I've seen more anti-space rhetoric in the last few weeks than ever before in my life. What gives? Great advancements have cost. That doesn't make them not worth doing
The argument is that focusing on space exploration deflects from facing the realities of climate change on our planet. If people start to think that space exploration could yield a solution to an increasingly uninhabitable climate on Earth, it could create a scenario where we spend even more on space exploration and less on addressing Earth's climate.
I've posted this before, but I see terraforming other planets as a necessary step to learn how to take care of the Earth. Large-scale geoengineering will be necessary sooner or later on Earth. However, it almost certainly has failure modes that we don't know about, and won't know about until we can experiment with it. Testing the effects on Earth, with nearly 8 billion people, is wildly reckless. Testing the effects on Mars or Venus, though costlier to implement, has the advantage of not risking those 8 billion lives.
You’ve got it exactly backwards IMO. Terraforming Mars or Venus will take millennia at least, millennia that we don’t currently have the luxury of waiting around for. We need to terraform Earth first — restore some of the damage we’ve done over just the last century or two — before we can think about the much more difficult project of terraforming other planets.
I understand we are at risk of large populations being displaced. But you seem to be under the impression we are facing a human extinction event, is that something backed up by science?
I think that’s a risk on the right tail, although not a very likely one. But even the modal outcomes — 2 or 3 K of warming relative to the preindustrial baseline — will likely kill hundreds of millions of humans and lead to the extinction of countless nonhuman plant and animal species. I’m comfortable saying that we should do whatever possible to mitigate that outcome instead of focusing on creating Martian bunkers for the 1% of the 1%.
> even the modal outcomes ... will likely kill hundreds of millions of humans
Once we are dealing with scenarios where hundreds of millions of humans are dying, it becomes harder to rule out the possibility of some desperate political or military leader resorting to using nuclear weapons. From there it is a small step to full nuclear war and the deaths of billions of humans.
Perhaps the "optimistic" scenarios are ones in which the hundreds of millions of humans that die are located far away from any nuclear armed countries, or at least those countries aren't destabilised by the economic and migration consequences of those deaths. I can, unfortunately, imagine militaries being routinely used this century for wiping out the remaining civilian populations of failed states.
Alternately: we can't even stop the anti-terraforming transformation of our own planet into an unlivable hellhole, despite the tremendous benefits of doing so, so why would anyone think we could possibly spend enough money to terraform a planet a zillion miles away that is inherently hostile to human life and where there is no financial benefit to doing so?
>I've posted this before, but I see terraforming other planets as a necessary step to learn how to take care of the Earth.
This thinking seems backwards. How can we learn to take a totally dead planet and make it living when we can't even figure out how to keep this one healthy?
I doubt the person you are replying to is suggesting that full scale terraforming is possible in a fraction of a million years. But perhaps smaller scale insightful experiments might be done without fear of wiping out life in our solar system.
Exactly. What happens if we have a swarm of satellites to divert/concentrate a large amount of solar radiation? What happens if we geo-engineer bacteria to precipitate out greenhouse gases? How long does it take for particulate matter to settle after diverting an asteroid to impact the planet? If we can make oceans, how does the size of oceans affect the absorption of new asteroid deliveries?
Mars and Venus are, as far as every experiment has shown, dead as doornails. Using them as a testbed for experiments that are too dangerous to do on Earth without first practicing is a good use for them.
I agree in a very theoretical and academic way, but practically speaking, how long will this testing take? We already risked the 8 billion lives with the accidental geoengineering we’re doing now.
Not only can we do both, but there is significant overlap.
To give two examples among many:
SpaceX's next major goal after making Starship capable of flying to Mars is to develop the infrastructure to refuel Starship on Mars. They plan to manufacture their fuel using the Sabatier process, which is also a form of carbon sequestration.
Research and development into Martian food production pushes the envelope in many agricultural research areas like vertical farming, high efficiency production with few inputs, et cetera.
Globally, no. In certain spheres (some influential), yes. And while I realize that my comment is (intentionally) pushing it a bit, I do think that when you look at the urgency of space exploration and climate issues that, per unit of urgency, space exploration is getting far more attention than climate issues.
Addressing global warming is not a cost in the long run, but the opposite. Technology that doesn't consume fossil fuel is inherently superior to what we have now and will generate enormous profits once the engineering is there. Don't believe me? Just look at Tesla's stock price.
Furthermore, cheap space travel does solve global warming because it makes the solution of orbital sun blocking feasible, which unlike currently available geoengineering tech, is instantly reversible.
If it weren't for what we already spent on space exploration, we wouldn't have nearly as much understanding of climate change, and we wouldn't have the variety of satellites we rely on to address the climate.
>The argument is that focusing on space exploration deflects from facing the realities of climate change on our planet.
Does it? It's not an either/or proposition.
Researching and developing technologies to allow humans to live in space in a sustainable way seems like it would almost certainly also create applications of such technology that can benefit us on Earth.
Whether that's methods to scrub the atmosphere of a space-based habitat of toxins/pollutants, utilize waste in productive ways and a raft of other stuff would be incredibly useful on Earth.
As an aside, I'd point out that even if we start colonizing space habitats, other planets and/or even planets around other stars, there are no technologies available or imagined that could transport colonists from the Earth faster than birth rates would replace them and continue population growth.
>As an aside, I'd point out that even if we start colonizing space habitats, other planets and/or even planets around other stars, there are no technologies available or imagined that could transport colonists from the Earth faster than birth rates would replace them and continue population growth.
Yeah, you should avoid needing that but it is certainly not impossible given high enough tech level & in-space infrastructure. Launch loops and orbital elevators should have more than enough capacity to enable that.
>Yeah, you should avoid needing that but it is certainly not impossible given high enough tech level & in-space infrastructure. Launch loops and orbital elevators should have more than enough capacity to enable that.
I think you're underestimating the effort, resources and logistics something like this would require.
In 2016, there were ~256 live births per minute[0]. That works out to ~369,000/day.
Even multiple space elevators couldn't hope to come anywhere close to that, but perhaps with launch loops as well we might be able to approach that.
But even if we could, how much of global production of, well everything, would need to be dedicated to getting even 350,000 people and the stuff they need off the earth every single day?
>Much bigger problem actually is where to put those billions once you have to move them in a hurry off a planet.
An excellent point. Even if you didn't need to hurry, the resources required just to stage such a migration are staggering and would likely exceed the production capabilities of the planet.
But as you point out, we don't really have any place to send all those "colonists" so the point is moot.
> The argument is that focusing on space exploration deflects from facing the realities of climate change on our planet.
In order to make this argument, you have to first figure out what percentage of NASA's budget is spent on space exploration versus things like GPS systems, weather satellites, climate monitoring, solar monitoring, physics experiments, etc etc, which have direct or indirect benefits to things happening here on earth.
NASA's budget for entire actual space exploration would be more-or-less a rounding error on our defense budget which routinely has $5b projects which benefits very few people and arguably makes the quality of life worse on our planet.
As far as I'm concerned, this is akin to suggesting you shouldn't back up the data on your computer because it distracts from protecting your working installation. You can do both—invest in a back-up strategy, while investing more money and vigilance in protecting the primary source.
Space exploration is more though, because not only is space exploration an investment in a back-up plan, it brings very real benefits home to earth. The whole point of exploration is that you don't know what you are going to find or what the repercussions of what you find will be.
Why do you see climate change and space exploration as orthogonal? It would seem to me that moving energy-intensive processes off the planet surface might ease the climate burden.
In the early 70's, physicist Gerard K. O'Neil asked the question "Is the surface of a planet really the right place for an expanding technological civilization?" [0]
You would seem to answer this question with 'Yes.' Why?
I think investing in space exploration improves some people's ability to face climate change on our planet. It's hard to see a scenario where everyone in the world would benefit from it, given the incredible advancement of private space flight. Don't get me wrong, it's amazing what those companies have been able to accomplish. But we can't pretend like the entirety of humanity benefits from it when access to that kind of technology is restricted to those with obscene amounts of wealth.
You could make that argument about any new technology over the last couple hundred years, and it would prove to be a vacuous argument. A rising tide lifts all boats.
Perhaps the intense focus is the only thing that drives the price. By focusing instead on a greater ambition you might deprive the "real problem" of the cancerous solutions that the political lime light brings.
The world and the US are hardly focusing on space travel. It’s a fraction of government budgets and resources. Militaries have a far larger focus, as do various economic activities.
If Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk (while Elon isn't posting moronic nonsense on Twitter) would take all the money they've invested in their pet projects trying to colonize Mars and the like and directly invested it in local programs to get some of the worst areas in the USA affected by homelessness fixed, it would likely have a greater impact on more peoples lives than what they're doing now IMO.
The goal is not to impact the lives of individuals. The goal is to preserve intelligence in the event of a catastrophe.
As far as we know, we are the only part of the universe that is capable of consciousness. The argument is that it is worth going to great lengths to insure against species-wide disasters (e.g. runaway global warming, giant meteor, World War 3)
The earth becoming uninhabitable due to climate change is going to happen way sooner than any pipe dream of folks trying to live on Mars, if they were really concerned about preserving the human species they would be putting billions of dollars into that instead.
The Earth didn’t become uninhabitable to animals and plants when volcanic activity raised the CO2 level to six times the current amount preceding dinosaur evolution. And it won’t happen for us either. That doesn’t mean climate change won’t be a significant challenge, but it’s not an extinction level event for generalists like humans who can survive in all sorts of environments.
I'd take the other side of that bet if it was possible. Just one of the many things that the money has enabled is 100Mbps internet to the entire globe.
SpaceX can also be highly profitable which generates tons of tax revenue and jobs (which were otherwise going to Russia or simply not launching into space at all due to cost). It also offers cheaper ways for all governments to launch satellites and other research/national defense, freeing up capital for other social things.
And as you've mentioned it helps create new technology opportunities which also generate efficiency/value/taxes like space internet and in the longer term mining without destroying our planet.
There are plenty of benefits to society. Although there will always be a contingent who thinks everything not an altruistic social giveout = bad use of excess capital.
Maybe because it’s the governments job to address homelessness, not Bezos and Musk. Also, does throwing money at the problem fix it? What is the fix? Do they know? Do you? How do you know they don’t also donate to charities?
> it could create a scenario where we spend even more on space exploration and less on addressing Earth's climate
And what exactly is "addressing Earth's climate" ?
This naive hope that green parties keep pushing "if we cut carbon emissions it's all going to go back to the way it was" ?
Carbon levels have already risen and climate change is already happening - nobody can realistically predict the specifics or the time scale. All existing predictions I've seen have been way out of error margins - and stuff like thawing ice and releasing trapped methane etc. can have huge non-linear contributions.
Saying that X% cut in emissions is going to reduce temperature increase by Y on Z timescale is just wishful thinking, and we don't even have mechanisms to enforce X% cut across the world.
Investing in technology that could help settle Mars is a way to protect from the inescapable negative climate effects we will have to live with, the sooner we start to deal with those the better (eg. start building for hurricanes/floods/large temperature differences, etc.)
You have no way of knowing that a significant portion of people who criticise this priority would not have done so if it came at the same moment but under a different administration. You're assuming so as a form of broad insult against your political enemies.
Space exploration and research is necessary for our long term survival (1000+ years) as species, provided that us and our civilization survives short term threats like global warming and ecosystems destruction.
Space exploration is not a fix for local and urgent problems, nor is a contingency plan. That is an idea that should be eradicated. Something that may blow off, at least partially, this century, can't wait the hundreds to thousands of years for the backup plan that may provide the space exploration.
Yes, it is something that we should keep researching. But it won't be a solution for our urgent problems.
It's because of the recent RNC tweet[0] with a list of some of Trump's priorities for the next term, and the firs two listed were a permanent presence on the moon and sending a manned mission to Mars. It did not mention the pandemic.
Most people who already considered these were a waste of resources probably didn't bother talking about it much. Now they are, because they have a clear rallying point to shout about.
I'm very pro-space exploration, and I think highlighting those priorities right now is absurd. Imagine being someone who already thought they were a distraction from more immediate needs seeing this tweet.
EDIT: I should clarify, their first reply to that tweet went on to mentioning a vaccine, but most people just saw the first tweet.
This is the nature of political strategy. The pandemic is a really hard thing for the current administration to spin, so they're probably better off talking about "hopes and dreams" types of things. They're trying as hard as possible to look good right now in order to get reelected.
Or you could consider that whilst this global pandemic hasn't been particularly lethal or existence-threatening, the next one might be. And having off-site backup for humanity is wise in that context.
We as a society can’t even agree to guarantee basic fundamentals needed to live in the US. Flint, MI still has tainted water, millions are unemployed, homelessness is rising and some are starving.
We can’t take care of our people on this planet, what makes you think everyone, or even most people, would be the ones chosen to be on the ships headed for a new life? Just look at what billionaires spend on private doomsday shelters, you think they’re willing to accommodate the masses? Migration from Earth under those circumstances would look a whole lot like the Titanic tragedy: life boats for the rich and powerful and certain death for everyone else.
In addition to your point about timing, there is also a contingent of people who will reflexively oppose anything Trump advocates, completely independent of merit.
Trump tweeted that he wants to go to space. The anti-Trump crowd is conjuring reasons of why that’s bad now.
In reality, NASA’s budget is a rounding error in the context of the US budget - 0.4% of the federal budget. Further, SpaceX presents a realistic path forward to privatizing Mars travel, trivializing the budgetary concerns anyway.
You would think Trump & Company could capitalize on "This Earth First".
Technology has a cost in that people expect to be paid for their participation in the sector. Economies built on "defense" have huge technology capital in terms of knowledge and skill workers. This begs existential questions on the goals of productivity shared as nations and humans.
Tangentially, if the captains of Space really believed in life on mars or the moon, why aren't terraforming efforts being undertaken as center peices to the master plans to inhabit the moon or mars?
It's right there in the 2nd paragraph of the article: "Just three days earlier, the Republican Party announced some of President Donald Trump’s priorities for a potential second term. The first two priorities listed were to “Establish Permanent Manned Presence on The Moon” and to “Send the 1st Manned Mission to Mars,” coming in ahead of “Develop a Vaccine by The End Of 2020” and “Cover All Pre-Existing Conditions” in health care."
Orange man like space travel. Orange man bad. So space travel bad.
Maybe the last several months of what is going on here on Earth has made people reconsider if the massive investments required for space exploration would be better spent on something else.
I'm not sure why you are forcing a choice between the two. People can be against spending on both NASA and the military. Also NASA isn't completely separate from the military industrial complex.
I think he's using the false dichotomy to point out that there's a hell of a lot of other bigger, less popular things than NASA that jump to mind if one's goal is to free up resources for solving more local problems.
I wasn't even presenting a dichotomy let alone a false one. There have been a number of issues that have shown an increased urgency over the last several months, not just COVID. As those other issues become more urgent, space exploration falls further and further down many people's list of priorities for funding.
