Re:Japan Is Giving Away 8M Abandoned Houses
by CM30 on Friday November 30, 2018 @11:20AM
(#18570152)
There are plenty of other drivers to expand off Earth:
1. Backup in case things go wrong (meteor strike, end of the Earth, nuclear war, mass plague, AI/robot revolt)
2. Outright inability to live alongside other cultures and societies/groups. Just like throughout history, some beliefs will also be controversial at best/illegal at worst, and while in the past finding a unoccupied area on Earth was practical, that's not really the case now. So space it is.
3. Science/academic study. Robots are neat, but there are some things it's better to send humans for, and a fair few scientists would probably rather be out there exploring than sat behind a computer screen.
4. General boredom/tourism/whatever.
5. Environmental concerns. Not just resource mining, but let's face it... eventually a lot of environmentally unfriendly industrial processes will probably work better in a place with no atmosphere/biosphere to ruin.
1. Backup in case things go wrong (meteor strike, end of the Earth, nuclear war, mass plague, AI/robot revolt)
2. Outright inability to live alongside other cultures and societies/groups. Just like throughout history, some beliefs will also be controversial at best/illegal at worst, and while in the past finding a unoccupied area on Earth was practical, that's not really the case now. So space it is.
3. Science/academic study. Robots are neat, but there are some things it's better to send humans for, and a fair few scientists would probably rather be out there exploring than sat behind a computer screen.
4. General boredom/tourism/whatever.
5. Environmental concerns. Not just resource mining, but let's face it... eventually a lot of environmentally unfriendly industrial processes will probably work better in a place with no atmosphere/biosphere to ruin.
Probably a bunch of other things too.