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Comment by melling | Hacker News Reader

I tried to make this case back in August after the Spaceship One accident.

"Someone dying is devastating. Trying to conquer space a handful of people at a time is the slow and dangerous way of accomplishing this task. We should be building machines to explore the solar system. This can be done for a fraction of the cost, time, and it will allow him to allow us to iterate quickly.

In 100 years, more humans will live off earth if we iterate with machines, etc now than if we move slowly trying to reduce the risk in order to keep humans safe."

If you read the threads you get a lot of people who don't buy it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8540279

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And as was asked in that thread, of all the human endeavors in which entire lives are spent and sometimes lost, why focus in particular on this one?

Because we can iterate more quickly and conquer space faster. In 200 years, if we do it my way we'll have far more humans living in space than if we do it a few humans at a time.

The point that you're completely missing is that I'm not saying that humans shouldn't eventually head out into space, it's that we should quickly interate our machines and other technology before we make the big push.

> The point that you're completely missing is that I'm not saying that humans shouldn't eventually head out into space, it's that we should quickly interate our machines and other technology before we make the big push.

Which means we will never do it. People are not as concerned about the national debt because they don't think they will have to pay it. Ditto for a lot of other events and practices.

The related item to that short-sightedness is that things that don't excite the public won't get done. We are already dealing with a generation or two that didn't get their jet-pack, flying cars[1], cyberpunk, or space planes to vacation space stations. Getting the PR to get funding for something that won't happen in the current generation's lifetime is a no go.

1) yes, impractical and dumb, but it was a sign of the supercool sci-fi tech - hell, we don't even have an SST anymore

We didn't get our humanoid robots either. How about we finish that job then send a few thousand of them throughout the solar system? Start exploring, mining asteroids, building bases, building other robots in space, etc. We can justify the research money spent on them because it has a direct payoff:

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Why-Japan-has-fallen-in-l...

Because your basically saying no human is going to get to journey into space in the near term, so why would the current generation fund it? No PR or dream, no funding. The possibility of Virgin Intergalactic is far more enticing to the public than probes. I, and I would bet most children, didn't dream of sending a probe to Mars, we dreamed of going ourselves.

What percentage of people passed the Marshmellow experiment?

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshmellow_test

There is a rather large difference between "deferred gratification" and "never".

That's why you choose the marshmallow now and can't wait "15 minutes". You want instant gratification now. I want the human race to move way out into the solar system, permanently, and in a big way.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140919.html

And I don't believe the general public will fund it without the hope, however distant, of getting into space themselves. They have been promised too much that hasn't come true and scientists are currently telling them that they are doomed anyway.

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