| I get that sustainability and long-term survival are critical. But space development isn’t an escapist fantasy — it’s already helping solve real problems. Take climate science. Without satellites, we wouldn’t fully understand how CO2 moves through the atmosphere. Space tech tracks deforestation, ocean shifts, and extreme weather. Even climate models rely on it. Dismissing space as just billionaires playing with rockets ignores how much we already depend on it. You say space-based industries — like orbital solar, asteroid mining, and colonies — won’t be competitive. But major tech shifts always start out looking impractical. Aviation was once a luxury. Early computers had "limited use cases". If people had written them off, they would have been wrong. Space is following the same trajectory. I get the skepticism that lower launch costs alone won’t create large-scale space industries. But history shows that when costs decline, new demand emerges. Starlink already proves this. Starship is designed to push costs even lower, making things possible that never were before. That’s not hand-waving—that’s measurable progress. Now, about closed-loop sustainability. You’re right that a space colony would need to recycle everything. But that’s exactly why we should invest in it. Perfecting closed-loop systems in space improves resource efficiency on Earth. The better we get at sustaining life in extreme conditions, the better we can solve sustainability challenges here. Maybe space-based solar and asteroid mining won’t scale soon — maybe they will. But assuming today’s economics will never change is shortsighted. Early solar panels were inefficient and expensive, yet now they’re among the cheapest energy sources. The cost curve changed. Space industries are still young — dismissing them now is premature. You focus on how civilizations fail, but the best way to prevent failure is through innovation. Expanding our toolkit, not restricting it, is how we solve challenges like sustainability. I don’t think it’s unrealistic to believe space will be a major part of that. |