The value of manned space flight?

Yeah, there is just no chance that climate change will prevent the earth from supporting human life. There are enough bad consequences of climate change, there is no need to exaggerate. (Exaggerating the risks can be bad because it harms credibility).

All of the risk, with respect to human extinction, lies in indirect, social consequences.
I don't think that this is actually decided yet, and it will definitely be dependent on how soon we respond. There are definitely amounts of CO2 we can blast into the atmsophere that will lead to results we can't stop anymore and survive long term. Will we let it that bad? We hope not.

Heck, even if we ignore CO2 and we kept growing in our energy consumption, we could theoretically end up boiling the oceans in few centuries due to all the waste heat (fusion isn't going to help here, even wind and solar would not).
Practically, it likely can't get that bad - but only because the environment would already be too hostile for us before that. And we'd likely will stop that growth even sooner than that simply because we're not that dumb - however, we might also still be too late, because the changes of the environment are dynamic. The system responds, and it can take decades or centuries until the new "equilibrium" is reached, and that equilibrium doesn't have to be one that supports human life - or it might, but unfortunately, the stages before already killed them off.

I sometimes worry that by not wanting to sound too alarmist, climate science might actually self-censor itself. Most of our climate action plans are based on the more optimistic or cautious predictions. There is a fear that by going by worst-case scenarios, people will reject the science, especially if some don't happen: But some of the worst-case-scenarios are also so far away that by the time we realize the worst-case scenariosare true, we might be past the point to do something about it. It's not an easy balance to achieve.

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Space Exploration is a lot of fundamental research paired with great engineering challenges. What we can gain from that is always hard to predict. Space - and other planetary bodies - are also unique environments that allow experiments we simply can't pull off on Earth. Low Gravity, No Gravity, vacuum, solar or cosmic radiation. So it will in my opinion always be useful to have both robotic experiments and human experiments in space.

We probably should not count on space travel, exploration or colonization really giving us a home from home - Mars will probably never be a safe haven to escape to from a dying Earth. Mars might be the test-bed of technology that we'll use on Earth, be it to deal with the consequences of climate change or other environmental changes, or make parts of Earth habitable or useable to us in ways they weren't before. Or something completely different we never could forsee, for a problem or technology we didn't think of when we started the mission.

You can always squabble about cost (including opportunity cost), should we spend money on X or on Y. But the thing with fundamental research is that its economical (and also health and social) impacts are hard to quantify before the discoveries are made and put to use. And when it comes to opportunity cost, one also has to check if there actually is still an "opportunity" to spend your money better. I would say if you already own all the shares for Investment X, you can't do much to get more, so you might need to take Investment Y instead, which might have a lower ROI, but unless it's negative ROI, still better than just sitting on your money.
 

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Yup.

Specific things have gotten worse or better when it comes to lifespan, health, poverty, war, etc . . . but overall we are doing better than ever before!

With one exception, in my opinion, and it's a big one . . . I'm very worried about humanity breaking the environment to a point where it can no longer sustain our current societies, and perhaps even lead to our extinction.

There are smart folks working on amazing solutions to the various specific climate change factors . . . . and there is hope . . . and maybe space travel might help out in some of those areas . . . but I'm not convinced we're going to make it.

The development of space stations on the Moon, Mars, Earth's Lagrange points, on random asteroids . . . . it could be a distraction more than a help . . . . but I don't think the corporate and governmental money being spent on space programs is enough to worry about. But we could certainly use more money and attention on the problems right here on Earth.
Space travel has already led to a better understanding of things like Climate Change, and will continue to do so. It showed us just how bad the depletion of the ozone layer was, which led to changes that allowed it to recover. It gave us the ability to better monitor the overall climate, so we know what is happening on a rather granular basis. It helped create the instruments that gave us those abilities.
 

"Houston, we have a problem. Excel keeps thinking this cell is a date."

Thousands Of Miles From Earth And On Their Way To The Moon, Artemis II Is Having Microsoft Outlook Problems

"A Windows laptop is used for the same reasons a majority of people that use computers use Windows," Robert Frost, Instructor and Flight Controller at NASA, explained on Quora, per Forbes.

"It is a system that people are already familiar with (I'd hazard a guess that other than the ISS GUI on the PCS, 80% of astronauts have never used UNIX/Linux). Why make them learn a new operating system?"
Dammit, I knew I should have gone with them. They took the wrong Canadian!
 

Space travel has already led to a better understanding of things like Climate Change, and will continue to do so. It showed us just how bad the depletion of the ozone layer was, which led to changes that allowed it to recover. It gave us the ability to better monitor the overall climate, so we know what is happening on a rather granular basis. It helped create the instruments that gave us those abilities.
I don't think there is anyone in this thread saying that we shouldn't be funding space programs. At least, I'm not.

But rather, should society prioritize space travel over other types of funding and scientific research. And some of us are pushing back against the futurist dream of colonizing space as a way to save humanity.

But yes, the space program has led to a greater understanding of climate science (and other disciplines).
 

Yeah, there is just no chance that climate change will prevent the earth from supporting human life. There are enough bad consequences of climate change, there is no need to exaggerate. (Exaggerating the risks can be bad because it harms credibility).
It's not an exaggeration, it's very possible. Worst-case scenario, to be sure. And not an unavoidable fate . . . but very, very possible.
 

I don't think there is anyone in this thread saying that we shouldn't be funding space programs. At least, I'm not.

But rather, should society prioritize space travel over other types of funding and scientific research. And some of us are pushing back against the futurist dream of colonizing space as a way to save humanity.

But yes, the space program has led to a greater understanding of climate science (and other disciplines).
It feels like a few are actually in the "stop space exploration" camp.

I suspect that at least a little colonization would be necessary, for resource acquisition, if only in the way that we currently do FI-FO for mining and oil recovery. Even if you have machines to fix the machines, that fix the machines, it's generally a good idea to have a person capable of fixing those machines.
It's not an exaggeration, it's very possible. Worst-case scenario, to be sure. And not an unavoidable fate . . . but very, very possible.
If we hit a runaway global warming threshold, then it's hello Venus II.
 

But rather, should society prioritize space travel over other types of funding and scientific research.
We don't. We put twice as much towards cancer research. The US alone puts 36 times as much towards the military. Spending on AI research is forecast in the trillions for 2026. That's just three things; there are hundreds more.
 

I don't think there is anyone in this thread saying that we shouldn't be funding space programs. At least, I'm not.

But rather, should society prioritize space travel over other types of funding and scientific research. And some of us are pushing back against the futurist dream of colonizing space as a way to save humanity.

But yes, the space program has led to a greater understanding of climate science (and other disciplines).
This is where I’m at. I’m not against space programs, and acknowledge what we have gained from them. The futurist dream of colonizing space, as you aptly called it, is the precise mindset that I am not in favor of.
 


Prioritising is really very hard. It's easy for me to say that we should fund all the research, because it's obviously correct and I'm not having to find the budget. If it costs $100bn* (I'm just pulling numbers out of my posterior at this point) to put a couple of guys on the moon to do some interesting but unproven research and it costs the same to produce a breast cancer vaccine, well, I know where I'd vote to put the money. But it's rarely that straightforward. A breast cancer vaccine that reduces mortality by 5% and costs $1m a dose is not terribly worthwhile.

*Also note that this would buy nationalised healthcare at current international prices for the US population for about 2 months, as a social programme comparison.

I'm honestly rather sceptical about the psychological or cultural value of manned space flight, because I'm not sure enough people care. The ISS is something everyone seems pretty happy with (and it produces valuable research) but putting a couple of people on the moon seems like it'd be rather more controversial (and people will want to have the debate about whether to spend the $100bn that way), so I'm not sure the psychological benefits are there. Sure, it's rah-rah bread-and-circuses but I'd really rather not embrace that model of government, you know?
 

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