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).
This is absolutely not what the article was about.
"If we are staring out into a giant graveyard, it does not augur well for our own future. But if we were to detect advanced life forms elsewhere, it would give us hope that we can find a way out of our own crises."
Actually, detecting intelligent life out there would be the most horrible news we've ever received. It would mean the Great Filter that prevents colonization of the galaxy is before us, not behind us, and that we're almost certainly doomed to fall to it.
Although, natural selection does have a bias toward propagating and persisting information. Since the information is part of the universe I would say some of the universe exhibits intent. Bacteria is part of the life, inanimate matter became life, life is a vehicle of transmitting and persisting information.
To think about 'us' as something other than the universe is a folly. If we care, then part of the universe cares because we are part of the whole.
Any selection pressure is there to trial the data and persist the useful data. What is considered 'useful'? Well, that's an existential question that is synonymous to `what's the point to life`. I don't have the answer but there does seem to be an intent in the process.
I think certain things feel pre-ordained for some, and like an unfolding of human destiny for others, because they are a tangible expression of common, shared human desires.
You’re right that economic and other concerns influence the specific timing, but I think the core human drives of growth and exploration are enough to drive us to the stars again in time, even without direct economic incentives.
I think a lot of people get too hyped up by farfetched sci-fi ideas, than actually study the logistics.
Some still take the logistics of sending a small crew for a visit at the moon (which are still over the top, and we've still haven't managed to repeat in 50+ years) and wish them away through handwaving to "colonies on Mars" and "colonizing the stars".
(Meanwhile we have the far more human friendly oceans, right here on Earth, which we haven't colonized yet -- a common theme in the 70s --, and we seriously discuss man kind living on foreign planets and what have you, with 1000x the difficulties).
And then some tackle the logistics problems directly. There's plenty of scientific and semi-scientific literature considering the logistical issues in full; even hard sci-fi pays attention to it. Still, let's not begrudge people from getting inspired by science fiction too much; if people limited themselves to only ever considering the economic gains, the life would be much sadder.
> Meanwhile we have the far more human friendly oceans, right here on Earth, which we haven't colonized yet
Why not both?
Also, I'm not sure the difficulties are 1000x - some of the needs, especially those around closed-loop habitation, are essentially the same; simultaneously, the ocean is a PITA to explore, in a bunch of different but similarly problematic way as space. I'd buy a 10x factor. Ocean exploitation is also hindered by politics and justified fear of environmental damage. In space, there isn't much to damage.
I think it's just people projecting their personal desires into some kind of imagined property of humanity in general. It's a way to make those personal desires seem less selfish and frivolous.
Many people are willing to pay $1000 to satisfy their iPhone wishes. Not many people are willing to pay $1000 so that "we" (i.e. someone else) could be in the stars.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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).
> 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.
Beyond other reasons given by the pro-colonization crowd, there is a simple reason. It's there, it's within reach, so why not?
> 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.
And yet people haven't been to the Moon since Apollo, so I feel the problem isn't with the lack of stepping stones.
Opportunity cost, if nothing else? Think of the immediate, real impact we could have by throwing money at (to pull an example out of a hat) malaria. Not to say that there mightn't be real gains to be had by manned space missions (although I'm somewhat skeptical of the magnitude of those gains), but there's more uncertainty for sure.
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.
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.
> "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.
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).