Lots of people are hyperventilating over the spectacle a
handful of narcissistic celebrity tech CEOs are making of themselves about their
plans to mine asteroids.
Soon enough, all of these same people will be too busy
hyperventilating over the spectacle a handful of narcissistic celebrity tech
CEOs are making of themselves about their plans to construct an orbital love
motel or a bucky-magick space elevator to notice when the plan fizzles because
neither the technology nor the will to do any of these things is there, and
hence they won't be able to swing let alone sustain the capital investment to
make any kind of go at it.
Indeed, no for-profit futurological folly will ever
make a go at any kind of space program that doesn't amount to the fraud of
calling low earth orbit amusement park rides a "space program."
Ever.
Space enthusiasts (one of whom I fervently am myself) need to seriously get
their Kennedy on and become avid Big Government types and stop this endless
fruitless futurological confusion of science fiction with science policy and
libertopian confusion of "free market" neo-feudalism with secular
techno-scientifically literate social democracies that can actually sustain public
investments in space exploration and extra-terrestrial infrastructure.
PS: And now for something completely different:
I don't think we need to get our Kennedy on. Robots can do plenty of science at a fraction of the cost. They aren't as productive or photogenic as people but they can also stay deployed for years.
ReplyDeleteThe Apollo program was very inspirational but didn't actually accomplish much science wise.
I totally get the argument about doing real cost-effective science via robots and teleoperating theater. But don't under-estimate the power of the inspirational! I'd personally like to see more humans in orbit and humans on Mars before I get so old I can't crack a smile anymore with sensawunda.
ReplyDeleteWe spend our money on worse things.
ReplyDelete