A small price to pay for progress at the scale of SpaceX
If we don't know the impact of it on the habitat, how is it a "small price"?
Being on multiple planets (and eventually multiple solar systems) prevents a species from going extinct if something catastrophic happens to their home world
No, we're not. And whatever we end up doing to the Earth, it's still going to be vastly more suitable for human life than anywhere else in the solar system.
If you care about preventing extinction, stop looking at the stars, and start digging bunkers. Or building undersea cities, or whatever.
As even that specific nerd is also doing a big project to reduce environmental damage, this isn't an "either/or", it's an "and".
1. killed literally, not metaphorically, everything
2. and literally boiled off all the oceans, rivers, and lakes, top the bottom
3. and strip mined literally, not metaphorically, everywhere to a depth of 3,000 km
4. and removed almost everything from the atmosphere except the current level of CO2/m^3
But for similar reasons, I think we should aim for the Moon before Mars: closer, so when (and it is "when" not "if") something goes fatally wrong, it will be easier to get help.
That said, if Starship delivers on Musk's vision, we'll probably get both.
Nate Hagens (00:43:15):
"And to me it's very smart and famous people, Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk among them say, "We're screwing up Earth. Climate is going to be bad. We need to colonize outer space and head to Mars." And that makes just zero sense to me, because on the worst thermonuclear runaway-climate scenario, Earth is still going to be a paradise next to Mars. I mean-"
Kim Stanley Robinson (00:43:43):
"I agree with you completely. That is a case that has to be made. And the thing about people like Hawkings, the thing about people like Elon Musk is they're smart, they aren't that smart. They aren't wise, they aren't philosophers, and they're not ecologists. Very often physicists will assume that ecology is just physics in action, and that they've got it all sussed out because they know the rules of physics and they can do rocketry. But you can't do plant biology just knowing rocketry. It's more complex, it's more interconnected, it's a more-complex science. And many physicists will arrogantly say that, "Because I know the laws of physics, I know everything." But they don't know how a marsh works. They haven't studied biology enough to understand their own ignorance. So how smart are you if you don't know how ignorant you are?"
[1] - https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/66-kim-stanle...
It bothers me when people just make up outlandish accusations.
In this specific explosion?
You understand that this test was too early, proved nothing and had little to no way to mitigate the likely explosion that they expected?
And that the impact on the nearby residents, the wildlife were not taken in consideration?
But it's fine because "surely they learned something"?
You should move next to the test site, I'm sure you'll be glad to be one of the people affected.
I'm sure this did not rush the launch. I'm sure people aren't going to get cancer because of a 420 bit.
(BTW it was the Denisovans not the Tibetans. Tibetans got the mutation from the Denisovans).
So we just suffer until the people that want to colonize other planets and trash this one?
Bit odd no?
Listen, I get it. We're not going to have a million person utopian colony on Mars in 2026. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to shoot for a small 4 person colony in 2032 to start doing research. This is currently our most promising way to get there.
Didn't spot any ludditism.
SpaceX's launch capability is not only much greater than that of competitors (including states), they're using methane fuel and do not use solid fuel boosters.
For context, ESA's Ariane 5 uses solid fuel boosters (ammonium perchlorate, aluminum, hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene) and a liquid fuel second stage (monomethylhydrazine, nitrogen tetroxide). NASA's SLS uses solid fuel boosters of the same composition and Ariane 5's. So does JAXA's H3.
If, as a species, we're going to be launching things into orbit, doing so using the SpaceX's tech is significantly cleaner than what we're using today. That's true even before considering reuse.
I feel like many are living in a world of sci fi.
Our orbit is already littered with orbital trash, we are worried we wont be able to leave orbit if it keeps going.
I don't see how this is justifiable in any way. There are very few worthwile things to do in space.
I’d say for the general public, some time in the 90s. For states, as far back as the 60s or 70s I’d say.
> And a requirement to what?
Off the top of my head? Current uses would include communications, navigation/positioning, remote sensing, research, and exploration.
Future uses will almost certainly include access to the resources of the rest of the solar system. In the grand scheme of things, we’re not that far away from being able to capture, relocate, and mine asteroids. Many of those contain resources that are extremely rare or difficult to obtain on Earth.
For example - I think we can agree that moving automobiles from ICE to EV will be a good thing for our biosphere. Cobalt is one of the raw materials that is in short supply. There are two near-Earth asteroids that combined are believed to exceed the Earth’s reserves for cobalt:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/2021/10/19/th...
If SpaceX does succeed in driving down the cost to orbit, mining those (and others like them) will be much more practical.
> Our orbit is already littered with orbital trash, we are worried we wont be able to leave orbit if it keeps going.
We’re a long way from risking Kessler Syndrome, and have the technology and experience to prevent it from occurring.
EDIT: Looking at your name, are you ancap??
When do you think (ballpark) it would be realistic? I'm seeing so many problems with it - how do you get the stuff from asteroids to earth? (Mass drivers are a nice idea, but in practice I doubt the public would accept hurling tons of material towards earth). There are so many problems that we have a hard time expecting, like lunar dust[0], issues with the code used to run the equipement, as it is often to far away to be reliably controled remotely (The cassini mission is a good example if I remember correctly)
While I agree that for communications and the likes, sattelite coverage is a net benefit, you have to agree that the material benefits of exploration and research in space are undefined at best - it's entirely possible we'll find nothing useful for a bit.
I think it's important to keep things in perspective - how many order of magnitude is SpaceX better compared to the old tech? How many launches do we actually need to do yearly? Is there a point where the environemental cost starts to be equivalent?
I'd like to see how much the current space race is damaging to the environnement compared to using the old designs - imagine it's equivalent to 50 years of launches (not a real number), it then becomes much less excusable. Imagine if we stalled the current space race for 15-20 years and had everybody forced to only run simulations, I'm certain there wouldn't be as many botched tests and designs as we are seeing, other compagnies included.(For reference, since the nuclear bomb test ban all nuke design is made in simulators [1]
[0]:https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.bbc.com/future/arti...
[1] :https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/virtual-nuclear-weapons-d...
Edit: I mean that the launchpad's design and subsequent destruction was a waste, and it possibly had negative effects on the flight (engines out at launch and further failures later on). They knew that this was going to happen and responded to this risk apathetically. The rest of test (launch, attempted stage separation, etc) was amazing and had my jaw on the floor. I'm very excited for future Starship missions and I believe in the concept. But this is obvious corner-cutting and has no place in an effort this monumental.
Progress is fine, they could be more careful and thoughtful. We made it illegal to dump industrial waste in water. Blowing up exotic concrete to the point it becomes a fine dust and spreads over a large area is unacceptable. They should be allowed to continue operations as long as they make the proper adjustments.
I think the Starship failure was a comical own-goal. But, in the end, we have to figure out what the cost of externalities like this actually are instead of hand-wringing.
Also, cars hit animals and insects. We should lower car speed limits to 5mph.
It's one thing if this is unavoidable. But it's not - they were warned, even Musk himself said a blast shield might be needed, but they didn't install one.
Clearly they will next time!
It will also be necessary to launch the full size Starlink 2 satellites, which have been increasing competition in Internet access around the world, including in places that have had wars and natural disasters.
So, it has use cases.
No one needs to go to space, or probe the workings of the cosmos. Hell, 99.99% of all software ever developed is utterly pointless, yet it employs every last person on this site. Humanity does stuff because we think we can do cooler stuff than the people who came before us. And that's a perfectly noble goal, unto itself.