11–16 of 16 posts
What is not moral is the fact that it is becoming a sort of big brother show based on no scientific assumptions.
A mission to Mars is science fiction at least until 2050 or more. We don't have the technology, we could land a 1 ton spaceship with a robot, but a space ship with enough food, water and air to let people travel for 6 months would be too heavy for current technology and crash on landing. What is not moral is the fact that it is becoming a sort of big brother show based on no scientific assumptions.
If US put the same kind of money into NASA they did during the Apollo days (so 4% of federal budged instead of 0.5% for a decade or two without changing the plan/goal of NASA with every administration change) a lot of stuff would be possible.
If you had an "infinite" budged you could just build a VERY big space craft in orbit and use that. But the money isn't there so it isn't happening until SpaceX or whoever lowers the launch prices further (SpaceX Falcon Heavy and/or ITS/MCT for example)
A mission to Mars is science fiction at least until 2050 or more. We don't have the technology, we could land a 1 ton spaceship with a robot, but a space ship with enough food, water and air to let people travel for 6 months would be too heavy for current technology and crash on landing. What is not moral is the fact that it is becoming a sort of big brother show based on no scientific assumptions.
The same argument could be made about just about any human activity that isn't obviously beneficial to humanity, the environment, etc. Is reading a discussion on HN morally defensible? You could be spending that time helping humanity somehow. Is working at a tech start-up making mobile apps morally defensible? You could be working at a soup kitchen instead. Is playing a video game morally defensible? You could be ass…
But it's marketed as somehow important to the survival of humanity, and that's a lie. There are no scenarios, even vaguely theoretical ones, where Mars is more hospitable than Earth any time in the next million years.
I feel almost exactly the same way about Burning Man. To the extent that it's marketed as a dance party in the desert for the wealthy, I think it's a wonderful thing. I respect that it holds important religious services for many people.
When people start talking about how it's an evolution of society, or somehow a solution to the world's problems, I take issue.
FWIW, I would answer the titular question in the affirmative: Yes, a Mars mission is morally defensible. It's just not good for society right now. Still, we should probably do it sooner than later, since we're about to burn our oil reserves. This might be our last chance to get out to the asteroids and build the factories to seed the space economy. But again, from Earth's perspective this is all just entertainment.
The same argument could be made about just about any human activity that isn't obviously beneficial to humanity, the environment, etc. Is reading a discussion on HN morally defensible? You could be spending that time helping humanity somehow. Is working at a tech start-up making mobile apps morally defensible? You could be working at a soup kitchen instead. Is playing a video game morally defensible? You could be ass…