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What sort of things do you think are necessary to change for this to happen?

• sorcerer-mar 1y ago
  "this" == produce political will to protect the environment at the expense of industry? Not too sure! Probably one part is to disabuse people of the notion that we have alternatives available if only we could just dedicate more brainpower to space travel. The real answer is to eliminate the tradeoffs through scientific innovation. As mentioned elsewhere, the real way to protect earth (and our species) is to produce better plastics, proteins, and pesticides. Each smart person wrapped up in sci-fi fantasies of simply off-planeting heavy industry is another brain dedicated to -- as far as I can tell (thus my questioning here) -- an almost completely useless endeavor. Which is why I believe the aforementioned disabusal is critically important. There's just no evidence that big explosions and adventures are what we need. We need people in labs nudging molecules over and over with a 0.0001% success rate.
  • Teever 1y ago
    Do you think that humans will ever colonize other bodies in the solar system, or build large scale artificial habitats that house hundreds of thousands of people? If so, when do you think this will start to occur? 50 years from now? 100? 200? If not, why not?
    • sorcerer-mar 1y ago
      Depends on your definition of "colonize". In the hundreds of thousands of people range, no we are several hundred years away (if ever). Mostly because outer space sucks and there's no reason to be there, as evidenced by the inability for anyone in this thread to come up with compelling reasons to do it aside from "ah the adventure!" (from people who haven't done anything that could be described as 'adventure' here on earth, ever).