Comment on We're not going to terraform Mars, but we're doing a good job of venusforming Earth.
hark@lemmy.world 1 day ago
This is why it’s silly hearing billionaires, who do the most damage to our planet, telling us how urgently we need to “get off this rock” which has supported life for millions of years in favor of some dead planet. It’s really just an extension of capitalism that demands infinite space to exploit, instead of being content with sustainability.
Elon’s argument for why we need to spread to other planets holds true even if everything on Earth were going perfectly.
It’s not about getting everyone off Earth - it’s about creating a backup for humanity on other planets. This ensures that the only known flame of consciousness in the universe isn’t extinguished by a nuclear war, pandemic, supervolcano, or asteroid impact.
By extension it would give more of an excuse for the top 1% to give even less of a fck about earth and the climate. Next thing you’d see is all the rich bailing to another planet while those who can’t afford it are left with what’s left of earth and the hellscape they left behind (and probably still have more agency over earth than those still living on there).
That’s quite cynical view. There’s about 0% chance of that happening during their lifetime. Or you think they’ll just want to go to mars and sit inside some capsule for the rest of their lives? C’moon now…
No, it would be cynical to say that all talk of space colonization is actually a lie to spur interest in government funded space technology, which gets contracted out to one major company owned by the richest man in the world who has become that rich off the back of other government subsidies.
Wait–
Our bodies are simply not made to leave earth for a long period. It’s a lofty goal but completely unrealistic when considering our biology has evolved specifically to live here.
Has no one learned anything from War of the Worlds?
Also, remember how humanity really messed things up when we started colonising other parts of our globe? We brought disease, we murdered and we polluted.
This is not risk free. When you give people access to space and still have terrorism and wars, things can end badly quickly.
There’s also a valid argument around where to best focus those resources now. We are nowhere near ready for space colonization on any scale, let alone sustainable ones.
A City on Mars by the Wienersmiths dives into some of these challenges if you are interested.
I think it would be a good idea to start colonizing space before “we have our shit figured out on earth”, since you know, that will never actually happen. We will have wars on earth for all eternity, we should colonize and explore space anyway.
Honestly, I strongly believe that striving to make space habitats work is one of the things that will finally teach us what we need to know to live sustainably on earth. The thing is, an affordable space colony is one that recycles almost everything, one that works mostly as a closed loop, a sustainable bubble. So in other words, if you know how to survive in a space colony, you know how to live without destroying the earth. And extreme sustainability is really the natural goal with any large space colony. Unfortunately nobody is really trying to do that here on earth, the funding, the engineering, it just isn’t happening. But if we start seriously attempting habitats in space, then people will be attempting that somewhere… And once we figure out how to do it, it can be reapplied to life on earth.
I used to think this way too, or hand wave away all the inconvenients as lessons to be learned, but there is a very valid argument to make that the best thing we can do as a species right now, is to focus inward here before we move out there. Wall before you run type thing. The book mentioned earlier covers a lot of these topics in detail and if you are interested I’d highly recommend as it reshaped my view of the current options. godpseed
We will most likely always have terrorism and wars. That’s not an argument against letting wealthy individuals fund a private space race.
Yes it is! Right now no one can hurtle an asteroid at earth to end it instantly. When space mining takes off that’s a very real threat.
He meant the budget spent on space is enormous and there are more urgent priorities on Earth solve so he does get it.
We already have Mars populated by human-made robot, and one going to Europa moon, terraforming means you’re thinking of making it habitable for humans, a huge difference from sending robots to do researches to understand better the moons/asteroids/planets.
The point you try saying his argument which seems against billionaires to be invalid instead of arguing against any other point he made just points out your focus is being an apologist for the wealthy to keep doing what they do best, starve and explore everyone else.
If you can make people survive on Mars, you’re more than able to make pockets of humanity survive those disasters on Earth
jaemo@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
It should also be a strong strong signal to stop listening to the apes that are hoarding all the bananas, and instead, eat that banana-hoarding abhorrence.
Shardikprime@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Bananas make for a terrible time value storage in the real world
In donkey Kong country tho? He who controls bananas controls the universe