And that's not even getting into the fact that multiple things can be done by humanity at once.
edit: apologies for the first sentence here which was unnecessary to make my point.
Totally unnecessary. That gratuitous dig doesn't advance your argument at all.
> What about all the resources going into video games, sports, movies, music, amusements parks, television, weapons systems, desserts, travel and vacations, etc?
That doesn't seem like it's u/paxys issue to address. The person they responded to made a _very_ strong claim: "The single most important job humanity has is to get our eggs into more than one basket".
It seems entirely consistent with both the original argument and the reply that humans could have two very important jobs to address (climate change, and becoming multi-planetary) and still have resources to dedicate to all those other things you describe.
> Do you make the same tired comments when those industries are brought up?
I would make a similar argument that u/paxys made if the amusement park industry claimed that building amusement parks was the single most important job that humanity had. Similarly, for sports, video games movies, or most other industries. Claiming the mantle of "the most important job humanity has" is a very big claim.
> And that's not even getting into the fact that multiple things can be done by humanity at once.
u/paxys didn't say that we could only address one thing at a time. They were disagreeing with the claim that becoming multiplanetary is the single most important job humanity has. Disagreeing with which singular job we have is the "most important" one makes absolutely no claim as to how we should be dividing our time.
Ultimately, I actually agree with the original poster that becoming multiplanetary and multistellar is an important feat we should be aggressively perusing. But I also think surviving any extinction-event filters that may come along the way is equally important.
Good point, I should have restrained myself here.
The rest of your comments would be fair, except that u/paxys said the following:
> There is enough time to think about colonizing the stars after that.
Which clearly indicates that we should not be working on space travel until AFTER we've solved humanity's problems.
I didn't read it as indicating that we should fully postpone humanity's problems. For example, the next few sentences read:
> The world isn't going to end because his next launch is a month late due to pesky safety regulations or whatever else. This effort is going to play out over many generations and centuries.
That indicates to me that the delay the person is considering is on the order of the delay imposed by FCC regulations (i.e. months or years), not "start working on it after we've solved humanity's problems".
But that's just how it reads to me
> The single most important job for humanity right now is to save this one planet we have from destruction. There is enough time to think about colonizing the stars after that.
And they're simply unable to come to any understanding, after decades of botched discourse.
I don't see how some group of people focusing on space travel as a way to potentially divert the end of humanity as something that bad
There's plenty of orgs doing worthwhile and important space exploration.
There's a bunch of individuals destroying this planet who want to go to space and are selling a nice colonists fantasy to get backing.
You're right that it's not either or: let's continue supporting viable space efforts. But let's not be naive about it.
This particular thread of comments is specifically about Mars colonisation.
OP: > The single most important job for humanity right now is to save this one planet we have from destruction.
You're arguing with nobody's point.
> There is enough time to think about colonizing the stars after that.
Which directly states that problems should be worked on serially - that space travel should be worked on AFTER we solve other problems.
It's fine to state your own reading of what they said and respond in kind, but dictating that your reading is universal when your comment is directly under evidence that it is not is a big leap.
If you insist on using 3rd party interpretation rather than 1st party intent to decide the meaning of a statement, I've got 16 upvotes on my comments here so others seem to be reading it the same as I.
But we don't need to vote to understand what "until after" means. It's not esoteric philosophical language - my 6 year old would understand it.
"Argument by upvote" is weak, especially in a forum where I can't actually see your comments vote totals.
Also, you are not the first party, so why do you feel so confident in being able to claim sole interpretation of "1st party intent."
They clearly meant that that space colonization was such a far off goal, that the difference in intensely focusing on it and moderately focusing on it won't cause measurable differences in our lifetime.
Or they didn't, I'm not a mind-reader, but I've given just as much evidence to back up that claim as you have yours.
If you want to make it into a discussion about comparing & contrasting impacts, you're going to have to take the collective impacts of those pushing the space-colony agenda: everything from perpetuating individual road transport & UK airline companies to the largest "bookstore" in the world and lots in between.
Space exploration is an extremely important and worthy scientific endeavour & orgs like NASA have been criminally underfunded for decades.
What is absolutely not worthwhile and shouldn't even uttered in the same breath as the history of efforts on ISS and similar, is a bunch of budding space cowboys sending phallic representations of themselves into orbit on PR missions and hiding their own destructive impact on our planet behind a colinist fantasy so thin only a complete scientific illeterate would fall for it.
SpaceX has contributed positively to benign public missions by being a contractor, but all the marketing bullshit outside of that around Mars is demonstrably nonsense.
> a bit of critical thinking
Indeed.
Like do people really think that there's better shapes to go with? And if people really believe this, what part of our public education system failed them most? Because my money is on critical thinking.
Fwiw, I'm at least glad that single word seems to be the only part of the comment above you found objectionable.
Face it man, people making fun of dick shaped rockets are seeing dicks where no one else is seeing them and calling themselves clever.
Fwiw the space plane I was referring to above was SS2, not a NASA vehicle. But yes, I agree, it is unlikely to be good for doing "real work in space". Which is the actual substantive point here, irrespective of vehicle shape.
Just to repeat since you seem to have missed it in my comment above: the phallic comment was not, I repeat NOT a literal commentary on rocket design. Yes, good rockets are long and cylindrical. Not what I was referring to.
Make Earth proper a gigantic park / nature reserve.
We can't "wait" for anything, or the window during which we can develop space travel will close. 10 or 100 years from now we might no longer have the motivation or the means to fund and build new vechicles like these.
Good luck dealing with the absence of cheap oxydizer and the lack of convection which makes heat dispersion a nightmare.
> Move our power generation into space and beam it down.
Our power is already generated in space, and beamed down to us. It also comes with no infrastructure cost, which is truly an engineering wonder when you think of it.
Wasn't one of the disasters in Simcity 2000 having your power-beaming space laser miss your power station instead light your city on fire? It seems like such a thing would cause massive hazards.
> Move people into real orbital habitats.
> Make Earth proper a gigantic park / nature reserve.
Or force people to live deep underground. Then when they save up enough money to buy a ticket, they can be transported there much more economically.
As for me, I like living on the surface.
Dial that up tenfold and I suspect you’ll be fine - especially with the plant in the desert (nothing to burn)
1GWh/y/ha. That’s a 4,000 ha requirement for the US electrical needs, about 10 square miles.
If industry had to pay launch costs for water, air, and other basic things they need, they wouldn't be financially viable.
If we then pointed out that in space or on the surface of a lifeless rock there are no costs of pollutants there might be a bit of incentive to move.
But you are correct, those companies would need to be self-sufficient in gathering all resource inputs and be able to ship finished products back where they are wanted. Much more complex than renting an industrial unit in an industrial town.
If it were at all easy or probable then there would be other players in the space. There aren’t. If you contribute to the friction that opposes spacexs forward progress then you bear the responsibility for working against the things that you claim to love as a self proclaimed nerd.
There were people who put on demonstrations against wealthy people spending their money on being patrons for scientists and early biologists. It was very unpopular for rich people to sponsor nonsense, the collection of random fluids and samples. All of which is the basis for modern biology and medicine. So which side of history are you going to be on? The idiotic mob or the people making things better?
> The single most important job for humanity right now is to save this one planet we have from destruction.
Aren't these two sides of the same coin? If we colonise Mars, but leave Earth a smoking ruin, then we've made things worse by trading a planet with a function biosphere for one without. If we wait till Earth is in perfect state before colonising another planet, we'll never leave, and be subject to many of the same risks.
He has a lot of talent at his disposable, and presumably information to a decent bit of otherwise locked away studies/reports. Do I think he is correct? Perhaps not, but my nor your opinion really matters.
If he's made the decision shits truly FUBAR, ala Foundation, then leave him alone while he works on what he may genuinely believe to be a shot at surviving the FUBAR long-term.
Soooooo. It's probably not vaporware homie.
I think you lack some self-awareness here. Space is clearly a mild curiosity to you at most.
I think it's extremely unhelpful to tell people what their interests are, or what they believe. How much could you possibly know about this person's interests from that one post?
Criticizing regulators is Elon's MO, whether it is the SEC for his Tweets, various transportation departments for self driving software safety, labor departments for covid restrictions for worker safety, FAA for rocket launches... You'd think there is some national conspiracy against him at this point.