prison mining colony.

but seriously, it could be used as a manufacturing and industrial hub for deep space operations like asteroid mining.

think about it like this. if we can manufacture things on the moon we can launch things for almost nothing into both earth orbit and the outer solar system due to how the orbital mechanics work.

this means we can build a million probes and send them all over the solar system, manufacture generation ships, permanent self sustaining space based habitats.

a new era of expansion, exploration, and discovery.

Turtles all the way down.

“Why do we need a space station?”

“As practice for getting to the Moon!”

“What can we do on the Moon?”

“Build spaceships for getting to the asteroid belt!”

“Why do we need to get to the asteroid belt?”

“So we can make components for the Mars colonies!”

“Why do we need a Mars colony?”

…

You know, they used to say the same thing about big mountains, right?

Here's a slightly older take on it from that era:

"""

People ask me, 'What is the use of climbing Mount Everest?' and my answer must at once be, 'It is of no use.'

There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever. Oh, we may learn a little about the behaviour of the human body at high altitudes, and possibly medical men may turn our observation to some account for the purposes of aviation.

But otherwise nothing will come of it. We shall not bring back a single bit of gold or silver, not a gem, nor any coal or iron...

If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won't see why we go.

What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to live. That is what life means and what life is for.

"""

(That's from George Mallory, for the curious.)

you get it.

So does William Shatner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU2ftCitvyQ

> """[...] What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. [...]""" (That's from George Mallory, for the curious.)

For many who are climbing the highest mountains that sheer joy turns into literal end if life. Wikipedia is trying to collect a list of them [0].

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who_died_clim...

Which is fine. As much as it's a cliché to say "they died doing what they loved", most people die in absolutely horrible circumstances. Death is death. I've had a few friends die mountaineering, BASE jumping, climbing etc. and once I've grieved I actually admit that they did, in reality, die doing what they loved. I may miss them, and call them selfish for engaging in dangerous activities, but I respect and admire the drive to push limits that border on the impossible. There are many more deaths that are purely senseless, easily preventable and just as tragic. No one other than the friends and family of those people seems to care or comment on the circumstances of those deaths.

For many people, loss of life is not the overriding concern.

There's adventure you fund yourself, and then there's adventure that taxpayers fund to the tune of several trillion dollars.

Yeah, if a huge chunk of DARPA's budget was spent sending people to climb mountains "Because it's there," people wouldn't be happy. The NASA budget for aeronautics is 1/8th the budget devoted to sending people into space "because it's there." Yet the aeronautics research is much more likely to have an actual positive impact on people's lives.

Earth is a spaceship, unfortunately somehow a bunch of monkeys went rampant and now they're busy tearing up the life support system.

If we can satisfy their (limitless and still growing) hunger for energy and resources by exploiting the rest of the solar system, the monkeys can be kept pacified. That could buy us time to figure out a more permanent, and balanced, solution.

The great thing about the Moon/Mars/asteroid belt is that we can strip mine it. Can't ruin the ecosystem if there isn't one.

I happen to like those apes and their antics. I also believe that another place to go will alleviate the tension over how to balance preservation of the earth with individual quality of life improvements

more people is better than fewer people. it means more of humanity, more discoveries, artwork, music, philosophy.

the more we spread out the more freedom we have to pursue our individual dreams and aspirations. (I believe individual freedom is inversely proportional to population density)

the more we spread out the less likely we are to become extinct in a single catastrophic event.

the instinct to explore discover and expand is intrinsically human. Implying humans should stay on earth is about as silly as thinking humans never should have left a small valley in Africa that could only support 100 people.

to stay is to die and become extinct. that might be preferable to some. and you are free to do so yourself, but please don't prevent those of us who have that unquenchable fire from pursuing that which will set our entire species free.

Why do we need to do anything?

We are the grey goo of the universe. Expansion is our thing.

So long as we don't come into contact with the black goo of the universe, I am more than happy doing what we do.

If you look at it that way, you can use the same logic here on Earth. Why do you go to work in the morning?

I know how these question chains go, I have a young son.

Because Terrans are the greatest species ever. A single planet is literally all our eggs in one basket.

“Because our population exceeds the carrying capacity of the planet, and if it does not do so already, will likely do so in the future, and if it does not do so in the future, it is still a good idea to have a backup plan for our descendants in case we manage to wreck this planet some how. Having a plan B just makes sense doesn’t it? Bet you the dinosaurs wished they had one”

It’s doesn’t, though. Per capita consumption varies. It’s more that a minority of our population vastly over-consumes. That problem would exist on another planet too.

Problem is, many would like to live just as this tiny minority.

That can be changed far more easily than which planet we live on.

Arguably most people are forced to under-consume, but they’d be happy far below the most conspicuous of over-consumption now happening.

That's a popular argument that falls apart when you look at the aggregate level of material wealth on this planet. Using GDP per capita as a passable proxy: current world GDP per capita is around $12k afaik, which is about where Mongolia and Indonesia are. Considering high level of inequality there (when you go there as a tourist, you're exposed to the wealthiest part of the society, and we're talking about the average), do you think people would be happy to freeze their consumption on that level? Or even lower, because most people talking about "over-consumption" also think that the current level of consumption is unsustainable?

To make things worse, there are also embedded emissions. You can see it with China, coming out of poverty requires infrastructure expenditure, which means "wealth averaged out" would be even worse than the average would suggest, as you can't average sewers and highways, you have to build them anew.

There is just not enough wealth on this planet as it currently is. When you're saying "they'll be happy far below the most conspicuous of over-consumption", it actually means "worse than an average citizen of Mongolia, forever", which doesn't sound as enticing, does it

That would assume GDP is a measure of resources and production capacity as opposed to just vaguely correlated. It would also assume there is no way to reduce unnecessary production costs, like profits.

It’s entirely possible to start from today’s resources and build production far more efficiently if we produce rationally for use.

Look at the scale of the numbers involved, profits are around 15% across developed economies [1], which is not nearly enough to offset the difference between average Mongolian and what you'd consider a decent QoL.

I don't see any evidence for that claim. What's more, planned economies don't seem to be particularly efficient at reducing waste or improving QoL, examples are plenty, from lake Karachay to unavailability of basic feminine hygiene products in USSR up until its breakup.

[1]: eg https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-25/us-corpor...

Because we are well over 75% through the window this planet can support life and are headed towards a complete extinction event with little chance of survival?

Life has been here for ~4.2bn years, has another good 500-800m years left until our carbon cycles grind to a halt.

"Why do we need a space station?"

"To save all life on Earth"

I've grown rather disenfranchised with most ecological movements (outside of the Whole Earth branch). Given what we've learned about our planet in the last few decades, and our current understanding of where this planet is heading, it's hard to interpret their arguments as anything other than advocating for letting all life on Earth die a slow death over the next 1Bn years.

Carbon cycle?

... to survive a giant rock falling on Earth?

you dont need to go further than asteroid mining and some robotic assembly platform. planets/moons are one of the worst uses of mass. I believe we'll end up making giant habitats like O'Neil cylinders and expanding using them.. pretty soon.

if you combine AI with robotics and space exploration, there is not much point to doing all this manually.

Introverts

Set up new places to fight over.

"Space: the latest frontier."

For expanding humanitys footprint to non-terrestrial areas. In a sustainable way. The only way to do that is learn bit by bit what works and what not. It's too complex problem to completely tackle by preplanning (unless we reach singularity first and we figure out it's actually possible to design robust life sustaining systems without prototyping).