The Ethics of Space Tourism?

[Clinton Huxley]

Vapour-ware.

We're using light sails and ion engines in space now. Try to keep up.

Indeed, on a small scale. Not seen the foundations for a space elevator anywhere yet.


Seriously, do you think I hadn't heard of light sails?

[Clinton Huxley]

No, the AI that supplants us will disperse itself in some substrate around the Sun and keep humans on Earth in their petting zoo.

[pErvinalia]

What are you trying to argue, Clinton? It's one thing to be a pessimist, but another to be a CES and argue for argument's sake. Consider the technological changes that have happened in the last 100 years. Consider Moore's law. I put it to you that we haven't even thought of the some of the technology that we will be using in 100 years from now.

[Coito ergo sum]

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).

We still can. With Constellation, had that program been continued, we'd be having excited conversations right now about how close we were to launch and how close we were to the start of a Moon base at Clavius crater. We'd be just a few years away, and the buzz would be beginning in earnest.

We can get humans to the Moon and Mars.

We just have to do it.

Aye. IF Constellaton still existed. And IF it had continued to be funded to completion. And if we all had a fish, we'd all have a fish.

The money was there. It was defunded for bogus reasons. A drop in the "Stimulus" bucket would have kept the program alive, and then some.

[quote="Clinton Huxley"

Look at the ISS. Some science gets done there but the astronauts spend most of their time patching up the thing. A moon base would be the same.[/quote]

Lots of value in that. There is a lot to learn, not the least of which is finding out what works and what doesn't in actual fact in space, solving problems, making repairs, living a daily existence for long periods of time. That ground has to be covered. There are many unknowns. In the 1950s, Werner Von Braun worked out a structure for a Mars program -- we could have -- in the the 1950s and 60s - put together a Mars program - von Braun was "full speed ahead" and we could have sent men straight out there in ships. The would have died horrible deaths, of course, because we didn't know about the effects the solar radiation and such in outer space or the effects of long term weightlessness and whatnot. So, the lessons we learn from space stations and Moon bases are valuable even on a day to day basis. If we want a Mars base, it only stands to reason to have a Moon base first. it's much closer. We can work out some kinks and practicalities.

[Coito ergo sum]

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?

Space elevator into low Earth orbit. Small engines of various kinds, including chemical, to travel in the Earth Moon system. Ion drive, solar sails and nuclear propulsion to travel between planets.

Vapour-ware.

An ion drive engine took the Stardust program to a comet.

A space elevator is elegant in its simplicity. It is not beyond us. All things take work. Lots of people said that a missile defense program was "impossible" and "not feasible." Now it's a no brainer.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Vapour-ware.

We're using light sails and ion engines in space now. Try to keep up.

Indeed, on a small scale. Not seen the foundations for a space elevator anywhere yet.


Seriously, do you think I hadn't heard of light sails?

Did you know that the first powered flight covered a distance less than the wingspan of a 747?

Or, "Of what use is a new born baby?"

[pErvinalia]

The PC will never sell more than a handful of units.

[Clinton Huxley]

What are you trying to argue, Clinton? It's one thing to be a pessimist, but another to be a CES and argue for argument's sake. Consider the technological changes that have happened in the last 100 years. Consider Moore's law. I put it to you that we haven't even thought of the some of the technology that we will be using in 100 years from now.

Don't disagree. And I am arguing for the sake of it, a bit. I'm a techno-realist rather than wide-eyed techno-optimist. It's too easy to say "space elevators" but there's many a slip twixt cup and lip.

[Clinton Huxley]

Vapour-ware.

We're using light sails and ion engines in space now. Try to keep up.

Indeed, on a small scale. Not seen the foundations for a space elevator anywhere yet.


Seriously, do you think I hadn't heard of light sails?

Did you know that the first powered flight covered a distance less than the wingspan of a 747?

Or, "Of what use is a new born baby?"

And? There is no certainty in any of this.

[Coito ergo sum]

What are you trying to argue, Clinton? It's one thing to be a pessimist, but another to be a CES and argue for argument's sake. Consider the technological changes that have happened in the last 100 years. Consider Moore's law. I put it to you that we haven't even thought of the some of the technology that we will be using in 100 years from now.

Don't disagree. And I am arguing for the sake of it, a bit. I'm a techno-realist rather than wide-eyed techno-optimist. It's too easy to say "space elevators" but there's many a slip twixt cup and lip.

It's being worked on. Mainly it's a materials issue -- getting a material strong enough to serve as a stable cable.

Sure, things are difficult, but you get nowhere without trying. You may get somewhere by doing the opposite of that.

[pErvinalia]

What are you trying to argue, Clinton? It's one thing to be a pessimist, but another to be a CES and argue for argument's sake. Consider the technological changes that have happened in the last 100 years. Consider Moore's law. I put it to you that we haven't even thought of the some of the technology that we will be using in 100 years from now.

Don't disagree. And I am arguing for the sake of it, a bit. I'm a techno-realist rather than wide-eyed techno-optimist. It's too easy to say "space elevators" but there's many a slip twixt cup and lip.

It depends what time frame you are talking about. If you want to say the next 50 years, then I'd probably agree with you. But 100+ years, the bets are all off. Talk about 1000 yrs and anyone trying to predict that we won't have something is talking through their poo shoot. No one knows at that time frame. You can only go by trends, and the trends so far are more or less exponential. Of course, at some point there will be a physical barrier to continued exponential development, and in fact, we are seeing the beginnings of that with transistor size. Regarding the latter, though, once we sort out quantum computing, we'll probably expand knowledge WAY faster than exponential. Translating that into physical technology will be restricted by physical bounds. But it will still be a faster rate than we have acquired technology in the last decade, for example.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

And? There is no certainty in any of this.

Is there certainty of anything? Should we wait for certainty? Sit on our hands?

[Clinton Huxley]

What are you trying to argue, Clinton? It's one thing to be a pessimist, but another to be a CES and argue for argument's sake. Consider the technological changes that have happened in the last 100 years. Consider Moore's law. I put it to you that we haven't even thought of the some of the technology that we will be using in 100 years from now.

Don't disagree. And I am arguing for the sake of it, a bit. I'm a techno-realist rather than wide-eyed techno-optimist. It's too easy to say "space elevators" but there's many a slip twixt cup and lip.

It's being worked on. Mainly it's a materials issue -- getting a material strong enough to serve as a stable cable.

Sure, things are difficult, but you get nowhere without trying. You may get somewhere by doing the opposite of that.

People have thought about putting a barrage across the Severn to generate electricity. For about 100 years. Nothing has happened. Even if all the engineering challenged can be solved, and I'm sure they can, there's no certainty it wold ever be built.

[Clinton Huxley]

What are you trying to argue, Clinton? It's one thing to be a pessimist, but another to be a CES and argue for argument's sake. Consider the technological changes that have happened in the last 100 years. Consider Moore's law. I put it to you that we haven't even thought of the some of the technology that we will be using in 100 years from now.

Don't disagree. And I am arguing for the sake of it, a bit. I'm a techno-realist rather than wide-eyed techno-optimist. It's too easy to say "space elevators" but there's many a slip twixt cup and lip.

It depends what time frame you are talking about. If you want to say the next 50 years, then I'd probably agree with you. But 100+ years, the bets are all off. Talk about 1000 yrs and anyone trying to predict that we won't have something is talking through their poo shoot. No one knows at that time frame. You can only go by trends, and the trends so far are more or less exponential. Of course, at some point there will be a physical barrier to continued exponential development, and in fact, we are seeing the beginnings of that with transistor size. Regarding the latter, though, once we sort out quantum computing, we'll probably expand knowledge WAY faster than exponential. Translating that into physical technology will be restricted by physical bounds. But it will still be a faster rate than we have acquired technology in the last decade, for example.

1000 years from now and it's more likely that AIs have spread into the galaxy. Humans or anything recognisably human? Less likely, IMO.

[Coito ergo sum]

What are you trying to argue, Clinton? It's one thing to be a pessimist, but another to be a CES and argue for argument's sake. Consider the technological changes that have happened in the last 100 years. Consider Moore's law. I put it to you that we haven't even thought of the some of the technology that we will be using in 100 years from now.

Don't disagree. And I am arguing for the sake of it, a bit. I'm a techno-realist rather than wide-eyed techno-optimist. It's too easy to say "space elevators" but there's many a slip twixt cup and lip.

It depends what time frame you are talking about. If you want to say the next 50 years, then I'd probably agree with you. But 100+ years, the bets are all off. Talk about 1000 yrs and anyone trying to predict that we won't have something is talking through their poo shoot. No one knows at that time frame. You can only go by trends, and the trends so far are more or less exponential. Of course, at some point there will be a physical barrier to continued exponential development, and in fact, we are seeing the beginnings of that with transistor size. Regarding the latter, though, once we sort out quantum computing, we'll probably expand knowledge WAY faster than exponential. Translating that into physical technology will be restricted by physical bounds. But it will still be a faster rate than we have acquired technology in the last decade, for example.

50 years is not a long time.

Any project involving human space habitation is a long term proposal. We have to just get moving on it.

I'm not worried about "predictions." I'm just in favor of doing the best we can and moving in a direction. The future will, no doubt, be as different from what you or I can imagine as it is different today than people 50 years ago could imagine.

Look at the imaginings on Star Trek. Cell phones now are better than they were imagined to be in the 23rd century. We have better communications in our cars than they had on the enterprise.

Invariably, what happens is that some things that are imagined never come to fruition, and some things that aren't imagined become reality. The imagining is the hard part, really. We have to start with the imagining, and then go for it. Some of what was imagined will happen, the rest won't, and some other stuff will happen that we didn't think of.

Without imagining and trying, though, nothing will happen.