Is it really necessary to send humans to those places just to get the knock-on benefits? Couldn’t we do those things directly, without going there?
It seems to me that, today, those who have the money to spend on these endeavors would only do so if there were perceived short-term benefits to themselves. That means they plan to exploit the resources, or increase their own power somehow.
I know the good engineers that make this happen are doing it for the challenge and in the pursuit of knowledge, and I know that’s why we poors support it, but that doesn’t “pay the bills.” What is the motivation behind the money? Why are they really doing this?
Sure. Let those goals be useful and reachable, not some narcissist’s fantasy about colonizing a dead planet.
Musk aside, colonizing Mars is absolutely achievable, and could be very useful. Having one point where humans exist is limiting, and creates a potential for one point of failure. Spreading out gives us many more opportunities for doing interesting things, and it also prevents Earth being wiped out (probably by us, but potentially something else) meaning the end of humanity.
I think you’re letting your hatred of billionaires make you hate everything they’re associated with, which isn’t correct or good. Make an actual argument for it being bad, not just saying billionaires support it.
There are about a hundred things that are more readily achiveable and useful than going to Mars or even the Moon. We have a climate crisis here on Earth, we’re facing severe challenges in agriculture, and almost a billion people live in abject poverty.
On that last point: what do you think unlocks more scientific potential - funneling trillions into research for a colony on the Moon, or making sure hundreds of millions of children get food, water, medicine and an education? My bet is on the latter, by a loooooooong fucking margin. You’ve got your Mozarts and Einsteins wasting away in squalor, and that’s just a bad use of our potential. Morality doesn’t even have to enter the equation.
I’m not hung up on the disgusting billionaires. They’re not the only narcissists around.
Luckily we’re doing billions of other things. We aren’t doing Luna/Mars missions and nothing else.
That’s a false dichotomy. We could very easily as a species support a space colony AND provide for the welfare of everybody if we collectively wanted to. One does not preclude the other, nor make it any more difficult to accomplish.
Start. By. Feeding. Children.
Then you can have as many space colonies as you want.
You seem to think I’m in charge of the world budget or something.
Of course not. But it’s people like you on the aggregate that prop up con men, and it does directly compete with effective measures to fix our own planet.
Fuck off. You and Elon both. You’re just making assumptions about me now.
Right, you don’t prop up con men, just their ideas.
There is no merit to going to Mars other than to distract people from real issues. I have no doubt that at some point, if humanity survives the upcoming centuries, we will put a research outpost on Mars. I do however very much doubt that we’d build a large, thriving colony there even millennia in the future, for the same reason that we don’t go building cities on the bottom of the ocean, in the middle of the desert or at the peak of mountains. There’s just no reason to do so.
Fuck Elon. Humanity’s dream of colonising space existed long before he was even conceived.
It’s still a moronic goal to focus on at this point in our evolution. We’re trying to run before knowing how to walk.
Why so? Honestly, there’s nothing about our current tech level that makes it impossible. It’s solely an engineering project and required political will.