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Comment by Fauntleroy | Hacker News Reader

I love your idealism, but you're living on a planet full of humans. I don't _like_ this very much, but it's obvious that other superpowers (China) aren't going to be hemmed in by idealism, so we need to make sure that we are in a position to (at the very least) defend ourselves in space.

Heck, even in the most idealistic portrayal of the future (Star Trek TNG) there's plenty of war in space.

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Star Trek is teleplay (I'm a huge Trekker: I have a replica of a tricorder signed by Shatner himself, in front of me, at SVCC (Thanks Woz!). He smiled at me and said, "Nice to see ya'." I still have the silver sharpie marker he used. Touched by his own hand. One day I'll meet a kid wearing a Starfleet uniform and Vulcan ears and bequeath 'em that pen, but the tricorder is getting buried with me when I die. Hardcore ST4LIFE.)

Now then, you can't hold up Star Trek as something to help decide policy in actual space.

If anything "Moon is a Harsh Mistress" is the sci-fi to look to. I don't want to give a spoiler though, but, uh, whoever gets to the Moon first effectively rules the Earth.

That accounts for local space around the Earth, now Alan Dean Foster was the first sci-fi author to point out that war is impossible in space due to fundamental physics. I don't have the time to go into it now but it's not hard to work out once you clear away the mental/emotional dross.

In sum, "war" in "space" is a mental concept not grounded in physical reality. People have been watching too much fiction and are all screwed up in the head in re: the realities of space and physics.

If we wind up with "war" in "space" it will be a kind of theater that the powerful use to cow the naive.

Moon is a Harsh Mistress is definitely what I look to too, also. Even if the US is becoming more authoritarian over time, it's far from the worst Great Power. We do deeply, deeply shitty, immoral things constantly.

Compared to the Soviets, Mao, German Reich #2 / #3, Napoleonic France... the world could do worse for the First nation to take the moon.

I don't talk about it much because it seems ungentlemanly, but FWIW I'm an American exceptionalist too. I agree with you that, if someone has to be top dog, it should be us rather than the commies, etc.

But I strongly suspect that we won't be able to colonize space without fixing our personal problems.

...Bad example. The point of TNG was to demonstrate how humans overcame conflict and are exploring space to find new species and help solving conflicts.

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