The Ethics of Space Tourism?

[charlou]

People would have to become far less wasteful .. and it would be enforced. Why not just enforce far less wastefulness here? Is our behaviour .. our gluttony, greed and apathy .. such that it is necessary to provide an extreme alternative in order to catalyse change? And would that really change such behaviour?

[pErvinalia]

People would have to become far less wasteful .. and it would be enforced. Why not just enforce far less wastefulness here?

Very good point. I think most people don't understand the problems we face here on Earth. They still think of it as a planet of abundance, and that humans are above nature somehow. Silly hoomans.

[Clinton Huxley]

We are never getting off this rock. With immense effort we can send a human a couple of hundred miles up. Go to what almost amounts to a war-footing and we can get one to the moon (or used to be able to).

[pErvinalia]

It's a matter of technology. To say the technology will never exist to make it reasonably cheap to get off the planet to another planet/moon is a bit ridiculous.

[Clinton Huxley]

It's a matter of technology. To say the technology will never exist to make it reasonably cheap to get off the planet to another planet/moon is a bit ridiculous.

You got anything better than a chemical rocket that isn't just vapour-ware?

[klr]

There was a time when people believed that powered flight was impossible ...

[Clinton Huxley]

There was a time when people believed that powered flight was impossible ...

Nearly 80 years on and we are still, basically, using V2s to get into orbit.

[klr]

There was a time when people believed that powered flight was impossible ...

Nearly 80 years on and we are still, basically, using V2s to get into orbit.

For most things, they serve us reasonably well - except when the rocket blows up of course ...

Anyway, there are always options for faster space travel, even if they might take a long time to realize:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/10 ... mars_trip/

Looks to be a lot better than the likes of Project Orion or Project Daedalus.

[Clinton Huxley]

There was a time when people believed that powered flight was impossible ...

Nearly 80 years on and we are still, basically, using V2s to get into orbit.

For most things, they serve us reasonably well - except when the rocket blows up of course ...

Anyway, there are always options for faster space travel, even if they might take a long time to realize:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/10 ... mars_trip/

Looks to be a lot better than the likes of Project Orion or Project Daedalus.

I had a kids science book in the 80s that had lots of cut-away engineering diagrams of all kinds of sci-if stuff. And still, none of it exists.

We are doomed. All doomed.

[klr]

...

I had a kids science book in the 80s that had lots of cut-away engineering diagrams of all kinds of sci-if stuff. And still, none of it exists.

We are doomed. All doomed.

I had books in the 70s that had us going to Mars in short order. The fact that we're still not there doesn't mean that we'll never get there. All we need is some healthy competition between certain major powers and power blocs. And the realization that there's minerals-a-plenty in them thar Martian hills.

[Clinton Huxley]

...

I had a kids science book in the 80s that had lots of cut-away engineering diagrams of all kinds of sci-if stuff. And still, none of it exists.

We are doomed. All doomed.

I had books in the 70s that had us going to Mars in short order. The fact that we're still not there doesn't mean that we'll never get there. All we need is some healthy competition between certain major powers and power blocs. And the realization that there's minerals-a-plenty in them thar Martian hills.

Those minerals would have to be plenty valuable to render that profitable. Besides, I wouldn't support fracking on Mars.

[klr]

...

I had a kids science book in the 80s that had lots of cut-away engineering diagrams of all kinds of sci-if stuff. And still, none of it exists.

We are doomed. All doomed.

I had books in the 70s that had us going to Mars in short order. The fact that we're still not there doesn't mean that we'll never get there. All we need is some healthy competition between certain major powers and power blocs. And the realization that there's minerals-a-plenty in them thar Martian hills.

Those minerals would have to be plenty valuable to render that profitable. Besides, I wouldn't support tracking on Mars.

Well, maybe we'll just go off and snag us some asteroids first ...

[Clinton Huxley]

Asteroids is more likely. They're no place to raise a kid, though.

[klr]

Asteroids is more likely. They're no place to raise a kid, though.

There's a song in there somewhere ...

[charlou]

sci-if