Is it really necessary to send humans to those places just to get the knock-on benefits? Couldn't we do those things directly, without going there?

It seems to me that, today, those who have the money to spend on these endeavors would only do so if there were perceived short-term benefits to themselves. That means they plan to exploit the resources, or increase their own power somehow.

I know the good engineers that make this happen are doing it for the challenge and in the pursuit of knowledge, and I know that's why we poors support it, but that doesn't "pay the bills." What is the motivation behind the money? Why are they really doing this?

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[–] 4 points 12 hours ago (1 child)

The first step to keep eggs in multiple baskets is to start with the cataclysmic greenhouse effect in the first basket.

Wanna colonize space? It's a centuries long undertaking, and you should start from a stable foundation. Especially considering, any long term habitation is gonna be fostering an ecosystem from scratch, so you kinda really wanna model that on a stable ecosystem.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 hours ago

    Not concerned with escaping greenhouse by going to space, if we don't sort that we'll kill off the space fairing generations before they live. The two things are ultimately important for different reasons. Yeah, we need to stop fucking the world up, no getting off world won't make that any better. What colonizing will help is medical (imperfect virus) cataclysm, super volcano eruption or foreign body hitting the earth.

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