Our Fate Is in the Stars

https://theamericanscholar.org/our-fate-is-in-the-stars/#.XPZ2Xi2ZMWo

by ascertain • 7 years ago

48 35 7 years ago

alexgmcm• 7 years ago

There are currently four living people who have walked on the moon, the youngest of which is 83: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who_have_walked...

It is probable that we will return to there being no living humans who have walked on the moon - something which must have been unimaginable at the end of the Apollo Project.

axelfontaine• 7 years ago

The incredible thing is that nobody born after 1935 has ever walked on the moon!

isolli• 7 years ago

And they were all Americans, which underlines what a rarity moonwalking has been in the history of humanity.

coldtea4• 7 years ago

There's no "fate" and no contract we've signed that guaranteers we're an interplanetary species.

It's just that we wish we could be in the stars, but wishing doesn't always make it so. And in some cases, wishing never makes it so.

Especially without installed bases, big haul ability, etc, it takes trillions and has zero to no returns (except the glory, curiosity, and scientific value) for companies to go to the planets, even more so to the nearest stars (which also can take decades).

So while satellites lunches can make a profit, there's not much financial incentive to go beyond (real, tangible, the kind somebody will invest in, not future prospects which might take 2-3 generations to even pan out), absent state funding them (Space-X style, paid by NASA/the government).

And contrary to popular belief, climate change problems will make it even more difficult to secure such space spending, not less (e.g. people will demand urgent Earth supports, states will go each to fight on its own survival, there will resource and trade wars, and so on).

Razengan• 7 years ago

If we die out here on our home (as far as we know) planet, then we didn’t “deserve” to colonize other planets anyway.

Isn’t that the point of natural selection after all?

coldtea4• 7 years ago

I don't think natural selection has a point, or the universe cares for us anymore than it cares for bacteria or inanimate matter.

tomp• 7 years ago

Wishes make profit. What is the use of an iPhone beyond satisfying people's wishes? Yet Apple is a $1bn company.

idlewords3• 7 years ago

And yet the iPhone doesn't work on the Moon. Explain that!

coldtea4• 7 years ago

Products that fulfill wishes make profit.

Wishes by themselves don't make anything.

In other words, wishing it so doesn't make it so. It takes a lot of further action on top of the wishing.

PeterisP• 7 years ago

Many people are willing to pay $1000 to satisfy their iPhone wishes. Not many people are willing to pay $1000 so that "we" (i.e. someone else) could be in the stars.

trevyn• 7 years ago

I think certain things feel pre-ordained for some, and like an unfolding of human destiny for others, because they are a tangible expression of common, shared human desires.

You’re right that economic and other concerns influence the specific timing, but I think the core human drives of growth and exploration are enough to drive us to the stars again in time, even without direct economic incentives.

pfdietz2• 7 years ago

I think it's just people projecting their personal desires into some kind of imagined property of humanity in general. It's a way to make those personal desires seem less selfish and frivolous.

coldtea4• 7 years ago

I think a lot of people get too hyped up by farfetched sci-fi ideas, than actually study the logistics.

Some still take the logistics of sending a small crew for a visit at the moon (which are still over the top, and we've still haven't managed to repeat in 50+ years) and wish them away through handwaving to "colonies on Mars" and "colonizing the stars".

(Meanwhile we have the far more human friendly oceans, right here on Earth, which we haven't colonized yet -- a common theme in the 70s --, and we seriously discuss man kind living on foreign planets and what have you, with 1000x the difficulties).

varjag• 7 years ago

This is absolutely not what the article was about.

"If we are staring out into a giant graveyard, it does not augur well for our own future. But if we were to detect advanced life forms elsewhere, it would give us hope that we can find a way out of our own crises."

pfdietz2• 7 years ago

Actually, detecting intelligent life out there would be the most horrible news we've ever received. It would mean the Great Filter that prevents colonization of the galaxy is before us, not behind us, and that we're almost certainly doomed to fall to it.

idlewords3• 7 years ago

This is an odd piece of nostalgia, unfortunately representative of a genre. The Apollo program grew directly out of a panic about nuclear weapons, and the technological race to build rockets that could rain those weapons down on an adversary on the other side of the planet. No nuclear bomb, no Apollo.

The same geopolitical conflict that produced the space race also gave us the war in Vietnam, which in turn made the expense of ongoing lunar exploration unappealing (the war cost about 4x as much as the Apollo program) after the prestige milestone of landing on the moon was completed.

The space program was a fluke of history. We had a frightening new weapon that gave an overwhelming advantage to the side that could develop orbital rockets, a rough balance of power, and a natural satellite just close enough to get to without having to learn to assemble stuff in orbit.

Unfortunately, all the other destinations in space are far away (it's called space for a reason!) and sending primates to those places is expensive and hard. There's also no reason to do it (given advances in robotics and autonomous systems) unless you subscribe to a kind of cultish belief in humanity's manifest destiny to become an interplanetary civilization.

If there had been an intermediate destination between the Moon and Mars for us to work towards after Apollo, things might have gone differently, but you work with the Solar System you're dealt.

martythemaniak• 7 years ago

It is well understood that history not a nice, neat, little linear progression. It is full of stop and starts, stagnation, dizzying S-curves, revolutions, backlashes and regressions.

Apollo was a wonder, yes an outgrowth of the arms race, but also a manifestation of a purposeful and unified nation that just doesn't exist today. It was unsustainable, but it was also very long time ago.

I find your views that "things are hard, so we shouldn't do that, and we should never get off this planet" unfortunately common. Here's two things to consider:

- Sending people to space is not just fancy. Today's robotic missions are like trying to fill a swimming pool with a pipette. In 7 years Curiosity has driven a total of 8.6km - an slow afternoon stroll for a person. Every single little action is planned and executed at an excruciatingly slow pace. Nothing can be fixed or adjusted. InSight ran into a rock and now it might not be able to burrow it's instrument down. Digging down 3m might prove too much for that robot, a trivial task for any human.

- If humans don't have outward goals, we're much more likely to just look inward and spend our collective energy tearing each other apart. Without looking outwards, the entire Earth will become one giant vapid high school.

idlewords3• 7 years ago

Apollo was not the product of a 'purposeful and unified nation'. The period 1961-1972 was one of the most politically turbulent in American history, to an extent we forget today. Politically motivated bombings were routine news! Apollo was the product of its time in interesting ways, but let's not deceive ourselves about America in 1969 being any more unified and purposeful than it is today.

I have nothing against doing hard things, but I think sending people to Mars is a hard, dumb thing, and that the money for that will be better spent on mechanized probes to more interesting places (like Ganymede or Europa) along with space telescopes. Other people feel differently!

But I am tired of the amount of special pleading in this debate. Everything is hard on Mars, because it is on Mars. Antarctica has water and all the air you can breathe, and yet we can barely function there. If we send people to Mars, it will be a one-shot deal like Apollo was, and then all the space nerds will be sad again. Better to fund robots at 1/10 of the level of a manned mission, and get to explore the entire solar system instead. If people are dead set on humanity having a 'backup plan', then the Moon is right next door and we can even set it up with wifi.

TeMPOraL7• 7 years ago

There's also no reason to do it (given advances in robotics and autonomous systems) unless you subscribe to a kind of cultish belief in humanity's manifest destiny to become an interplanetary civilization.

Beyond other reasons given by the pro-colonization crowd, there is a simple reason. It's there, it's within reach, so why not?

If there had been an intermediate destination between the Moon and Mars for us to work towards after Apollo, things might have gone differently, but you work with the Solar System you're dealt.

And yet people haven't been to the Moon since Apollo, so I feel the problem isn't with the lack of stepping stones.

jblwps• 7 years ago

It's there, it's within reach, so why not?

Opportunity cost, if nothing else? Think of the immediate, real impact we could have by throwing money at (to pull an example out of a hat) malaria. Not to say that there mightn't be real gains to be had by manned space missions (although I'm somewhat skeptical of the magnitude of those gains), but there's more uncertainty for sure.

classicsnoot• 7 years ago

It is probably a good thing that Asimov, Clarke, Feynman, Sagan, and Tesla don't have to see who inherited their legacies of thought, ambition, and deed.

Imagine explaining to any one of them that the imagination and impetus of the future man, imbued with technology and options, is completely given over to spam email, ICOs, and dressing up 90s code as "innovation" so they can cash out early.

I've been feeling this place degrade over time, and this thread is a red flag.

SlackerNews: we know better; we won't change.

vokep3• 7 years ago

I think they might be surprised it isn't worse. The fact the internet exists at all is insane. The internet in some form maybe was inevitable, but most likely alternatives would be companies growing ever larger walled gardens until interconnection was a necessary next step. Instead we got a ton of infrastructure for military and academic work allowed use by public resulting in a huge free network for all. Sure facebook is trying to undo that, but the fact they have to put in effort at all is awesome.

tshannon• 7 years ago

"NASA commissioned two studies, with the twist that each team had to flesh out the other’s plan. Making the engineers step into each other’s shoes unstuck the debate, and Huntsville came around to Houston’s approach. That one decision ended up saving billions of dollars."

I love this. I find that so many people get emotionally attached to a decision, simply because it was theirs or their teams.

Our Fate Is in the Stars

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