Is it really necessary to send humans to those places just to get the knock-on benefits? Couldn’t we do those things directly, without going there?

It seems to me that, today, those who have the money to spend on these endeavors would only do so if there were perceived short-term benefits to themselves. That means they plan to exploit the resources, or increase their own power somehow.

I know the good engineers that make this happen are doing it for the challenge and in the pursuit of knowledge, and I know that’s why we poors support it, but that doesn’t “pay the bills.” What is the motivation behind the money? Why are they really doing this?

  • yesman@lemmy.world
    4·
    8 days ago

    First, there is a school of thought that says that the planet is ultimately doomed, and if we want to survive as a species, we need to get off of it.

    I’ve just never understood this mentality. Terraforming Mars to escape climate change is as dumb as a bag of hammers. As far as cosmic catastrophes go, most of the stuff that’d kill Earth will get Mars and the Moon too.

    And if you’ve got ambitions outside the Solar system, then planetary engineering becomes a trivial problem by comparison.

    I think that “we’ve got to leave Earth or we’re going to die!” tacitly admits that there are few good reasons to do it.

    • dhork@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      8 days ago

      Terraforming Mars to escape climate change is as dumb as a bag of hammers.

      I think the people who advocate for this feel that once we have the technology developed to terraform Mars (and put in the effort to do so), we will also have the political and social will to not make the same mistakes we made on Earth.

      But every plan I have read about relies on also harvesting the resources of the remote site. So how sure are we, really, that we can not ruin the next place, too? Seems like a lot about Human Nature has to change first.