
Our Fate Is in the Stars - ascertain
https://theamericanscholar.org/our-fate-is-in-the-stars/#.XPZ2Xi2ZMWo
======
coldtea
There's no "fate" and no contract we've signed that guaranteers we're an
interplanetary species.

It's just that we wish we could be in the stars, but wishing doesn't always
make it so. And in some cases, wishing never makes it so.

Especially without installed bases, big haul ability, etc, it takes trillions
and has zero to no returns (except the glory, curiosity, and scientific value)
for companies to go to the planets, even more so to the nearest stars (which
also can take decades).

So while satellites lunches can make a profit, there's not much financial
incentive to go beyond (real, tangible, the kind somebody will invest in, not
future prospects which might take 2-3 generations to even pan out), absent
state funding them (Space-X style, paid by NASA/the government).

And contrary to popular belief, climate change problems will make it even more
difficult to secure such space spending, not less (e.g. people will demand
urgent Earth supports, states will go each to fight on its own survival, there
will resource and trade wars, and so on).

~~~
tomp
Wishes make profit. What is the use of an iPhone beyond satisfying people's
wishes? Yet Apple is a $1bn company.

~~~
idlewords
And yet the iPhone doesn't work on the Moon. Explain that!

~~~
TeMPOraL
[citation needed]

I think there's a good chance it would boot, especially while still within the
crew compartment of the lander.

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alexgmcm
There are currently four living people who have walked on the moon, the
youngest of which is 83:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who_have_walked...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who_have_walked_on_the_Moon)

It is probable that we will return to there being no living humans who have
walked on the moon - something which must have been unimaginable at the end of
the Apollo Project.

~~~
axelfontaine
The incredible thing is that nobody born after 1935 has ever walked on the
moon!

~~~
isolli
And they were all Americans, which underlines what a rarity moonwalking has
been in the history of humanity.

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idlewords
This is an odd piece of nostalgia, unfortunately representative of a genre.
The Apollo program grew directly out of a panic about nuclear weapons, and the
technological race to build rockets that could rain those weapons down on an
adversary on the other side of the planet. No nuclear bomb, no Apollo.

The same geopolitical conflict that produced the space race also gave us the
war in Vietnam, which in turn made the expense of ongoing lunar exploration
unappealing (the war cost about 4x as much as the Apollo program) after the
prestige milestone of landing on the moon was completed.

The space program was a fluke of history. We had a frightening new weapon that
gave an overwhelming advantage to the side that could develop orbital rockets,
a rough balance of power, and a natural satellite just close enough to get to
without having to learn to assemble stuff in orbit.

Unfortunately, all the other destinations in space are far away (it's called
space for a reason!) and sending primates to those places is expensive and
hard. There's also no reason to do it (given advances in robotics and
autonomous systems) unless you subscribe to a kind of cultish belief in
humanity's manifest destiny to become an interplanetary civilization.

If there had been an intermediate destination between the Moon and Mars for us
to work towards after Apollo, things might have gone differently, but you work
with the Solar System you're dealt.

~~~
martythemaniak
It is well understood that history not a nice, neat, little linear
progression. It is full of stop and starts, stagnation, dizzying S-curves,
revolutions, backlashes and regressions.

Apollo was a wonder, yes an outgrowth of the arms race, but also a
manifestation of a purposeful and unified nation that just doesn't exist
today. It was unsustainable, but it was also very long time ago.

I find your views that "things are hard, so we shouldn't do that, and we
should never get off this planet" unfortunately common. Here's two things to
consider:

\- Sending people to space is not just fancy. Today's robotic missions are
like trying to fill a swimming pool with a pipette. In 7 years Curiosity has
driven a total of 8.6km - an slow afternoon stroll for a person. Every single
little action is planned and executed at an excruciatingly slow pace. Nothing
can be fixed or adjusted. InSight ran into a rock and now it might not be able
to burrow it's instrument down. Digging down 3m might prove too much for that
robot, a trivial task for any human.

\- If humans don't have outward goals, we're much more likely to just look
inward and spend our collective energy tearing each other apart. Without
looking outwards, the entire Earth will become one giant vapid high school.

~~~
idlewords
Apollo was not the product of a 'purposeful and unified nation'. The period
1961-1972 was one of the most politically turbulent in American history, to an
extent we forget today. Politically motivated bombings were routine news!
Apollo was the product of its time in interesting ways, but let's not deceive
ourselves about America in 1969 being any more unified and purposeful than it
is today.

I have nothing against doing hard things, but I think sending people to Mars
is a hard, dumb thing, and that the money for that will be better spent on
mechanized probes to more interesting places (like Ganymede or Europa) along
with space telescopes. Other people feel differently!

But I am tired of the amount of special pleading in this debate. Everything is
hard on Mars, because it is _on Mars_. Antarctica has water and all the air
you can breathe, and yet we can barely function there. If we send people to
Mars, it will be a one-shot deal like Apollo was, and then all the space nerds
will be sad again. Better to fund robots at 1/10 of the level of a manned
mission, and get to explore the entire solar system instead. If people are
dead set on humanity having a 'backup plan', then the Moon is right next door
and we can even set it up with wifi.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Better to fund robots at 1 /10 of the level of a manned mission, and get to
> explore the entire solar system instead._

The unfortunate reality is, once people settle for this, the 1/10 will get cut
to 1/1000 because "all you do is send robots to dead rocks". Funding science
isn't sexy these days.

> _If people are dead set on humanity having a 'backup plan', then the Moon is
> right next door and we can even set it up with wifi._

For some x-risks Moon may be just a bit too close. I understand that the
x-risk avoidance argument is a niche one, though. IMO we should absolutely do
the Moon - and then Mars or Venus (or both).

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classicsnoot
It is probably a good thing that Asimov, Clarke, Feynman, Sagan, and Tesla
don't have to see who inherited their legacies of thought, ambition, and deed.

Imagine explaining to any one of them that the imagination and impetus of the
future man, imbued with technology and options, is completely given over to
spam email, ICOs, and dressing up 90s code as "innovation" so they can cash
out early.

I've been feeling this place degrade over time, and this thread is a red flag.

SlackerNews: we know better; we won't change.

~~~
vokep
I think they might be surprised it isn't worse. The fact the internet exists
at all is insane. The internet in some form maybe was inevitable, but most
likely alternatives would be companies growing ever larger walled gardens
until interconnection was a necessary next step. Instead we got a ton of
infrastructure for military and academic work allowed use by public resulting
in a huge free network for all. Sure facebook is trying to undo that, but the
fact they have to put in effort at all is awesome.

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tshannon
> "NASA commissioned two studies, with the twist that each team had to flesh
> out the other’s plan. Making the engineers step into each other’s shoes
> unstuck the debate, and Huntsville came around to Houston’s approach. That
> one decision ended up saving billions of dollars."

I love this. I find that so many people get emotionally attached to a
decision, simply because it was theirs or their teams.

