Mastodawn

@gleick I'm not convinced shutting the door isn't a good thing. It completely cuts off both the TESCREAList narrative about "good of the future trillions of human minds across the galaxy at the expense of every real person here now except the billionaires" and the prospects of space capitalism. We don't need space; it's awesome to explore but not essential to survival or happiness.

@dalias that feels wrong to us, emotionally, but we don't have a principled argument

Irenes (many)

@dalias weather satellites are the really big thing that ground-based tech is considerably less useful for, so there's that

@dalias but it's not really about the practical concerns to us

@ireneista To me it is. I love space, space exploration, Voyager, Mars rovers, etc. But I love humanity and the hopes of us overcoming capitalist-fascism more, and would be gladly willing to give up space if that's what it took to drive it home to everyone that we have to learn to live together here not chase billionaires' scam-fantasies about colonizing space.

@dalias but think, like, hundreds of years ahead... is that actually the way it will play out? we don't think it is, we don't see why it would be

@dalias space exploration drove imagination in the 20th century, and pushed back against religion-driven conservativism to an astonishing degree, because it was new and involved a fundamental change to how humanity conceptualizes itself

but given time any social force becomes, you know... old and less exciting

@dalias one way or another space exploration is unlikely to be thought of as transformative even fifty years from now. yes, that is sad, and honestly a condemnation of humanity's choices and priorities. one way or another there will be a society, and the dedicated dickheads will use the dominant social forces of that society to their advantage.

@dalias we appreciate the poetry of feeling like this sacrifice of space could have a benefit, but we just don't see why it would work that way

@ireneista Hundreds of years from now we're either going to be extinct or still living here on earth. The idea of colonizing space is utter nonsense. It's less habitable and appealing than living on the bottom of the oceans. Sci-fi entirely ignores the vastness, harshness, and hostility of space, and the reality of relativity.

@dalias yes, we agree with that

@dalias the difference between the scenarios would largely be about the viability of science missions

Andrew Zonenberg Dec 2, 2024

@ireneista @dalias Navigation is a big one. Especially in dense forest, over open ocean, in bad weather, etc. GPS makes things much much better.

On the plus side, GPS birds live high enough up that they're unlikely to be affected by LEO clutter. The big concern is during launch and orbital insertion, when you're still down low. But it's unlikely we'd reach a truly apocalyptic Kessler situation where LEO is so full of debris you're guaranteed to be struck within minutes. Just "lifetimes are unacceptably short".

So you might need a slightly more energetic booster to lift it up to the working orbit quickly so it doesn't spend too long in Kessler-land, and might lose a few percent of your replacement GPS craft to impacts on the way up, but it wouldn't be a complete denial of higher orbits.

@azonenberg @ireneista That makes it sound more appealing to me - preserving navigation and still having the ability to launch autonomous things, but having "humans going into space" become unacceptably risky to the point of ruling it out.

Andrew Zonenberg Dec 2, 2024

@dalias @ireneista There is legitimately interesting science that can be done by human-staffed bases, which is much more difficult to do with fully autonomous vehicles (in particular, the ability to service equipment to extend its lifespan).

I would really like to see a lunar setup similar to Antarctica - obviously unfit for large scale human habitation and dependent on supplies from earth, but a handful of scientists rotating in and out year round.

Self sufficiency is never going to happen, of course - that's a billionaire's pipe dream.

David P Dec 2, 2024

@ireneista @dalias correct me if I'm wrong, most weather satellites are usually in geostationary orbits at around 35,000 km.

@pewnack @dalias sure, and how are we going to conduct repairs or launch new ones?

@pewnack @dalias (but yes, usually geosynch)

David P Dec 2, 2024

@ireneista @dalias

Well, yeah. A tad difficult.