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Comment by rhcom2 | Hacker News Reader

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rhcom2·

Pretty cool but also sad to see so much garbage in the background

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8navgU8-tw0&t=126s

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Too sad. Imo the only garbage in the world is plastic (and other man made, use once materials). It's time we stop treat food waste and human waste as garbage, they are manure and treat plastics separately like we treat heavy metals.

Why don't we spend our time, money and effort to fix the plastic problem asap instead of trying to settle in mars is beyond my imagination. May be it's not as cool a problem to solve.

The plastic waste researchers may not be inclined to solving problems of space propulsion. Likewise, rocket scientists won't be pushing the field of plastic microbe decomposition or whatever. Luckily there are some of each here on the earth at the moment.

Certainly we (as in all humans) can work on both things at once.

Not when nationalism is king, and "make <whatever> great again" is the priority. That tends to lead to focusing on one thing, and doing it very terribly.

I hate nationalism but i i don't think it is any better any worse as far as the environment is concerned than any other ideology.

Although yes the current wave of it seems to be particularly bad for the environment.

Environment protection is basically homeland protection.

I don't think even the worst nationalists only focus one one thing. But to be honest, I'd be okay with ignoring plastic for another decade if we'd make settling Mars the only topic anybody is allowed to work on.

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