Our Fate Is in the Stars
theamericanscholar.org
theamericanscholar.org
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).
Isn’t that the point of natural selection after all?
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.
The intent comes from the design, decided by the physics of the system. With this physics set, life is possible, and this sort of life can survive. Deeper intent comes through in the form of meaning - it was necessary that as intelligent agents evolved and emerged, that they have understandings of good and bad, happiness and pain. And from those, life lessons which are universal - tied to existence of life in general - emerge. If it is destined that whatever surviving life learns these principles to survive, that seems to give a sort of roadmap for existence, an intention of how its supposed to go.
I like this view as it models the universe in self contained meaningful (includes purpose) way without any supernatural claim. I don't believe it necessarily shuts out any supernatural claim either, if you happen to have such belief. But of course you can simply call the universe or the concept of existence itself 'God', and it does seem quite fitting still.
Where does the design come from then? This question can only have supernatural answers.
> If it is destined that whatever surviving life learns these principles to survive, that seems to give a sort of roadmap for existence, an intention of how its supposed to go.
Why? This view conflicts with pretty much the human-universal underpinning of morality. Nature is brutal, and while humans sometimes commit such acts on their own, they're universally frowned upon and great effort is expended to avoid them. Moreover, we've already freed ourselves from the shackles of biological evolution many thousand of years ago. We're now in the development regime couple of orders of magnitude faster - the progress of science and technology. There's nothing to say we have to, or even should, guide our lives by the patterns we learn from other parts of nature.
Whatever you do you will be nature. There is only nature, humans think they are outside of it or in control of nature, but we are part of nature because all there is, is all there is. There are no boundaries of distinction, it's a spectrum that encompasses all. At a fundamental level everything is equal and smooth.
Why is the design so exact, why is there only one? Well, with 2+2=4, + and = and digits are part of a system we already both know and have mentally setup, we've already put design to make it that way. So shouldn't 'someone' have to decide what the first logic is? Well, no, because binary logic is self-evident. I have a hunch that there is a single everything algorithm which is the way that something must always emerge from nothing, but as far as I can tell, any cellular automata that expands infinitely (as opposed to fizzling out) starts exhausting various binary systems and renders out the 'design' of that. A very easy to recognize early emerging and very common design is the Sierpinski triangle. Note that back when Steven Wolfram was first researching into that, he didn't do anything to purposefully design Sierpinski triangles in, they were just there, part of the predestined design.
And yes theres nothing that says we have to live according to nature. Theres nothing saying we have to survive at all. Personally I like living though, and paying attention to other systems in nature and trying to learn lessons, seems to be helpful for making living even better.
I think there's a good chance it would boot, especially while still within the crew compartment of the lander.
Wishes by themselves don't make anything.
In other words, wishing it so doesn't make it so. It takes a lot of further action on top of the wishing.
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.
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).
> 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.
"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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
SlackerNews: we know better; we won't change.
I love this. I find that so many people get emotionally attached to a decision, simply because it was theirs or their teams.