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m o n d a y
@spacepanty
Yes but don’t things become feasible (in centuries or otherwise) because we actually work on them? Progress doesn’t appear out of think air. I don’t think anyone expects thriving space cities within our lifetimes, or even our children’s lifetimes.
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m o n d a y
@spacepanty
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m o n d a y
@spacepanty
Mars colonies (at least right now) are usually brought up as insurance against extreme tail risk/extinction events where physical proximity is a catastrophe vector (large asteroid strikes, unknown superweapons, out of control bioweapon etc), And for that I think they make sense
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Antipodal Gray
@0xGray
Well I mean OP of this whole thread is talking about us having 2 - 3 centuries left at best. On off chance that closing window causes a catastrophic war earlier I’d hope we did have a backup on mats even if it was resource intensive if it meant rescuing trillions of future lives
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m o n d a y
@spacepanty
Exactly, even ignoring the fact that probability for such things increase with time span, the value at risk (every single human or post-human life to be born in the future, from the point of the X event) makes the expected cost worth almost anything.
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m o n d a y
@spacepanty
But even then the resources apparently being “wasted” on this endeavour is grossly overestimated. The only group actively pursing “colonisation of Mars” at the moment is SpaceX, which takes up a tiny fraction of the money (yearly) that Americans spend on alcohol in a week
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m o n d a y
@spacepanty
Of course costs are not constant. But in SpaceX’s case, their operations are increasingly being funded by growing the economic pie (new space startups using them for sat launches since its getting cheaper + starlink probably becoming a $100B business within 5 years) -
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m o n d a y
@spacepanty
- meaning even much larger potential costs associated with this in the future will most likely not eat into the budgets of other pressing things in any meaningful way.
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Antipodal Gray
@0xGray
I try to assume the best of people when they argue their points, but I cannot shake the sense that deep seated antipathy towards Musk as a person is brainworming a lot of people on the question of Mars
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m o n d a y
@spacepanty
This is my feeling as well. Disdain for Musk and Bezos etc. has noticeably bled into disdain for such endeavours as a whole. Terrible meme.
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