keccers on Warpcast

keccers pfp

Do you guys think public sentiment is such that people feel the risk of dying is far less than the risk of not going to Mars? Does a majority of society feel further outer space exploration is worth dying for

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shazow pfp

I think there is huge variety in what people consider risky, sometimes the alternative is just not appealing so not doing it is perceived as a guaranteed bad outcome vs doing a risky thing. While risking death to go to Mars does not appeal to me, I've made a lot of life decisions that received commentary about how risky they are when they didn't feel risky to me at all (doing a startup, working with crypto, not having children, etc). More moderately: There's lots of room for autonomous space exploration, and the tech unlocks towards it seem very important (moving environmentally toxic industry off our planet, mining asteroids for terrestrially rare materials, harnessing more forms of sustainable energy, etc). But if people want to mindfully risk death to do something that has a vaster appeal to them, I don't think we should stand in their way. Space exploration is probably lower risk and a better outcome than ATV'ing (same death rate as being an astronaut!), base jumping, professional football, etc.

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keccers pfp

Where it gets interesting to me is that space faring is so expensive it requires tax dollars. And I wonder if people will see death and perceive it as acceptable to pay for in exchange for more space exploration In some way this is all a thought experiment my own beliefs not well calcified. But Robots as a next generation Laika i do know that appeals to me personally 😊

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shazow pfp

I think we're generally aligned, but I'm not convinced that autonomous space faring will require nation-state tax dollars. We're already at a point where individuals can afford to send small satellites into space, and it'll only get cheaper. Probably x100 cheaper when we have industry capacity already in space (most of the cost is escaping the gravity well). We can imagine a world where production is largely automated and many non-organic materials are more abundant in space than on earth. Maybe we'll have to reconsider our model of value, if nation states are largely valued by their mineral resources + labour/production capacity.

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