay you handsomely.
  - thefaux 3y ago
    How exactly do you realistically think we are going to survive in outer space? And even if we could, why would we want to? I don't think the rest of society should subsidize the escape fantasies of a small minority who find space travel exciting and worth seriously pursuing.
    - autoexec 3y ago
      > How exactly do you realistically think we are going to survive in outer space? Currently, I don't think we can, but I think our odds of survival increase the sooner and more seriously we invest in research and experimentation towards that goal. We already have some pretty good concepts for things like generation ships and propulsion, but clearly we've got a long way to go. The more ships we send out the better our chances will be. > And even if we could, why would we want to? Because generally it's always been our nature to. Your question would have been just as relevant when it meant crossing the oceans, entering the rainforests, or mapping Earth's cave systems, but we did those things and more because we're explorers. We've usually benefited from exploration as well. We find new resources, new scientific discoveries, and new opportunities pretty much every time we put in the effort. None of us would be where we are or have what we do today if somebody else hadn't put in that work before us. We're also generally driven to survive. Or instincts for self-preservation don't just apply at an individual level. Like many other animals we work cooperatively to preserve and advance our species and our communities even to the point where individuals become self-sacrificial at times. > I don't think the rest of society should subsidize the escape fantasies of a small minority who find space travel exciting and worth seriously pursuing. I disagree that it's a small minority who want humanity to continue to survive. Most people might not be interested in space travel itself, but they wouldn't suggest we should just allow ourselves to die out without even attempting to survive. I think that most people who understand that space travel is a requirement for the survival of our future generations find space travel to be worth seriously pursuing with true dissenters being those unaware that the destruction of our planet and all life on it is going to happen eventually and that it is entirely unavoidable. Everyone else understands at least on some level that space travel is worth seriously pursuing and either enthusiastically support it or would simply rather slow that pursuit down because they feel the short term gains are worth playing the odds and simply hoping that we won't kill ourselves off and none of the other life ending disasters (like giant space rocks and solar flares which could happen at any time without warning) will happen while humanity kicks the can down the road. I think that it's a very optimistic view that in addition to us being lucky enough to avoid the kinds of disaster that would end all life on Earth before we bother to get around to investing time and resources into finding a way out of our solar system, we'll also be lucky enough to avoid any and all disasters that would make doing that kind of research later extremely difficult, unlikely, or impossible. Economic collapse, exhaustion of natural resources, plague, war, even the dumbing down of humanity either through attacks on science and education or through other means (for example leaded fuels causing average IQs to drop by several points) could mean that we're in a better position right now to tackle the challenges of space travel than future generations will be. If we're unwilling to just lay down and die space travel is just a question of when and not if. Because the amount of time we have left is extremely uncertain and our future is generally looking more dire than it has in a very long time, it seems irresponsible to put off the work that must be done today just so that we can play, be lazy, or devote all of our increasingly limited resources to immediate pleasures and short term gains. I'm not suggesting that we drop everything else we do and devote ourselves to the problem of space travel 100% but it seems very odd to single out the relatively small investments we're making today as problematic. Even if it turns out we'll all die off in a few years time anyway, we'll have already been "wasting" a lot more money on things far less worthy.
anigbrowl 3y ago
I'm in favor of space travel because of the way we keep messing up this planet as much as anything else; we're clearly running out of runway. OTOH the death of the Sun is a stupid rationale, because changes in solar output are predicted to be hundreds of millions of years away, which is not a useful deadline of any kind. You might as easily argue for saving money on oversized fireworks and solving teleportation first.
- autoexec 3y ago
  Yes, the death of our sun is a very long way out, but it's also entirely certain and unavoidable. It's a hard deadline. We could very easily kill ourselves off in a million ways before that happens and there is plenty of other threats in space that could do it for us without warning at any moment, but those are all only possibilities. The end of Earth and everything on it at some point in the future due to the death of our sun is a certainty and there's nothing we know of that can prevent or allow us to survive it. > You might as easily argue for saving money on oversized fireworks and solving teleportation first. Oversized fireworks seem unlikely to save us, but if teleportation becomes more promising than traveling through space in ships I'm all for it. Right now, it looks like ships are our best bet and so that's where we should be spending more of our limited and increasingly vanishing time and resources. It's a good idea that we continue to look into alternatives, we just want a greater percentage of our resources/efforts spent on whatever seems the most likely to work.

asdff 3y ago

By the time the sun dies enough time will have passed where there won't even be humans, we will probably have speciated into something else entirely. We are talking like two billion years here, more time than going from the first eukaryote to the first human.

autoexec 3y ago
True there's no telling what we'll be like by the time that happens, but whatever we become I'm sure we'll want to get well away from here. I think we'd be lucky to survive in any form here on Earth for that long.
nullindividual 3y ago
Earth has 200 million more years of habitability. Not too far off!
pfdietz 3y ago
The Earth becomes a Venus-like hellball long before the Sun dies.

woopsn 3y ago

The toilet on the ISS cost $20,000,000+. One of them. "I guess you're fine with the whole species dying" is extremely unfair (and ridiculous) rhetoric. Rather, the assumption that we won't kill ourselves first is completely unjustified, and to many people merits more concern and immediate action than the ultimate death of the sun.

autoexec 3y ago
> Rather, the assumption that we won't kill ourselves first is completely unjustified, and to many people merits more concern and immediate action than the ultimate death of the sun. All the more reason to get off the planet and spread out really. While I'd also put my money on us doing ourselves in, there are a lot of threats to our existence from space. Giant rocks, solar flares, supernova/gamma ray bursts, alien invasion, etc. We'd likely never see them coming. As for the cost of the toilet, if you can design and build one for less that works just as well for men and women while in microgravity, pre-processes urine so that astronauts can drink it later, stays clean and prevents smells from stinking up the place, all while not being more unhealthy or uncomfortable to use NASA would likely pay you handsomely.
- thefaux 3y ago
  How exactly do you realistically think we are going to survive in outer space? And even if we could, why would we want to? I don't think the rest of society should subsidize the escape fantasies of a small minority who find space travel exciting and worth seriously pursuing.
  - autoexec 3y ago
    > How exactly do you realistically think we are going to survive in outer space? Currently, I don't think we can, but I think our odds of survival increase the sooner and more seriously we invest in research and experimentation towards that goal. We already have some pretty good concepts for things like generation ships and propulsion, but clearly we've got a long way to go. The more ships we send out the better our chances will be. > And even if we could, why would we want to? Because generally it's always been our nature to. Your question would have been just as relevant when it meant crossing the oceans, entering the rainforests, or mapping Earth's cave systems, but we did those things and more because we're explorers. We've usually benefited from exploration as well. We find new resources, new scientific discoveries, and new opportunities pretty much every time we put in the effort. None of us would be where we are or have what we do today if somebody else hadn't put in that work before us. We're also generally driven to survive. Or instincts for self-preservation don't just apply at an individual level. Like many other animals we work cooperatively to preserve and advance our species and our communities even to the point where individuals become self-sacrificial at times. > I don't think the rest of society should subsidize the escape fantasies of a small minority who find space travel exciting and worth seriously pursuing. I disagree that it's a small minority who want humanity to continue to survive. Most people might not be interested in space travel itself, but they wouldn't suggest we should just allow ourselves to die out without even attempting to survive. I think that most people who understand that space travel is a requirement for the survival of our future generations find space travel to be worth seriously pursuing with true dissenters being those unaware that the destruction of our planet and all life on it is going to happen eventually and that it is entirely unavoidable. Everyone else understands at least on some level that space travel is worth seriously pursuing and either enthusiastically support it or would simply rather slow that pursuit down because they feel the short term gains are worth playing the odds and simply hoping that we won't kill ourselves off and none of the other life ending disasters (like giant space rocks and solar flares which could happen at any time without warning) will happen while humanity kicks the can down the road. I think that it's a very optimistic view that in addition to us being lucky enough to avoid the kinds of disaster that would end all life on Earth before we bother to get around to investing time and resources into finding a way out of our solar system, we'll also be lucky enough to avoid any and all disasters that would make doing that kind of research later extremely difficult, unlikely, or impossible. Economic collapse, exhaustion of natural resources, plague, war, even the dumbing down of humanity either through attacks on science and education or through other means (for example leaded fuels causing average IQs to drop by several points) could mean that we're in a better position right now to tackle the challenges of space travel than future generations will be. If we're unwilling to just lay down and die space travel is just a question of when and not if. Because the amount of time we have left is extremely uncertain and our future is generally looking more dire than it has in a very long time, it seems irresponsible to put off the work that must be done today just so that we can play, be lazy, or devote all of our increasingly limited resources to immediate pleasures and short term gains. I'm not suggesting that we drop everything else we do and devote ourselves to the problem of space travel 100% but it seems very odd to single out the relatively small investments we're making today as problematic. Even if it turns out we'll all die off in a few years time anyway, we'll have already been "wasting" a lot more money on things far less worthy.

anigbrowl 3y ago

I'm in favor of space travel because of the way we keep messing up this planet as much as anything else; we're clearly running out of runway. OTOH the death of the Sun is a stupid rationale, because changes in solar output are predicted to be hundreds of millions of years away, which is not a useful deadline of any kind. You might as easily argue for saving money on oversized fireworks and solving teleportation first.

autoexec 3y ago
Yes, the death of our sun is a very long way out, but it's also entirely certain and unavoidable. It's a hard deadline. We could very easily kill ourselves off in a million ways before that happens and there is plenty of other threats in space that could do it for us without warning at any moment, but those are all only possibilities. The end of Earth and everything on it at some point in the future due to the death of our sun is a certainty and there's nothing we know of that can prevent or allow us to survive it. > You might as easily argue for saving money on oversized fireworks and solving teleportation first. Oversized fireworks seem unlikely to save us, but if teleportation becomes more promising than traveling through space in ships I'm all for it. Right now, it looks like ships are our best bet and so that's where we should be spending more of our limited and increasingly vanishing time and resources. It's a good idea that we continue to look into alternatives, we just want a greater percentage of our resources/efforts spent on whatever seems the most likely to work.