Something I have trouble explaining about space travel. Like, if you've read my book, you know I think human space faring is probably not economically valuable. It's not a good use of science dollars compared to other areas. I'm even skeptical of the case for inspiration (it doesn't seem to causally related to more aerospace degrees).
But it's also just really cool. Why don't I feel this way about Antarctica or Seabed exploration?
@ZachWeinersmith part of it for me is that exploration of Earth stuff always comes with a side of “oh no, now that we can get there, how are we going to fuck it up”
Though I’ve started to have that feeling about sending humans to the moon and Mars and such. Like if it was economically viable I’d be kind of pre-grieving the strip mining and the introductions of weird microbes that would mislead us when we tried to understand the history of those places or if there is any kind of life at all already out there that we’d contaminate and harm those ecosystems.
I suspect they’re closely related. The simple fact that sending someone into space and bringing them back alive (let alone keeping them alive and healthy for more than a short period) is so monumentally difficult is the root cause of both the coolness and the lack of viable economics.
@dtl @ZachWeinersmith It’s the rarity value though: I’ve been to Antarctica four times, including spending the winter there. That makes me unusual, but not astronaut-level unusual. Go to the right university department and you’ll meet other people like me, but astronauts? Yeah, rarer than hen’s teeth.
(Unsurprisingly many Antarctic people, myself included, applied for the job Tim Peake eventually got. Some even got interviewed. But ultimately at the time they wanted a test pilot.)
@ZachWeinersmith
Familiarity. If you look at Victorian materials, fiction & non-fiction, they did have that kind of attitude to exploring the unknown parts of the world. Now that they are explored, space is the new frontier.
(Also BTW economic value is not a great metric for "what humans should be doing", as the environment can currently testify)
@ZachWeinersmith Antarctic exploration *was* sexy 100-150 years ago, though! We kind of remember Captain Scott's ill-fated South polar expedition, but less so the ferocious international rivalry that drove it (or Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen who got there first and survived).
In contrast, now we have Antarctic bases, familiarity breeds … boredom?
@cstross @ZachWeinersmith I feel compelled to mention the number of 1900s and 1910s science fiction boys novels about arctic or antarctic exploration.
I just finished "through the air to the north pole" a not especially noteworthy entrant in the genre.
This kind of thing was absolutely the stuff of dreams and ambition prior to the age of commercial flight.
@cstross @ZachWeinersmith Perhaps unsurprisingly, here in Denmark we *do* remember Roald Amundsen. There are streets named after him and the like.
(But we have little if any cultural memory of Scott.)
@datarama @cstross @ZachWeinersmith
TBF, Scott didn't make it.
@cstross @datarama @ZachWeinersmith
Ah, you right and I am wrong.
Not makin' it back is a pretty big deal tho.
@alanpaxton @cstross @lemgandi @datarama @ZachWeinersmith I would not call it “arrogant imperial incompetence.” First a rendezvous failed as the rest of Scott’s team simply failed to show up as expected, and then after prolonged bad weather, Scott and his last companions got stuck another 10 days in a blizzard just 20 km (12 mi) short of the final depot / meeting place.
All these arctic/antarctic explorers had to have some level of hubris to try so hard to be first. Given the competition, nobody was going to be first without significant risks.
The real shocker with Antarctic exploration is that there weren’t MORE deaths. These expeditions were all inherently risky. There were too many unknowns, & safety margins were not high enough to protect against all risks.
@tphinney @alanpaxton @cstross @lemgandi @datarama @ZachWeinersmith a TV company re-enacted some of the expedition with like-for-like materials and food. The Scandinavian team ate like kings and actually gained weight, but the Brits all lost weight and were suffering malnutrition so the programme had to be stopped before they suffered long term effects.
Scott gambled and in most years would have made it back alive, but Amundsen had the better materials and food however you look at it.
@datarama @cstross @ZachWeinersmith Whereas here we have e.g. a statue of Scott
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Robert_Falcon_Scott,_Christchurch
Interesting comparison :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_the_Amundsen_and_Scott_expeditions
@bigblen @cstross @ZachWeinersmith As far as I know there aren't any Amundsen statues in Denmark, but there are some in Norway. In Oslo, there's actually a monument with five statues, one of each of Amundsen's expedition members who reached the South Pole (including himself, of course).
I used to live just a couple of streets away from one of those streets named after him. When I was a kid and we learned about the history of polar exploration, we got a long story of Amundsen's expedition - and Scott got only a brief mention.
@bigblen In fairness, we also have a big bronze bust of Amundsen. He has a very shiny nose, because it is considered lucky to touch it when you visit the museum.
A journalist looked into this a few years ago, and it turns out that this tradition dates back to the 1960s, when a tour guide found himself with time to fill. He made up a local legend about Amundsen's nose having aphrodisiac qualities and the tourists all queued up to touch it.
https://ehive.com/collections/3003/objects/50/bust-of-roald-amundsen
@Photo55 That's the one: the Antarctic gallery in Canterbury Museum.
The whole museum is currently closed for a five-year rebuild, so a generation of children is missing out on seeing the giant moa and blue whale skeletons, the meteorite you're allowed to touch, the mummy Tash Pen Khonsu, the reproduction Victorian street, the racist 1980s dioramas of early Māori (not coming back), the gallery of later Māori culture that did a better job, and Amundsen's nose.
@ZachWeinersmith
Space travel certainly has those downsides.
But consider: do we want humans to be permanently confined to Earth?
Some would say 'yes', but anyone who says 'no' should consider that today impacts tomorrow.
@ZachWeinersmith I don't care very much about the economic value of space exploration. I want to know more about the universe we live in. That has its own value.
The big question is life: Does it exist anywhere else in our solar system (the only place we are likely to establish definitive proof of its existence), and if so, did it have an independent origin? I place immense value on exploring such things, even if there were no economic benefits.
@copper_tunic @ZachWeinersmith
The space race inspired *many* varieties of STEM degrees, not just Aerospace.
50+ years ago I was glued to coverage of Apollo even more than I am to Artemis now.
The post Sputnik curriculum reform pushed me into STEM; i did pure math and very applied systems programming as a liberal arts degree, go figure. Would i have got there without Sputnik, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab? Maybe but uncertain. Could've been a Lawyer or Actuary or Historian.
Zach Weinersmith
why not build it yourself
sus
Jernej Virag 
David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)
Dr. Evan J. Gowan
Bart-Jan Vrielink
technetium
Dr David Mills
Mike Prior-Jones
HighlandLawyer
Charlie Stross
Nick Gully
katfeete
Rackhir
Andrew (Television Executive)
datarama
lemgandi
Piers Cawley
Bill Ricker
alanpaxton
Thomas Phinney
Adam Trickett 
bigblen
Isaac Freeman
MidgePhoto
steveo
DougMerritt (log😅 = 💧log😄)
Bodhipaksa
Bruno Nicoletti
Dany [Danny]
unit327