
Stop Building a Spaceship to Mars and Just Plant Some Damn Trees - smacktoward
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2019/07/stop-building-a-space-ship-to-mars-and-just-plant-some-damn-trees/
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deogeo
Why is it only space exploration that is targeted this way?

The entertainment industry has $97 billion/year revenue, despite the existence
of more movies/games than one could watch/play in a lifetime. Meanwhile,
SpaceX had a $1 billion budget for all of 2002-2012, and NASA's entire yearly
budget is $21.5 billion - just 0.49% of US government spending.

So lets "Stop Making New Movies and Just Plant Some Damn Trees"

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dasKrokodil
Very true, and let's not even get started about the defense industry...

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deogeo
I think redirecting the defense industry to make space rockets instead of
death rockets is one of the more feasible ways to improve the world. Because
reducing their budget is politically challenging, to say the least - they are
exceedingly good lobbyists.

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dasKrokodil
I like that. Sort of like swords to plowshares.

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atoav
Know what? Let’s cut CEO bonuses and salaries back to the level they had in
the 50s and use that money to do both.

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solveit
How?

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atoav
Limit it by law to a multiple of the lowest wage any worker or subcontractor
earns.

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tluyben2
Let’s do both.

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jillesvangurp
I agree with the sentiment. It's worth pointing out that the articles title is
highly click-baity as the actual article does not mention Mars, Elon Musk, or
any investments in getting to Mars. The only mention of the word space is in
the context of space for canopy.

What I find interesting about the goal to get towards Mars is that it includes
all sorts of plans for terra forming mars as we might find our selves having
to terra form earth back to it's former glory.

In order to do that, we could do worse than letting loose creative geniuses on
all sorts of wacky ideas like getting to Mars, electrifying our vehicles,
storing lots of energy, and mass deploying solar energy. At least a few of
those things might help us reduce our carbon footprint. I'm all for plans that
involve restoring ecosystems. Planting trees is sort of the simplistic version
of that. It's a start; it won't be enough by itself. I'm afraid that in the
minds of simpler people this turns into a "I can have my cake and eat it" kind
of thing where planting trees means a free pass for burning gas, coal and oil.
We need to stop doing that ASAP and we need technology to allow us to do that
without reverting back to our per-industrial era selves. Courtesy of Elon Musk
(and many others), that seems a lot more profitable and doable than it used
to.

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rjf72
Yeah, I think the tangential successes is what many people miss about
technology. Computers are by far the best example of this. At one time they
would have undoubtedly been seen by many, perhaps even the majority, as a
waste. Governments were spending many millions of dollars (when that was a lot
of money...) developing building-size machines that needed large teams of
professionals to maintain and operate. Yet they were little more than
glorified calculators. For instance the first general purpose 'super computer'
was the ENIAC [1]. It was capable of a blistering 40 divisions per second!

And it's literally impossible to even imagine all of the ramifications of
creating a sustainable civilization on Mars. Being able to manage, and ideally
control, atmospheric conditions is just scratching the surface. For instance
it would signal the beginning of the end of scarcity since suddenly we now
have effectively infinite land open up to colonization (as success on Mars
would not be the end of planetary colonization efforts, but the beginning),
infinite resources, and so much more. Again I think trying to imagine the
implications of this is akin to trying to imagine the implications of
computers - it's simply not possible in any meaningful way.

But the great thing is that we live in a free society. So everybody is free to
pursue their own vision. Plant a tree, build a spaceship, work on carbon
scrubbing, or whatever else you personally think is a good idea. This is
perhaps the one very good thing about the rise of mega-wealth. At one time
you'd need governments to build and develop spaceships - governments whose
ideology, views, and values tend to take a 180 every decade, if not less. For
instance Nixon killed the space program in no small part because of a personal
animosity he had with JFK, one that his death apparently did little to sate.
And in modern times government space ships like the SLS are 90% pork barrel
and 10% real. Yet now in an era where many private companies revenues exceeds
the GDP of small nations (and accords corresponding private wealth), space is
just becoming another industry.

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC)

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scarejunba
Article has very little to do with title. The title is clearly intended to be
clickbait.

