alt Hacker NewsI think this sort of view is quite myopic. In general space has practically infinite everything - land, resources, energy, and more. It has the potential to enable, in turn, infinite expansion of humanity. But we're not going to get to the endgame without playing the opening first.
The path to international air flight began with often suicidal attempts to flap our arms with various instruments attached and act like birds, with many thinking we'd never go anywhere beyond that. With space we're already a bit more advanced, yet we're far from where we need to be - and the only way we're going to get there is by going out and starting on a very long journey.
We didn't do anything in 1969. Landing on the Moon and leaving a flag is like seeing the Wright Flyer go 260m, waving a Mission Accomplished banner, and then quitting with that as the state of art of flight - a mildly interesting novelty that was, at best, a proof of concept.
Replies
> space has practically infinite everything - land, resources, energy
The Earth has more land than mankind will ever need. The Earth has effectively infinite energy from the Sun. And most of the resources we need are derived from biological matter, which Space lacks.
We'd be much better off building colonies on the bottom of the ocean than on the moon or mars (or a cylinder floating at a lagrange point.)
After we run out of space on the ocean I suppose it will make sense to consider space colonies, but I think you are really underestimating the technical challenges.
Infinite distance and travel cost too!
> space has practically infinite everything - land, resources, energy
...of a density so low that it is 0 on average.
space has practically infinite nothing.
I know the pretty pictures always show the planets all nice together, but in reality there's this huge, irradiated, projectile-infested nothing that you and I cannot deal with, even with current tech.
Radioactive, toxic, dry, low-gravity and anoxic land isn't exactly prime real estate. Even the North Pole is a better environment for humans to live in than the Moon or Mars are.
> In general space has practically infinite everything - land, resources, energy, and more. It has the potential to enable, in turn, infinite expansion of humanity.
Love the (sorry, but greedy) take. Maybe we shouldn't expand infinitely. I don't see our species as that special. Maybe we should stay a bit modest, and errm, down to the earth in our ambitions.
Both humans and resources can't be in infinite number at the same time. Something can be infinite relative to other, and I like the current balance, thanks.
Even if you think a space industry is useful in general, there is no reason for humans to be involved. Robots are superior to humans for this application today and will only become more superior in the future.
You fail to comprehend just how large space is. Almost all of space is well out of reach. There is zero reason to think we will ever be able to overcome the laws of relativity, which in turn mean we will never be able to reach the stars. I know, this negative comment makes you mad, but there is every reason to think it is the case.
A SciFi generation ship could maybe do that to the closest stars before it fails completely - but we have reason to think those stars will have any planet we can terraform. (ignoring the ethics if life exists - we don't have the technology to detect life on other planets)
Mars is the only planet that could potentially support human life. Even then the best parts are about as nice as Antarctica - not very nice. Which is to say a catastrophic failure of life support gives you seconds to get the backup [scuba type gear?] working as opposed to guaranteed death. Mars is a lot smaller than earth and has much less energy (less sun). Thus there isn't much potential there.
Everything else we can reasonably reach is much harder to work with than Mars.
Face it, earth is all we get: make it last.