31–40 of 325 posts
I've seen more anti-space rhetoric in the last few weeks than ever before in my life. What gives? Great advancements have cost. That doesn't make them not worth doing
People are having a hard time when orange man does or says something that they actually agree with.
They need to find a glass half empty way of looking at it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not that great advancements have cost. The argument is that focusing on space exploration deflects from facing the realities of climate change on our planet. If people start to think that space exploration could yield a solution to an increasingly uninhabitable climate on Earth, it could create a scenario where we spend even more on space exploration and less on addressing Earth's climate.
I've posted this before, but I see terraforming other planets as a necessary step to learn how to take care of the Earth. Large-scale geoengineering will be necessary sooner or later on Earth. However, it almost certainly has failure modes that we don't know about, and won't know about until we can experiment with it. Testing the effects on Earth, with nearly 8 billion people, is wildly reckless. Testing the effects…
I've seen more anti-space rhetoric in the last few weeks than ever before in my life. What gives? Great advancements have cost. That doesn't make them not worth doing
Maybe the last several months of what is going on here on Earth has made people reconsider if the massive investments required for space exploration would be better spent on something else.
>He believed that humans and technology had a fascist relationship, tracing a particular wave of destruction to the Nazis. Heidegger pointed out that the Nazis specifically invested in technology and sought to destroy intellectualism, books, and texts. It is rare that Godwin's Law proves true right from the start.
If we as a species can't successfully fulfil our caretaker role on the one planet we currently occupy, expansion would be happening with the wrong motivations and the end result will be perpetuating the same patterns of harm on an even larger scale.
Article chooses to frame the question in an American political context which reduces a wide philosophical issue worthy of discussion to a narrow partisan hack piece that only feeds petty argument and division. The USA doesn't have a monopoly on space exploration, so should we/shouldn't we hand wringing is irrelevant.
I've seen more anti-space rhetoric in the last few weeks than ever before in my life. What gives? Great advancements have cost. That doesn't make them not worth doing
It's because of the recent RNC tweet[0] with a list of some of Trump's priorities for the next term, and the firs two listed were a permanent presence on the moon and sending a manned mission to Mars. It did not mention the pandemic. Most people who already considered these were a waste of resources probably didn't bother talking about it much. Now they are, because they have a clear rallying point to shout about. I'…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not that great advancements have cost. The argument is that focusing on space exploration deflects from facing the realities of climate change on our planet. If people start to think that space exploration could yield a solution to an increasingly uninhabitable climate on Earth, it could create a scenario where we spend even more on space exploration and less on addressing Earth's climate.
I've posted this before, but I see terraforming other planets as a necessary step to learn how to take care of the Earth. Large-scale geoengineering will be necessary sooner or later on Earth. However, it almost certainly has failure modes that we don't know about, and won't know about until we can experiment with it. Testing the effects on Earth, with nearly 8 billion people, is wildly reckless. Testing the effects…
This thinking seems backwards. How can we learn to take a totally dead planet and make it living when we can't even figure out how to keep this one healthy?
It is dangerous to think fish have a destiny outside Ocean, said a vocal member in a school of fish 400 million years ago.
> The problem with this line of thinking — and the Trump administration’s ideological and monetary support for NASA exploring the solar system — is that it perpetuates the myth that, through technological developments, humans are destined to leave Earth and find a utopia elsewhere. I haven't heard anyone make this argument in earnest. What I have heard are arguments to the effect that we _must_ expand past the Earth…
> I haven't heard anyone make this argument in earnest. What I have heard are arguments to the effect that we _must_ expand past the Earth because it will inevitably become uninhabitable, probably due to human intervention. The counter-argument is that even after a nuclear Armageddon or the zombie apocalypse, Earth will still be more habitable than Mars for humans. Also, Mars will be much more susceptible to events l…
Yes, but we don't live in radiation-hardened bunkers on Earth. The effect of a Martian environment on Earth would be billions of deaths and the total collapse of society.
The effect of the Martian environment on Mars is...people have to wear space suits.
One is a normal state of affairs, and the other is a cataclysmic event that society is not prepared to survive.
Reminds me of The Expanse: Mars could become the utopia Libertarians are looking for.