
Bill Gates questions worth of space exploration for improving humanity (2013) - sprt
http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-on-space-exploration-2013-8
======
wavesandwind
Good to know that Bill Gates shares this viewpoint. It's not that space travel
is wrong or doesn't have great potential. It's just that, in my view (and I
guess it's also BG's judging from his short quote only), it cannot not alone
bring humanity into the bright future. Look at how we are (mis)treating the
environment. Look at all the greed, corruption and anger around us. Anyone
seriously thinks going to new worlds will change these human tendencies? Of
course not.

I see only one truly worthy alternative - education, with strong emphasis on
sustainability and care about the environment, as well as some sort of moral
principles that would help prevent spending trillions on new ways to kill each
other (aka defence) in future generations.

~~~
petra
>> I see only one truly worthy alternative - education

I strongly agree - but education in regular sense - schools, etc probably
won't do. We maybe need something closer to the training Buddhists monks get
in a monastery, a training that deeply changes the structure of their mind,
and instill them with deep compassion and caring for others, eclipsing at
enlightenment.

But:

1\. Buddhist monasteries aren't scalable - they fit only a rare few, they take
too long, and are very hard. And it seems that with science/tech we can create
something better.

2\. Once we have the tech - it isn't trivial to use it. People fear messing
with their brain. How do we prevent abuse. Making people too relaxed and
compassionate may make them less fit for the 21 century. How do we integrate
this. How do we convince everybody .etc.

I feel like this is THE biggest question of our current century, because once
this can be offered mass scale, human nature changes deeply - and everything
changes with it.

~~~
wavesandwind
Yes! I strongly agree and your definition of education if very close to what I
had in mind.

I also see Buddhist ideas as one of very few hopes of real change in the
world. Yet, as far as science goes, the best it can do is help spread these
ideas (internet, which we already have). Personally, I don't believe in brain-
changing tech for the near future at least. It will be always up to the
individual so go sit in the corner and do some meditation/self-improvement.
That's not scalable indeed.

~~~
KellhusSmellhus
There is already brain-changing tech, drugs.

------
jansho
I love Elon Musk's original vision. I think we need one backup plan as radical
as that.

But when you have others like Jeff Bezos jumping on the bandwagon, it becomes
a race and I wonder about the true motives. Race for what? Humanity, ego or
boyish dreams to conquer space? Let's not forget that Earth 1.0 is the best
one we've got, by literally _lightyears._

If humanity is the concern, let's start with fixing it. Fix poverty, fix the
environment. There doesn't need to be a 'magic bullet' that solves all of this
at once, because if we have enough rich people targeting different areas, the
world will radically improve.

I respect Bill Gates for realising this. He's not perfect, but it's clear that
he's less concerned about glamorous legacies. He chooses a few areas he
believes he can make a difference in, and he sticks to them.

It's not just for rich people though. If you're interested, here's a link that
someone posted a while ago: [https://80000hours.org](https://80000hours.org)

~~~
wellboy
The reason for a backup is not poverty or other things that you can possibly
fix, but extinction events, such as nuclear war, evil AI, virus etc.

~~~
jansho
Sure.

We need the backup for worst case scenarios like that.

What about the world as it stands now?

We need the wealthy to jump on _that_ bandwagon, not the former.

I understand that Elon Musk actually wants to reboot space race to ramp up
innovation (sorry I can't remember the source, but I believe it was an early
interview where he was talking about NASA not being as forward-looking as it
used to be.) But it's hard not to be cynical when there is still a lot of
suffering in this world. Can't we make everyone in this world at least have
dinner everyday?

~~~
wellboy
There are a lot already fighting poverty, diseases and the like, no one did
something about space exploration.

So would it be smarter to say that you need another one fighting the former or
that you add the first to find a solution for one of humanity's biggest
threats in the next century?

------
dwaltrip
In my view, this misses the mark. The primary benefit is the second-order
effects. Inspiring the next generation of scientists, engineers, and
innovators. New technology developed in the process that improves life on
Earth. New scientific advancements. A deep feeling of awe and wonder, that
ignores borders and nationalities, and brings us closer together as a species.

Now from an economic and investment standpoint. The most important angle here
is one of _marginal benefit_. If we are already spending 100 billion a year on
disease, poverty, and climate change (this is a very conservative guess), how
much good is adding a few billion more? It's likely not going to move the
needle extensively. However, that money that will make an enormous difference
in our space endeavors, letting us reap some of those second order benefits.

This idea is core to approaches that involve casting a wide net or
diversifying your efforts -- essential strategies for when
information/understanding is incomplete and the possibility space is broad.
Very much like where we are at today.

Lastly, we need to look longer term. A space program is essential in moving
humanity into the next technological era, and will likely have many unforseen
positive benefits. Looking at the two paths, I think 200 years now, all else
being equal, the GDP and happiness quotient of a society that invests in space
exploration will be significantly higher than in one that doesn't.

P.S. This is also a bit ironic coming from Bill Gates, given the impact the
space program had on the nascent computing industry:

[http://www.computerworld.com/article/2525898/app-
development...](http://www.computerworld.com/article/2525898/app-
development/nasa-s-apollo-technology-has-changed-history.html)

~~~
Judgmentality
> Now from an economic and investment standpoint. The most important angle
> here is one of marginal benefit. If we are already spending 100 billion a
> year on disease, poverty, and climate change (this is a very conservative
> guess), how much good is adding a few billion more? It's likely not going to
> move the needle extensively. However, that money that will make an enormous
> difference in our space endeavors, letting us reap some of those second
> order benefits.

I feel like this is faulty reasoning. That money might fund a project that
otherwise wouldn't get funded which may cure cancer (unlikely, but honestly
I'd say finding a moderate breakthrough for treating a specific strain of
cancer with a few billion dollars is about as likely as that few billion
dollars getting us significantly closer to Mars). It's not that every project
is getting funded and it's just how much they get funded - some projects don't
get funded at all. Nobody can predict the future which is why startup
investing is so hard - the winners often start out looking like losers
(DropBox, AirBnB, Google, Tesla, Apple all struggled to raise money
initially). And big accomplishments often come from underdogs, like the Wright
Brothers (who were up against much better funded and better educated
competition). And sometimes the best discoveries are completely accidental -
like penicillin.

Nobody knows the best way to allocate resources. I think the smart thing to do
is to back things because you believe in them, not because they seem
underappreciated. And honestly, Elon Musk has such a cult following that I'd
say anything he does gets way more love than all the other things that money
could be spent on.

------
petra
It's possible that even Elon Musk has changed his mind about the value of Mars
for humanity. One could view his plan to convince cities replace their roads
with 3D tunnels, as preparing a massive shelter for humanity, to protect us
against catastrophic risk, instead of a mars colony.

BTW: he has very smart leverage strategies, especially in the context of him a
change makes, instead of of the common focus of value extraction of most
business people.

Is there any place one can read about such strategies ?

~~~
maliker
Or the tunneling machines are for building habitats on Mars. Well, it's a fun
hypothesis at least. Anything that could improve traffic in major cities gets
my vote of approval regardless of what other applications it has.

~~~
drcross
I think your point is probably closer to the truth. Musk's desire to travel to
mars seems to stem from the fact that it's a pretty awesome, adventurous thing
to do, so it's one that doesn't fade on some whims. Whatever people say about
Musk, he undoubtedly is pushing humanity in a better direction so maybe we
should leave him to it.

------
cm2012
There is certainly a large internet subculture that places undue moral value
on space travel.

~~~
xyzxyz998
I'm not opposing what you're saying but I feel like the distribution is
somewhat:

80% - Science and its marvels 15% - Humanity survival (IMHO not possible) 5% -
So we know more and more and somehow fix problems where that knowledge may be
applicable (is that what you're calling moral value)?

I do think that we should be better off spending money elsewhere. I don't know
why Trump is so pro-space travel and stuff.

------
MarkMc
I _half_ agree with Gates.

To me, sending probes into space deepens our understanding of nature and over
time that knowledge will benefit humanity. But sending humans into space is
really just an exercise in human vanity, like climbing Mount Everest or
placing a person at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

For the cost of sending a man to Mars we could send out two probes - one to
Mars and one to Europa. Wouldn't that be better for science and humanity?

------
godmodus
Tech developed for space is whats saving us though. Push for space -> more
science in general. Fewer skeptics. More educated folk.

Have to disagree with big B on this.

------
prodmerc
I get what he means, but you can spend the next 500 years trying to fix
humanity's problems on Earth, it will never end.

Meanwhile, space is the final frontier, and just like our ancestors, we're
compelled to go out and conquer it. It's actually an easier task than fixing
all the stupid.

~~~
chrischen
Compelled by Star Trek.

------
easilyBored
_Everybody’s got their own priorities. In terms of improving the state of
humanity, I don’t see the direct connection. I guess it’s fun, because you
shoot rockets up in the air. But it’s not an area that I’ll be putting money
into_

That' the beauty of it, a lot of rich people with their own ideas and
priorities. The world problems existed even before the rich started spending
on space exploration, and likely we'll have problems for millions of years.

This quote from Interstellar is thought provoking: "we're not meant to save to
earth, we're meant to leave it"

~~~
scriptkiddy
I'd like to add to your quote here. It's not something from the film, but it's
something I feel like not enough people understand: The Earth doesn't need
saving. No matter what we do, we cannot kill the Earth. We do not have that
power. We can make the Earth inhospitable for ourselves, but it will recover.
The Earth will keep spinning until the Sun expands and swallows Earth whole
billions of years from now.

We, as a species, do not have any sort of power capable of stopping the Earth
from doing its thing. In fact, one could argue that we are part of the Earth's
thing. We don't exist on Earth, we are part of Earth.

------
elorant
It's funny that he says that because I remember him almost a decade ago asking
on LinkedIn "how we will encourage more young people to pursue careers in
science and technology". Well, that's how. Space exploration is sexy and
intriguing as hell. Take for example how much admiration and awe the Cassini
mission has created. We have a tiny vessel in the edges of our solar system
some 1,5bn kms away exploring unknown worlds and sending back valuable
feedback. You can't but feel humbled by all that. Imagine now what will happen
if a few years in the future we find life in some planet out there.

Space exploration will bring more people to science because it attracts a lot
of attention. It's intriguing because it involves a multitude of
disciplinaries from engineering to biology, geology, physics, astronomy, you
name it. Look at how many great sci-fi movies have been produced in the last
decade. The reason for that is that younger generations understand technology
and are intrigued by it. And there's nothing more intriguing than setting a
colony on Mars or sending a probe το Europa to drill on the ice in search for
life.

We do that, and thirty years down the road we'll have two or three times as
many scientists as we have today. And then they will take humanity further. As
they've done for the last 200 years. We live in a time of prosperity due to
scientific breakthroughs, from fighting infectious deceases that expanded life
expectancy to decades, to improving agriculture productivity and thus increase
access to food for more people.

~~~
Veedrac
I feel he's come to the conclusion that the right answer is to bring a healthy
standard of living, education and stability to the billion-plus people in
extreme poverty, who _would_ be contributing far more had they only the
chance.

------
crush-n-spread
Anyone who's claiming that there is no direct connection between the
improvement of humanity's condition and space travel is right; there is no
_direct_ impact, but the _indirect_ connection between new forms of society
and an overall increase in human well-being is staggering, also obvious.

Look at the pioneers who left the oligarchies of the United Kingdom to start a
new society in America. They took their lessons from the oligarchies and
forged a new set of rules, a new way of running their country, democracy. They
could not have created this new method within Britain! This is the important
part: The creators of democracy did so within brand new territory, and then it
spread to the rest of the world.

Humans are going to do amazing things on Mars, and the things we do there
would absolutely be impossible to do on Earth. However, the incredibly strong
and probably breathtaking examples we set for Earth will certainly inspire
long term positive change on our home planet. I conclude that if you want to
make large, sweeping, positive changes on your home turf, the best way is to
set up a much, much better society and wait for them to copy you. Don't waste
time trying to convince the people around you who are already comfortable
enough!

------
xchip
As a physicist I totally agree, there are more urgent matters.

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FrozenVoid
Asteroid mining is ignored. The value of materials in them is immense and will
change the economy. All these scenarios of "X running out in Y years" become
irrelevant once asteroid/space industry develops.
[http://www.asterank.com/](http://www.asterank.com/)

------
cletus
Honestly, I don't really get it either.

As for tech billionaires dabbling in space, it comes down to what they expect
to get out of it.

In Musk's case he's managed to create a company that can launch payloads into
orbit (and hopefully beyond one day) at what will hopefully be a fraction of
today's launch costs if the promise of reusable first stages holds true. He's
also managed to do this on a fraction of the budget that NASA seems to be
spending on the SLS. Launching satellites is a commercial enterprise so
hopefully self-sustaining. Must hopes to leverage this to one day colonize
Mars. Well, good for him.

Not sure what Bezos is up to but superficially it looks like a "me too"
SpaceX.

So why send things other than satellites into orbit or probes into deep space?
That's really what it comes down.

Some will point to the resources out there. This argument I just don't buy
because the economics of any material on earth are many orders of magnitude
cheaper than what resources from space could possibly cost. Take iron, for
example. You're talking less than $100/ton. How could extraction from space
possibly compete with that? Obviously accessible iron on earth is ultimately
limited but even at $10,000/ton it'll drastically change human society.

So what about colonization of other planets and moons? Well, first you need to
ask why. To me, the only goal that makes sense is to ensure survival of
humanity by creating a self-sustaining colony as anything built on the premise
of requiring supply from Earth is ultimately just a vanity project.

So what would it take to have a self-sustaining colony on another world? If
you think about it, it's a lot and I'm not sure it's feasible with current
technology.

Also, where? Other worlds are pretty inhospitable. A lot are attracted to Mars
but I'm not sure why. It essentially has no atmosphere (pressure is much
closer to a vacuum than Earth's atmospheric pressure), which, incidentally, is
one of the problems with the Martian (the movie at least; I haven't read the
book). It lacks the Earth's protection against UV rays too.

So what about interstellar travel? Sad as it sounds, I just don't think humans
are built for it. We live too short a period. The distances are so vast that
how would you ever construct a vessel large enough to make the trip and be
self-sustaining or have enough supplies for thousands of years and then also
propel it to the necessary speeds?

The conclusion I come to is that there are simply too many of us here on Earth
and this will resolve itself if we don't resolve it first.

~~~
Can_Not
> You're talking less than $100/ton. How could extraction from space possibly
> compete with that? Obviously accessible iron on earth is ultimately limited
> but even at $10,000/ton it'll drastically change human society.

I think you misconfigured a word there, but what about the price of getting 1
ton of iron into space? If it's already there, we can manufacture in space.
More important is the price of rare Earth metals like Platinum. We could build
goods in orbit or build missions in orbit. Space mining and manufacturing
should bring about a new era where 3rd world country slave mines shutdown and
entirely new products can be made when the high price of rare Earth metals
become the low price of common space metals.

~~~
cletus
Yes but let's put that in perspective.

To get one rocket into LEO currently costs about $100m. That's equivalent of
digging up about 1M tons of iron. Obviously it's a lot less for more valuable
materials. It looks like platinum is about $1k/oz and Google tells me there
are 32,000 oz to the ton so that's about $32M or 3 tons of platinum.

Now obviously if you were living in space you wouldn't need to get things onto
or out of the Earth's gravity, which is where things get really expensive, but
the launch cost puts things in perspective about just how expensive it it to
do anything in relation to space.

So take that platinum. Where is it coming from? The asteroid belt? How
expensive would it be just in fuel to go and get it and possibly refine it
(assuming you don't find a solid lump of it)? What energy source are you
using?

People tend to think too simplistically about energy. Like the holy grail is
viewed as getting more energy out of fusion than you put in but fuel is only
one cost component of energy. Let's consider:

\- How expensive is a fusion reactor?

\- How big is it?

\- What is the energy output?

\- How much does it cost to maintain?

Add all those things up and there is an amortized cost to even fusion energy.

So start adding all this up and the delta-V required to get all of this to and
from wherever it comes from and it's hard to come up with an economic model
for how this can possibly work.

------
c-smile
There are not that many useful tasks that can be solved in principle with
massive use of rockets based on chemical reaction. But none of these tasks are
"mission critical" for survival of the civilization.

Having 10 companies launching rockets instead of current 5 will not make any
differences in principle.

It is just a matter of time for next gamma burst or so to wipe out life on the
planet. So we need colonies on large enough distances. And Mars does not count
as it is too close.

To achieve that goal (civilization survival) we a) must keep our common home
habitable and b) focus efforts on finding ways of inter-stellar travelling.

~~~
JacksonGariety
You must choose between a) and b).

------
ekianjo
I guess, just like he did not see the point of Free Software.

