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On what dimensions would that be preferable?
> On what dimensions would that be preferable? Novelty, for one.
Obviously one is free to want that. When I think of the opportunity costs involved, it seems repugnant to be honest. The opposite of glorious.
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They didn't believe there was literally nothing there. They went all that way to find unclaimed riches. The hypothetical riches were quite obvious: same stuff we have over here, but not owned by someone yet. What are they hypothetical riches of outer space? This is a question we should think about clearly and logically without resorting to stuff like "oh tally-ho the adventure!" type nonsense.
There is many times more water in gas giant moons than on Earth. If we develop the technology needed to make a multi-generation ship we also have the technology to make deep space habitats - enough for trillions or quadrillions of people. Just imagine the economic output of a civilisation a million times the size of ours.
Then we can use all of that new productivity to start working toward the next rung?
Our economy is not currently throughput limited on water or space so I don’t find this compelling.
> those of us with an interstellar bent naturally start musing about ‘sundiver’ trajectories, using a solar slingshot to accelerate an outbound spacecraft, perhaps with a propulsive burn at perihelion. . The latter option makes this an ‘Oberth maneuver’ and gives you a maximum outbound kick. You can't do a solar slingshot like you can with (say) Jupiter because the sun is essentially at rest with respect to the rest…
> the sun is essentially at rest with respect to the rest of the solar system But not with respect to other star systems.
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> On what dimensions would that be preferable? Novelty, for one.
Yeah, makes sense. Novelty like what toys provide! Obviously one is free to want that. When I think of the opportunity costs involved, it seems repugnant to be honest. The opposite of glorious.
Developing propulsion technology to reach 0.1c velocity will move the needle on interstellar propulsion from impossible to just barely feasible. Although that is at least 100-200 years away, we can absolutely start expanding into our Solar System, starting with nearby bodies, like Moon and Mars.
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> On what dimensions would that be preferable? Novelty, for one.
Yeah, makes sense. Novelty like what toys provide! Obviously one is free to want that. When I think of the opportunity costs involved, it seems repugnant to be honest. The opposite of glorious.
And art and scientific endeavour and exploration and possibly all the things that make us human, but sure.
The comment by Benjamin Stockton on the article page is spot-on: >I just wonder if humanity’s adventurous nature is leading us away from a proper focus on the sustainability of our civilization, our specie, and our fragile planetary environment? But we still need spaceflight at least for planetary defense against asteroids, mining asteroids(so we don't have to mine Earth), etc.
But sure, we should solve all the problems on earth with one hand tied behind our backs until we can launch any more rockets.
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What resources are on asteroids that justify the energy expenditure to get from space and back? Can't be many of them...
> What resources are on asteroids that justify the energy expenditure to get from space and back? With chemical rockets, not much. With "a propellant-less propulsion propulsion system such as solar sails or electric sails," bringing water (propellant) to low-earth orbit starts making sense [1], as does mining platinum, but only if "the quantity of platinum from space would substitute an equal quantity of terrestrial…
The energy involved in chemical rocketry is actually not that much. Getting a kilogram to LEO is roughly as expensive (in energy) as flying it to the other side of the world in an airliner. Getting stuff back from an earth-crossing asteroid can also be very cheap energetically, with very small delta-V (if one is willing to wait long enough).
The comment by Benjamin Stockton on the article page is spot-on: >I just wonder if humanity’s adventurous nature is leading us away from a proper focus on the sustainability of our civilization, our specie, and our fragile planetary environment? But we still need spaceflight at least for planetary defense against asteroids, mining asteroids(so we don't have to mine Earth), etc.
Humans, simply by existing on Earth, have a huge and often negative impact on the environment. If we could somehow shift the human population off Earth, either by terraforming planets (like Mars) or creating artificial space habitats, it would have a huge positive impact on Earth's environment. We don't currently have the technology to do so - we would need space elevators to feasibly move humanity off Earth - but that doesn't mean we should move our attention away from space in the meantime.
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> We need to develop better plastics, proteins, and pesticides. Not send protein blobs to other planets because it looks cool in sci fi movies The reality is more people get passsionate about working on things that look cool in sci fi movies than developing plastics, proteins and pesticides for a mediocre paycheque. This lesson--that the path to groundbreaking technologies is through inspirational moonshots, not comm…
Nobody referenced any sort of committee. Groundbreaking technologies are not created via moonshots. They’re created by decades of slog. Moonshots can launch from an unremarkable platform of slog, but the slog had to happen. You just cannot speedrun the vast majority of questions that need to be answered to power a breakthrough. That’s why I’ll question glory-chasers who want to sit on the rocket but can’t take a few…
The slog is almost always in pursuit of a moonshot. The moon justifies the slog. We don’t slog for the sake of it.