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I honestly find the skepticism about human activities in space to be annoying. And it's been going on for many decades. A lot of people seem to be automaticall

by fouc 2y ago

I honestly find the skepticism about human activities in space to be annoying. And it's been going on for many decades. A lot of people seem to be automatically skeptical about space. They somehow think that investing in space is taking away from investing in the planet Earth. I disagree with that premise. I think we can do both. And we should do both. Colonizing the Moon or Mars will actually require significant understanding of Earth ecology. We still have lots to learn from Earth.

tetris11 2y ago
The article frames it as though everyone who is skeptical in this new space race is also anti-astronomy from the examples it uses. I think this is a false premise. Plenty of people love astronomy and the insights it has given to other worlds and ours, but are skeptic of what building and expending rockets can do for the world, except launch monitoring sattelites, tourism, and eventually the ability to build starships.
elzbardico 2y ago
The cynical in me thinks this is very suspicious to have appeared organically. Especially when you consider it is very convenient for the plebe to direct their attentions to this subject while ignoring the other far more nefarious stuff the same elites have been doing to allocate a bigger piece of the pie for them. It is almost like someone is distracting the Tiers-État with a sacrificial goat.
mlsu 2y ago
It stems from a more fundamental misunderstanding about how allocation of resources works. If a space program costs $10b and you suddenly defund it, you don't get $10b to spend on other stuff. You get a bunch of unemployed people, most of whom are interested in and good at launching things into space. I believe this phenomenon is responsible for SpaceX's success: a huge group of smart, motivated people, interested in space, being grossly mismanaged. Projects canceled, bureaucracy, etc. SpaceX comes along and says "we actually want to go to space; we're gonna do it for real" and all the sudden those people are breaking their backs working 80h weeks to hit impossible deadlines. You can't just buy that or materialize it from thin air, not for all the pork in NASA. If these rocket scientists and engineers are doing anything other than rocket science or engineering it's a loss for all of us. Certainly for them as well.
mcmoor 2y ago
Everyone have their own rational ratio of how much should be allocated for space (or any blue sky research). For example I'd oppose my country funding a moon landing, not only because my country have GDP per capita 20 times less than USA, also because trust in central government capability is low af. USA itself may be much much richer and more capable, but it just means there'll still be rational limit, but higher.

by fouc 2y ago

tetris11 2y ago

The article frames it as though everyone who is skeptical in this new space race is also anti-astronomy from the examples it uses. I think this is a false premise. Plenty of people love astronomy and the insights it has given to other worlds and ours, but are skeptic of what building and expending rockets can do for the world, except launch monitoring sattelites, tourism, and eventually the ability to build starships.

elzbardico 2y ago

The cynical in me thinks this is very suspicious to have appeared organically. Especially when you consider it is very convenient for the plebe to direct their attentions to this subject while ignoring the other far more nefarious stuff the same elites have been doing to allocate a bigger piece of the pie for them. It is almost like someone is distracting the Tiers-État with a sacrificial goat.

mlsu 2y ago

It stems from a more fundamental misunderstanding about how allocation of resources works. If a space program costs $10b and you suddenly defund it, you don't get $10b to spend on other stuff. You get a bunch of unemployed people, most of whom are interested in and good at launching things into space. I believe this phenomenon is responsible for SpaceX's success: a huge group of smart, motivated people, interested in space, being grossly mismanaged. Projects canceled, bureaucracy, etc. SpaceX comes along and says "we actually want to go to space; we're gonna do it for real" and all the sudden those people are breaking their backs working 80h weeks to hit impossible deadlines. You can't just buy that or materialize it from thin air, not for all the pork in NASA. If these rocket scientists and engineers are doing anything other than rocket science or engineering it's a loss for all of us. Certainly for them as well.

mcmoor 2y ago

Everyone have their own rational ratio of how much should be allocated for space (or any blue sky research). For example I'd oppose my country funding a moon landing, not only because my country have GDP per capita 20 times less than USA, also because trust in central government capability is low af. USA itself may be much much richer and more capable, but it just means there'll still be rational limit, but higher.