Its not either/or. Climate is ultimately a risk management problem, and few risk management experts adhere to an “all your eggs in one basket” paradigm.
From a certain perspective, exploration of the universe/space travel/colonization of other celestial bodies is the most important thing our species can do.
As someone else said, you can do more than one thing at a time.
Resources are limited. We should spend them where they will have the most impact in the near to mid-term. Let our great-grandchildren figure out how to colonize Mars.
Agree to disagree. Daring big things should always be encouraged imo.
1 Like
Dare to fix the Earth. The idea that we are going to make Earth uninhabitable and Mars inhabitable is crazy. Maybe after we are actually fixing the Earth we can try to do two things at the same time.
If there’s a fire in your kitchen, try putting it out before you start construction on a vacation home.
14 Likes
You guys are really missing the point here. 99% of the urgency is to make space exploration public again and not a plaything for the wealthy. 1% of the urgency is deciding how important it is relative to fixing the climate on Earth.
Why? I don’t want anyone spewing millions of tons of CO2 to go to Mars. Having the government pay for it, ie me and you, doesn’t make it better at all. It’s worse. I want my money spent fixing the Earth.
Do. Both.
Going to Mars is counter productive. It’s not just a waste of money, it makes Earth worse.
1 Like
Fine. Let the scientists in the government decide how to best approach the program. I dont care that much. What I care about is that Musk stupidly shooting cars into space doesn’t suddenly make all space exploration dumb. Science is good guys.
1 Like
I imagine most people like the big space stuff because it’s cool and gives us, as part of the human race, a sense of accomplishment. It seems nearly impossible to land on the moon in the 60s or now land on Mars this decade so we want to see it happen out of a sense of ambition and curiosity. Seeing a rocket land on earth successfully 25% of the time! Cool! Seeing a rocket explode 75% trying to land! Cool!
That being said these grand space goals have always been a monster waste of human resources and money and as micro rightfully points out are producing a ton of co2 on the planet we need to actually survive. Throw the trillions and engineering brainpower at valuable solvable problems here on Earth. I wish the “do both” side of the argument was right but I doubt it is. That whole pesky scarcity of resources thing is real.
1 Like
Fun with math.
If you let every billionaire in America keep 1 billion dollars, the rest of the money could double NASA’s budget for a century.
Resources aren’t that scarce, they’re hidden.
Yes all the resources have been funneled to a handful of billionaires that are are using it to play space rather than solve climate change or even solve a relatively small scale problem like drinking water in Flint. That’s kind of my point.
Scarcity of resources also doesn’t imply they are truly scarce in the sense that they don’t exist. It implies they are finite which is undoubtedly true.
2 Likes
I don’t really fear the emissions stuff that much if the program is run by government scientists. Billionaires fucking around for pride will naturally pollute with no regard, but armies of publicly funded scientists are more trustworthy stewards of the greater good
Indeed. I am a fan of solving root causes. But your perspective and @microbet 's are very valid and important as well.
I think we agree somewhat here. For some reason when the billionaires do vanity projects it seems a lot more wasteful than what NASA has historically done. Besides we all kind of own part of NASA and can influence the direction it takes to some extent.
Essentially privatizing NASA is a bad thing.
We could do that, or we could other things with that money that actually improve life on earth.
Government funded scientific research improves life on Earth. It improves it ALOT.
1 Like
Scientific advances related to space exploration have vastly improved life on earth.
At what cost?