To me, it feels like a further step in advancing human civilization. Disperse the population a bit and keep growing as a species. That said, I’m no expert and if you have literature to recommend please do!
Depends on how far you’re thinking.
Nowhere else in the solar system is anywhere near as habitable as Earth, and there’s still lots of empty space to fill on Earth. Consider for a moment how much easier a self-supporting city on Antarctica would be than a city on Mars. Human space travel is done purely for science or recreation, at this point, not for growth.
If you want to “disperse” in any significant way, you have to start looking at exoplanets, and it’s going to take centuries to get there, and we don’t have the technology to survive that yet. Once we do, there’s a strong argument for it, because our planet and solar system will only last so long.
Yeah we must be many generations away if ever
It’s a good idea at the wrong time. Our species priority should be managing ecological overshoot. For example, tackling our Planetary Boundaries so humanity can de risk human civilizational collapse and possible extinction.
Space should come after we’ve solved for sustainability. Edit: I should also note that true sustainability also advances our capabilities in space as for any meaningful human missions, you’ll need to bring your sustainable environment with you wherever you go. It will need it’s own circular economy and ecology and the technology that goes with it.
I believe that space exploration and development is of such high potential future utility as to become a moral imperative, but I suspect that view will be unpopular given that in recent decades some of the most infamous tech billionaires have stuck their hands and toxic branding in that area.
Sounds reasonable to me.
Space travel is a non-starter. It’s taken decades to even leave the solar system.
Do you think that’s permanent? Or could science/tech advance?
BillGill said it better than I could - speed of light limitation.
I can add that our nearest star is 4 light-years away, so if we could travel at the speed of light it would still take 4 years to get there.
We can’t even travel a fraction the speed of light yet - even if we could there are massive challenges to even approaching a fraction of the speed of light.
As for something magical like warp, well that’s still just ideas.
Not by enough. We will advance, but the speed of light is still a hard limit that we won’t get close to.
we are not able to detect a civialization as advanced as us but orbiting our nearest star (which probably can’t have life as we know it) if they aimed all their antennas at once at us and we happened to turn all our antennas to them at the right speed.
there is no reason to think we can make a spaceship that will make it to the nearest star. Even if we could make a generation ship survive, if the star doesn’t have perfect conditions for life we won’t be able to redirect to enough stars to hope to find one (assume one exists and we ignore the ethical problems of invading like that - both we should not ignore but this is too long already)
mars is just slighly more life friendly than the worst parts of antartica. We could maybe get something there self supporting, but it will be with massive investments. Everything else is far far worse. (We will probably get someone to mars and back in a few years, but it won’t be a place to raise a family)
anything worth doing in space involves robots. If you want to ‘inspire man’ or make life better on earth there are better ways.
I appreciate the detailed response!
As much as I love space and the idea of space travel we have a lot of problems on this planet that need to be solved before we even think about expanding our reach to the stars.
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Yeah, id agree with ya unfortunately
Those earth-like exoplanets are many light years away. They’re not just a hop past mars and we may never be able to reach them (cue people jumping in talking generation ships that we don’t know if we will ever be able to build ).
There are other possible places in our solar system though, depending on how many problems we’re able to solve, notably large water moons of the gas giants
So yeah, systematic, gradually reach farther, moon—>mars—>space stations—> water moons, over a few centuries. I’m sure each step will be harder than the last but we can dream we can grow we can meet challenges …. Until we cant
“Disperse the population” is still way out in the future and we don’t even know yet if we’ll be able to.
But there are so many steps we should be taking. Life shouldn’t just be a drudge, a life worth living has hopes and dreams, visions of a better future, in addition to challenges driving innovation. Yes we need to invest more in our people, but investing in our dreams has far less money but can return larger value
I know I’ll never live long enough to see a colony but the space program has been a true inspiration from the beginning watch Apollo landings on the family black and white tv. We had a bit of a lull but developments around space are coming faster and more exciting than ever.
I’m excited to progress toward a permanently manned moon base, to answer more questions about whether we’ll ever be able to live in space, develop ever more technology to approach that possibility.
Its the only real option we have given a long enough time frame. That or voluntary extinction
In the short term, we should probably focus on fixing our problems on earth. Some space research should still be funded, but not as a major priority. Once we finally have our shit together, we can start exploring the stars.
I think thats completely reasonable
This is a salient point, but obviously the answer lies in the nuance.
If there were some kind of mars-race and the US and China invest trillions in being the first to put a man on Mars, that seems like it would be a huge waste of resources given that those trillions of dollars would be better spent on rolling out renewables and de-carbonising industries.
On the other hand, methodical, strategic, considered advances into space are appropriate.
Space exploration needs to be balanced against our other objectives.
The US is currently spending billions on an illegal war with Iran. It is hard to say with a straight face that we don’t have enough money for space exploration and social programs when we spend our money on that.
It’d be surprising if we haven’t either ruined ourselves or achieved an actual end of history by 2300. So, that.
The savings from completely ignoring space aren’t what people think, though.
I think the war happens in 2112 actually so a little sooner
Hey, Putin could decide to end it all next year, for all we know. Or maybe AI arrives in 2040 and is already well on it’s way to total paperclip conversion of Earth by 2112.
On the other hand, if everything goes pretty straightforwardly some of the same people will be around in 2112, and some but not all of the same geopolitical and social divisions, as well. That stuff settles out over decades, and there’s only 9 decades to 2112.
I see what you’re saying but reality is, we’ll never get our shit together perfectly. We’ll never advance into space if we wait on that.
Imagine if our ancestors thought that before travelling to new lands or sailing the seas. They wouldn’t have gone anywhere.
Some space research should still be funded, but not as a major priority.
Most of our ancestors probably did think that before sailing the seas, they were focused on feeding themselves, fighting off diseases and other tribes, learning how to build. While others focused on making boats and sailing. Sailing became what it is now because society survived long enough for sailing to develop. Similarly, if we as a species can keep ourselves alive long enough, gradual progress towards space exploration will develop into much more.
I think we need to address climate change and capitalism first. But once that’s done, I think space exploration would be sweet.
Like achieve carbon neutral and live post scarcity?
Maybe I don’t think post scarcity is necessary for ending capitalism, but carbon neutral sounds good to me.
Space is cool and it’s a better use of our time than blowing each other up.
Agreed
Humans are life’s way to expand itself off this planet. So, yeah, let’s keep exploring
I do not expect spreading out to significally reduce our resource consumption. In fact, I expect it to momentarily rise, as we shoot equipment and personell out if the gravitational pull of the earth.
Furthermore I’d like to see our energy consumption stay at a constant level or even decrease instead of steadily increasing. This is especially true for energy accessed through burning of fossil fuels. We need to drasticly reduce our CO2 output.
