Jeff Bezos Pledges to Expand His Space Ventures
wsj.com
wsj.com
The universe is vast and we haven’t left the cradle yet. There is so far to go for us. It makes me feel so much better about Earth and humanity just knowing we are doing this.
As was said by XKCD: "The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space--each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision."
It's currently en vogue to hate Bezos, Musk, and anyone else who is spending money on spaceflight instead of donating all of it to poor people / fixing the planet / fixing the government / whatever, as if it's a money-only problem and that these people don't have vast charitable giving programs.
I realize this doesn't answer your question, but that's the main opposition.
Worse, while the billions they have can buy them a private island filled with whatever perversions they enjoy they are too poor by an order of magnitude or three to actually finance real space exploration.
It takes unfathomable amounts of time, effort and money to bring in a technology from R&D to the consumer market. "Entrepreneurs" merely privatize the gains in the last step of the process and call themselves a genius.
Space exploration is so far away from commercialization that the private market will not be able to finance any thing past low earth orbit for another generation or three. By then the climate change already locked in would make the world hospitable for Lizard People and put most of our major cities 0.2m below sea level.
I assume you are the arbiter of real space exploration, then? The last fifty years don't show real progress on this endeavor, so I'm not exactly sure who is going to do this for real if it isn't the status quo or these two billionaires who are engaged in a pissing contest.
>> "Entrepreneurs" merely privatize the gains in the last step of the process and call themselves a genius.
Ah yes, another person who thinks Musk is not an engineer and that SpaceX somehow doesn't... manufacture all their engines and 95%+ of their stuff here in America... while NASA was using Russian equipment and most private companies were launching using foreign material, land, and resources.
Right. He's just free-riding. Then what were we and everyone else doing before SpaceX undercut ULA (leaning on Russian tech) by massive amounts?
>> By then the climate change already locked in would make the world hospitable for Lizard People and put most of our major cities 0.2m below sea level.
I should really read comments back to front before spending any time on them.
Want a counter argument? What about: life redundancy on Mars (or the Moon) would change the fact that if we fuck up Earth, it means suffering for Billions of people, multiplied across many generations. "Preserving" life on another planet doesn't make the pill sweeter, to me.
Please respect (but not necessarily agree with, of course) this point of view, instead of blindly accepting what Elon or others are trying to force-feed you with.
PS: Elon didn't invent the idea of rogue AI either. Again, lots of people have considered this and calculated risks, etc. but his name keeps getting brought up as if nobody thought of this before. I've got nothing against Elon or his fans, but there seems to be an anti-Elon crowd who like to reframe in-depth discussions about some large, complex topic (space colonisation, AI, energy infrastructure, etc.) as if it's all about one guy, just so they can state their disagreement with that guy.
In fact Bezos has stated that his ideal future would be for the majority of humanity to live off the Earth, so that it could be left as a nature reserve.
I don’t see how building a moonbase where people live really helps people on earth. For that matter doesn’t the low gravity leech calcium from your bones or something? Why would anyone even want to live on the moon. Sounds unpleasant.
The trick will be to developing a delivery mechanism for dropping and installing semi-autonomous robots on the moon.
Also, of course, we need robots capable of doing anything a person can do - even to the point of repairing other robots. Not talking self aware, just with the appropriate agility.
Especially the logo on the jacket.
I don't know if this was some kind of cosmic joke, played by the graphic arts department. But I think someone should tell the king about what that logo he's wearing over his heart, sort of looks like.
I love Jeff but sometimes it seems like he's compensating for something...
For now.
The key multiplier to changing space exploration is making that no longer true. And you could do a lot worse than solid ground, with gravity, near Earth as a first permanent step.
Using a lunar space elevator allows you to cheaply move materials from the moon into space and build huge interplanetary rockets without having to design your rocket around the rocket equation to get out of a gravity well.
In fact, the more I think about this, the more I think a lunar space elevator port is the key to exploring the solar system. You can build massive spaceships and refuel them without ever having to deal with the tyranny of the rocket equation.
* Gravity: enough to help with long term habitation, but low enough that getting on and off is much, much easier than Earth.
* Close to Earth
* Enough space that one could build a lot of things. It's a lot cheaper to dig than it is to launch more space station modules.
* Yes, but unless all resources and future astronauts are all from said moon base then they have to leave Earth anyway. Stopping at the moon would take even more energy.
* Close to Earth yes. But not really to anything else (the moon is relatively right next to earth compared to any other object really worth landing on).
* Build what? This is similar to point 1. To get any resources there we still have to send them from earth. It'd be relatively waaaaay cheaper to send more space station modules then to either send raw resources + specially designed building equipment, or moon base modules.
Don't get me wrong. I'd vote for it and pay my share in taxes to develop and build a self sustaining base on the moon. My reasoning is more of a engineers "because we can" mentality to a fun (IMO) challenge. We'd also benefit on Earth from the technology developed.
There are a number of very smart people who believe that the next big thing is industry in space with materials not from earth.
I'd say though, lets pretend that an entire "flight" to intercept an comet/asteroid/material-rich-spacebody (Sorry I don't know the technical terms here) could be reduced to 100million USD. That material would have to be worth that 100million USD, not to mention all of the R/D.
Again personally I want humans to one day achieve it just for the heck of it - why not? But others are money driven and I'm not sure it makes actual financial sense (in terms of money making)
I realize we can work on more than one problem at a time and that it is expedient to do so. But I often wonder how much space exploration, particularly manned missions, are a distraction from more pressing issues on our home planet.
Also, if space exploration is a more scientifically exciting problem than say, ensuring enduring sources of clean water for the millions of people who don't have access to it, well then, that's a sad world indeed.
Enduring sources of clean water for everyone in the world is a scientifically very easy problem to solve compared to most of what is discussed on this website.
The problem is that it is a politically very difficult problem to solve. And you want Bezos/Musk/etc to fix this... how?
However, I would be encouraged to see the scientific community Incorporate a stronger social solidarity into their work. Because a problem is hard or simple is not reason enough alone to pursue it, personally. Finding the largest prime number known might be a somewhat difficult task, but to what end is it found?
* Close to Earth while maintaining a nearly constant distance.
* Always reachable. Never is it on the other side of the sun from Earth.
Why not settle the Gobi Desert? Develop technologies to suck carbon out of the air, and reverse global warming? Develop technologies to cope with climate disruption, or even just purchase land for the anticipated climate refugees. All of these are really Hard problems, and billion times more pressing, and much more obvious impact.
Furthermore, do you have a list of what Bezos et al give to charity in attempts to improving the current planet? It's not negligable.
The original problem in Flint had nothing to do with money that someone could throw at it and everything to do with government corruption and potentially racism. Is the plan to privatize cities in hopes of better and more efficient oversight, giving Elon/Bezos cities to purchase?
Here is a list of celebrities and rich people who have donated to Flint, since you brought it up. It is not an insignificant list nor an insignificant amount of money.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis#Donations_o...
>> but we could easily just freight bottled water in far cheaper
This is being done by Nestle, and had been funded by many other rich people as well.
The headlines of "Flint still doesn't have clean water" are technically true, but the problem has a solution being applied to it. Upending all the pipes tomorrow by throwing billions of dollars at contractors to do it will cause the entire city of Flint to have no water instead of potentially risky water (despite testing showing that the water is almost entirely fine), so that's not a solution either.
I'm not suggesting privatizing cities though my replies specifically. What I mean is on the broader perspective, we as a society are spending 10s/100s of billions to get to the moon and make a habitable base.
I totally understand that many of the problems communities face are political, and just throwing money at these kinds of issues won't solve those problems. I'm in favor of funding NASA with taxes (my taxes included), etc. I think flint wasn't the best example for this specifically.
I just think that there are certainly problems communities are facing that can be solved by paying R/D of civil and scientific engineers to work on solving these issues. It's great that we can recycle urine on the ISS, but can we help people in less fortunate places who have no water?
I'm NOT saying these issues can be solved by only throwing money at them. But if we as a society are spending tens or hundreds of billions (Let's include private companies and any other space programs from any nation because I'm considering this an international effort) to make the moon habitable, that's hundreds of billions not spent on helping many fixable problems that will immediately provide significant improvements to quality of life to many lives (say drinkable water in 3rd world nations, etc). I'm not saying we should spend all of that money on not going to space, just that we should consider what we're really achieving vs. what we know we can effectively achieve in terms of bettering humans as a society.
NASA was buying things from Russia and overspending with the ULA contractors until SpaceX came around. Unfortunately, in entrenched industries, it sometimes takes someone like Elon with all of his flaws to actually get shit done. The private sector needs to push the public one from time to time.
>> I think flint wasn't the best example for this specifically.
But it very much was. Most problems we have as a society and the greatest injustices are not ones where short-term - or even long-term - economic bandages will solve the problem. The enemy is mostly us and how we choose to politically navigate these situations.
>> It's great that we can recycle urine on the ISS, but can we help people in less fortunate places who have no water?
You've chosen another Flint. Do you think globally, the problem of water distribution is one where private money could solve issues? This would only be true if you were okay with private money hiring private military contractors to overthrow dictators who are oppressing their citizens on purpose to control them with water shortages, and quelling political wars/problems with privately-funded forces to increase water distribution efficiency.
If that's unacceptable - and I think you will find that it is - then private money doesn't do a lot there. Water shortages exist globally primarily because leaders of countries want them to exist, or don't give a shit that they exist. Not because there isn't enough money being thrown at the problem.
>> I'm not saying we should spend all of that money on not going to space, just that we should consider what we're really achieving vs. what we know we can effectively achieve in terms of bettering humans as a society.
You keep bringing up money as the proxy, however.
I want you to describe to me how billions of dollars could fix political instability globally that won't make American private companies seen as imperialist assholes.
Ah yes, I've run into the Earth arbiter and judge of significance of charitable giving.
Some days I wish Bezos et al would reduce their philanthropic giving to $0 for a calendar year and see what people have to say about their previous stingy behavior.