If we confined to this marble forever, then we will end. We will have to expand - our good bits and (sadly) our bad bits, or end… The next big war, if confined to this marble, will send us back a couple of millennia if not end us.
On other notes:
It is important to understand where we live and what it means in terms of energy consumption - if you live in a “developed” country (especially in remote locales) you likely use a lot more energy than if you live in a less developed countries - is the solution to be less developed?
The “invention” of the bomb was a culmination of an exorbitant use of resource, i.e. European colonial wealth in the trillions of dollars over centuries of accumulation. Should be go back and uninvent that? Why did we not use it to solve poverty - the war was pretty much won already… The bomb has enabled many breakthroughs - the benefits of which have been very impactful in a positive way across many sectors and eras
Life has never sat still - otherwise we’d all still be a wiped stain on some vent at the bottom of an ocean…
This, SpaceX, Blue Origin, etc, is what it is. Guys with an itch (good or bad is unclear) that are using their dime to make more bucks. Best case scenario, it expands our horizons - worst case scenario, it is an expensive fireworks show.
If we stay confined to this marble, we will end - likely through our ourselves.
Nail on the head. Until we manage to evolve past ideological and religious differences that simply amount to how much power one can wield or how much someone can benefit themselves we simply destroy this planet and ourselves. Husbanded correctly and with the technological advances we have made, and will continue to make, there is enough wealth and resources on this world for us to survive here until the sun’s luminosity makes it impossible to do so, give or take another 500 million to a billion years from now. Let me repeat that number again, 500 million to a billion years from now.
Instead, we’re trying to our best to destroy it and look forward to a future elsewhere. I’m all for space exploration, I love the idea of habitable worlds and intelligent life in the cosmos but we’re all ass backwards in what we’re achieving in our own home.
Both. We are living in a time of widespread prosperity that is unparalleled in human history. A middle class in a large number of countries that can afford to go to the nearest store and buy groceries and luxuries. Poverty exists in huge numbers, but so does prosperity. It’s our very own nature that makes these advancements seem hollow and unfulfilling and the ever ready nature of man to want more and more and so strife and division are never far from the surface in most places and simply a part of life in others.
Therein the worst; there are few contented places in the world unaffected by this and also by the relentless rape of our planet in search of profit. The natural world has suffered, species have gone extinct at a rate that is simply astounding and those that haven’t are but a fraction of what they once were. There is nowhere on the planet unaffected by the greed and practises of our species. We’re on a world being consumed by us and so we have rich people telling us that in order to survive we need to move on. But we don’t, we can fix what we have and find a means to secure the resources we need in order to live on this world without killing it. Abolishing the concepts of money, ideology and religion would go a long way to doing that, imho.
I guess where we differ is that I do not think there is a solution to all of the problems that exist. I think there is an evolution to our way of life and a need for balance, in terms of how we live and our expectations, but that will only come with time - a commodity that is such an unknown that I feel it is better to spread the bets sooner rather than later.
Currently we risk losing everything on the whims of a madman in the East or the re-election of another in the West - or indeed by the suffocating control of another in the far East. There is also the spectre of inequality, which can undermine everything and which fuels much of the discontent we see.
We are what we are and have what we have - it can be good (and bad) but the alternative is extinction. Why would anyone want that?
I would tend to think, that nowadays the commercialization of existence tends towards the needs of the few over the needs of the many. doesn’t really sound much like progress.
I’d much rather live somewhere close to the ocean where I don’t have to work, have a water catchment system or a clean creek nearby where I can grow my own food and keep some chickens for eggs and protein and catch my own fish in the ocean. not have to work for a f’ing living. But society is so fucked up now, you can’t even own land without having to buy it off someone at a rediculous price.
Er, no. It’s the fact that’s he blatantly revealed himself to be a right wing shill who spreads conspiracy theories and entertains and spreads Russian disinformation, for a start. We can go back to his growing up as a beneficiary of Apartheid where he boasted about selling emeralds just out of his pocket like that when in the states to now saying ‘what emerald mine?’. We can go on and on about his disinformation, blatant lies and the company he keeps but it’s all out there and had been posted here and all over the place basically but you choose to turn a blind eye because a company he runs makes fancy rockets that go to space. More fool you, then. Hitler insisted on the Autobahn, after all.
He’s a salesman, no doubt, and he is intelligent enough to get the right people around him to proof his concepts and bring them about, which in it’s own is a skill, but let’s not kid ourselves as to where the money to fund all these projects is coming from and it’s not out of his own pocket. It’s subsidised by government and donors, Mr Musk himself is no altruist by nature at all, at all. No no no. So while you may look at his arse and see the sun shining out of it, the reality is far different but no mind, you carry on. I doubt that you even bother to look at the reality behind him, besotted as you are.
When is going early with a test a calculated risk or just plain arrogance / fuck it, let’s do it for the lols?
I get the impression it’s always the latter with Musk. For me there’s different ways to skin a cat with regards to rocket development. Building full scale stuff and blowing them up on a whim isn’t one I’d favour to be honest.
It is when it leads to the ability to re-use orbital class rockets. Falcon 9 has had almost 150 successful landings on the run. If you follow the whole Starship project (I do) you see the rate they build stuff, realise a problem, scrap it and start again. The pace of iteration and progress is nothing short of staggering.
@wyld.at.hrt I don’t think the sun shines out of his arse, I’m obsessed with space flight and progress. He’s kicked it from verging on static to charging for mars and brought prices down and reliability up. Without Musk, the only was of getting people into space right now would be with the Russians and Chinese as it would have been since the shuttle retired. Boeing still fucking Starliner up doesn’t help. The government pay him for a service that he can provide with US tech, US jobs, US launches and US manufacture. Hell of an achievement.
