[ud_0]

> There is enough garbage on the surface of the earth to worry about.

Every single time there is anything happening with space flight, there is at least one comment saying "We should literally solve every single problem here on Earth first before even thinking about anything related to space". This seems like a pretty shallow code for space flight should not happen, ever.

I've been wondering about the people who make these comments for a while, and your seems to follow a similar blueprint. I have some questions, maybe you can answer them.

What motivates this? Are you worried about Earth getting deprioritized? Is the perception that we must decide between tackling social problems/climate change and gratuitous space adventures? Are these comments a way of saying that humans should never venture beyond Earth or that we're just not ready yet? Even if you believe actual humans should never go to space, do you still believe we should have infrastructure there to support Earth?

[Razengan]

“Only do shit that immediately improves my own life.”

[silent_cal]

I didn't mean to make it code - space flight is a complete waste of money. As far as I'm concerned we've already proved our point with regard to space travel, and can now afford to spend those bajillions of dollars on planet earth instead of satisfying the curiosity of nerds.

[ud_0]

But this specific endeavor is about protecting our orbital infrastructure, it has nothing to do with curiosity. We depend on satellites. Yes, the byproduct will be that orbital cleanup also protects science equipment and access to space in general, but that's not the main purpose.

What do you think falls under "the curiosity of nerds"? Isn't that all of science? Or just cosmology? Or space-based platforms?

[silent_cal]

I don't think there's anything wrong with curious nerds... you make a good point that a large portion of scientists are just that. But the authentic ones are willing to do it for free. It's the ones who are always whining about how they need constant boatloads of public funding (which is supposed to be spent on public services), while pretending to have a pure and noble interest in humanity, who are insufferable.

[ud_0]

> But the authentic ones are willing to do it for free.

The only scientists who can afford to work for free would have to be independently wealthy, that's not very common. I don't think there is anything wrong with charging money for work, even if you do enjoy that work. Like any kind of work, research science has its share of 9-to-5ers who don't really care, but those people have their uses, too.

> It's the ones who are always whining about how they need constant boatloads of public funding (which is supposed to be spent on public services)

The core problem is really that often public money spent on science leads to results that are privately monetized and closed off from the public who funded it. That's why I believe SciHub is such an important institution, because it makes research results accessible to the public who funded them in the first place. However, funding for space-based data gathering (such as telescopes) has generally led to publicly-available data - the same cannot be said for, say, biomedical research.

I would argue that research is a public service, as long as it doesn't get immediately spun off into patent-encumbered "university-adjacent" enterprise (which I would argue is nothing less than legalized corruption). Of course the issue becomes: how do you prioritize science funding and how do you balance it against other public services?

[silent_cal]

I agree with pretty much everything you say. I just think that space travel's place in the prioritization of science funding is way too high. They are "eating for free" on the glory days of NASA.

[leetcrew]

space flight by humans may be pointless for the foreseeable future, but satellites are anything but. gps and satellite imagery have immediate practical utility, just to give two examples.