To me, it feels like a further step in advancing human civilization. Disperse the population a bit and keep growing as a species. That said, I’m no expert and if you have literature to recommend please do!
In the short term, we should probably focus on fixing our problems on earth. Some space research should still be funded, but not as a major priority. Once we finally have our shit together, we can start exploring the stars.
This is a salient point, but obviously the answer lies in the nuance.
If there were some kind of mars-race and the US and China invest trillions in being the first to put a man on Mars, that seems like it would be a huge waste of resources given that those trillions of dollars would be better spent on rolling out renewables and de-carbonising industries.
On the other hand, methodical, strategic, considered advances into space are appropriate.
Space exploration needs to be balanced against our other objectives.
It’d be surprising if we haven’t either ruined ourselves or achieved an actual end of history by 2300. So, that.
The savings from completely ignoring space aren’t what people think, though.
I see what you’re saying but reality is, we’ll never get our shit together perfectly. We’ll never advance into space if we wait on that.
Imagine if our ancestors thought that before travelling to new lands or sailing the seas. They wouldn’t have gone anywhere.
Some space research should still be funded, but not as a major priority.
Most of our ancestors probably did think that before sailing the seas, they were focused on feeding themselves, fighting off diseases and other tribes, learning how to build. While others focused on making boats and sailing. Sailing became what it is now because society survived long enough for sailing to develop. Similarly, if we as a species can keep ourselves alive long enough, gradual progress towards space exploration will develop into much more.
I think thats completely reasonable
Its the only real option we have given a long enough time frame. That or voluntary extinction
Humans are life’s way to expand itself off this planet. So, yeah, let’s keep exploring
Very low priority first focus should be on making our only planet as livable and with as many healthy ecosystems and thriving species as possible given how utterly unlikely we will ever have significant population on any other.
While it’s easy to agree with your priorities, taking resources away from our future will make next to no difference. Most of these issues are not budget issues and the space program is a miniscule budget comparatively.
For example most of these places where overuse of water is ruining ecosystems can’t really be helped with money. Maybe more intelligent allocation helps in some cases but we really need to face that some places can’t support the number of people there
Thats fair
Yes and no
“Low priority” and “first” are actually pretty different statements. “First” requires pretty authoritarian control over how people spend their time. But the statements are thrown together pretty often and people intuitively accept them. Realistically the world is a bunch of people doing their own thing, and in that world a small fraction of time and resources is spent on space. Some of this ends up being useful technology is developed for the rest of the world too. Personally I’m hopeful for stations and bases doing some of the expensive research for closed loop products and recycling but that’s still a hope and far from a certainty
if we can’t learn to utilize space resources then we will never significantly be able to travel in space. We should put most of our effort in autmation that can accomplish things in space like mining and refining right up to eventual manufacturing.
Yes and no. I don’t really see how robots in space is usually an end goal. Sure, we need satellites, probes, telescopes like we already do.
But mining is a great example where there’s no point . Of course robots can do it cheaper than humans but there are extremely few, if any, resources valuable enough to be worth mining in space and bringing back. Maybe helium-3 if we ever get fusion working.
Where it is worth machines mining in space is to support human space activities. Being able to, for example, build habitats or at least radiation shielding from simple local rock saves huge amounts over bringing that weight from earth. The reason people are excited about craters near the South Pole of the moon is the prospect mining water, oxygen, even rocket fuel for use to make human space activities radically cheaper. At that point you’ve drastically cut the weight of things needing to be lifted from earth, radically cut costs, while making life in space generally safer and easier.
Yea, I’d imagine lots of very intelligent robots would need to come first. Just sucks to know I’ll never see it I guess.
The maximum speed of information and how spread out space is, combined with the likelihood of fully automated planet destroying superweapons that can’t be well defended against being the meta for future warfare, make this a very bad idea IMO. One of thousands of humanity’s offshoots goes nuts and decides we all need to die, it’s over, and you’re rolling the dice with every one. It is clear that on a population scale we do not now have our shit together enough to keep that from happening even with the benefit of instant communication, let alone without it.
Creating human colonies throughout the galaxy at this point would be like making copies of a severely mentally ill and suicidal person in the hopes that the clones will have a better survival rate if there’s more of them. It is stupid. Human culture and organizational technology need to be way better before we even consider spreading out into space because otherwise we’re facing the exact same apocalypse just on a grander scale and harder to resolve. Probably shouldn’t even send humans, instead craft some artificial lifeform using us as a template that is inherently better at this stuff than we are.
Okay so the problem with space travel is numerous and I don’t believe we’ll see anything beyond reaching Mars and the Moon in our lifetime.
First thing, we need everyone on board to back NASA and be intelligent enough to figure out where exactly what we want to do. We keep finding these earth-like exoplanets, so why not start there?
The other thing is, to achieve the level of space travel we need, on the levels of where Voyager-1 and Voyager-2 is going in length of space, we’d need to spend significant time and resources building the materials and ships needed for that kind of travel.
Like I said, this won’t be done in our lifetime. We’re probably several lifetimes out.
Those earth-like exoplanets are many light years away. They’re not just a hop past mars and we may never be able to reach them (cue people jumping in talking generation ships that we don’t know if we will ever be able to build ).
There are other possible places in our solar system though, depending on how many problems we’re able to solve, notably large water moons of the gas giants
So yeah, systematic, gradually reach farther, moon—>mars—>space stations—> water moons, over a few centuries. I’m sure each step will be harder than the last but we can dream we can grow we can meet challenges …. Until we cant
Yeah, id agree with ya unfortunately
Depends on how far you’re thinking.
Nowhere else in the solar system is anywhere near as habitable as Earth, and there’s still lots of empty space to fill on Earth. Consider for a moment how much easier a self-supporting city on Antarctica would be than a city on Mars. Human space travel is done purely for science or recreation, at this point, not for growth.
If you want to “disperse” in any significant way, you have to start looking at exoplanets, and it’s going to take centuries to get there, and we don’t have the technology to survive that yet. Once we do, there’s a strong argument for it, because our planet and solar system will only last so long.
Yeah we must be many generations away if ever
I think we need to address climate change and capitalism first. But once that’s done, I think space exploration would be sweet.
Like achieve carbon neutral and live post scarcity?
Maybe I don’t think post scarcity is necessary for ending capitalism, but carbon neutral sounds good to me.
I believe that space exploration and development is of such high potential future utility as to become a moral imperative, but I suspect that view will be unpopular given that in recent decades some of the most infamous tech billionaires have stuck their hands and toxic branding in that area.
Space is cool and it’s a better use of our time than blowing each other up.
Agreed
It’s a good idea at the wrong time. Our species priority should be managing ecological overshoot. For example, tackling our Planetary Boundaries so humanity can de risk human civilizational collapse and possible extinction.
Space should come after we’ve solved for sustainability. Edit: I should also note that true sustainability also advances our capabilities in space as for any meaningful human missions, you’ll need to bring your sustainable environment with you wherever you go. It will need it’s own circular economy and ecology and the technology that goes with it.
At this point i think the rich would use it for mining offworld resources to get richer rather than advancing humanity
That seems likely
I want my share of those resources to go to my retirement account. A shorter work week would be better. Or maybe a machine to do my laundry so I can do other things with my limited time on earth.
Or maybe a machine to do my laundry
Oh boy, do I have news for you!
Alt joke >!You mean a wife? !<
My wife often does my laundry - but she has better things to do with her time.
I hear ya
