Space pessimists

[Pipcard]

On the forum for a game that promotes ideas of space exploration and colonization, I see many posts talking about how "reusable launch vehicles will never be economical because mass production and labor costs are more important" and "we will never have flight rates high enough for affordable space travel" and "space colonization will never be practical" and "humans will never go to Mars in this century, or never at all."

Now I do see the point about colonization being impractical. It's true that the most extreme environment on Earth (not counting the deep ocean) will still be better than Mars or the Moon, so how can we avoid having "all our eggs in one basket?"

But I get tired of this letdown attitude, that we will never get anywhere. That it will always be a pointless endeavor. Especially when it's on a forum like this one.

Edited May 18, 2015 by Pipcard

[Bill Phil]

Just look at NASA. Getting forced to waste almost 40 years of its existence. The trend is that not much more will come about.

[tater]

This title should be "space realists."

[Pipcard]

This title should be "space realists."

Case in point.

[Wanderfound]

This title should be "space realists."

Or "space is not an appropriate environment in which to rely on the power of wishful thinking".

Space travel and research are important things. Ill-informed misguided space boosterism does harm to realistic efforts in space.

[Tex]

I'm all for space travel. Jeez, if I randomly won the lottery the first thing I'd do is book a ticket to the ISS or some other orbital flight. But from the standpoint of the whole of humanity, I see right where they're coming from.

I'm as supportive of space travel as can be, and I really think governments and more private space companies should work more on advancing human spaceflight. However, I do agree that we should be spending more focus on the humanitarian problems right here on the ground. When we solve our energy and hunger crises, then we can focus on getting our tentacles out there and colonizing other worlds.

[Pipcard]

I'm as supportive of space travel as can be, and I really think governments and more private space companies should work more on advancing human spaceflight. However, I do agree that we should be spending more focus on the humanitarian problems right here on the ground. When we solve our energy and hunger crises, then we can focus on getting our tentacles out there and colonizing other worlds.

That's why I'm not believing that the space budget should be anything more than a couple percent.

[baggers]

The main "pessimistic" thing about manned exploration is the Fermi paradox, I think.

Personally, I think we have better time improving genetical technology than manned spacecrafts.

Heavily-modifieds "humans" and biologicals systems could probably live in very differents planets. And effectively solve the "all our eggs in one basket".

http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/02/life-not-we-know-it-possible-saturns-moon-titan

[Jonboy]

This title should be "space realists."

Exactly what I opened the thread to say.

[Pipcard]

Realism is supposed to be in-between optimism and pessimism.

Edited May 19, 2015 by Pipcard

[vger]

I'm all for space travel. Jeez, if I randomly won the lottery the first thing I'd do is book a ticket to the ISS or some other orbital flight. But from the standpoint of the whole of humanity, I see right where they're coming from.

Bill Gates should start his own space program. It's not like he's going to do anything else with that money.

[GoSlash27]

Realism is supposed to be in-between optimism and pessimism.

Pipcard,

The way I read this, you started this thread to let everybody know that you "get tired" of what you perceive to be pessimism. You also imply rather strongly that such attitudes have no place on this forum.

If it were up to me, I'd just say suck it up; this is a big community and there's room for all of our viewpoints.

However, it's your thread.... so what is your proposed solution? What viewpoint must we all believe so that you won't be "tired" anymore?

[SciMan]

Most "space pessimists" seem to bring up political or economic factors that make whatever space idea somebody proposes look hopeless.

Examples: "Skylon won't ever fly because it's not profitable." "You can't use an Orion drive in space because of the various nuclear weapons treaties." "Manned missions to Moon or Mars are too expensive to ever fly in our lifetime." Etc. Etc. Etc.

With the low amount of wars going on right now, wouldn't it be a good idea to direct some of that money to something that has the potential to advance the human race as a whole? War's not even a zero sum game, anyways. It's a NEGATIVE sum game. All sides lose something in a war, some just lose less than others.

Trading a mutual loss for a mutual gain is a no-brainer, right? Or am I having too much faith in humanity again?

Of course, I realize that it's not likely, because it requires people in positions of power to think farther ahead than the next election (or whatever). I guess that's one thing non-democratic forms of government have going for them. Not that I'm advocating for one of those.

And if somebody's still pessimistic, how about they start thinking of a way to solve the problem, instead of just throwing up their hands and saying "It'll never happen," "But you can't make money doing that" or the like?

It helps if you start replacing "Impossible" with "Highly Improbable". Funny thing is, a bunch of thing that were thought "Impossible" are things that we rely on in everyday life.

Even Bill Gates was proven wrong. "No one will need more than 637 kB of memory for a personal computer" "We will never make a 32-bit Operating System", etc.

Don't predict what the future "Can't" or "Won't" do. Predict what it "Might" do. You'll end up right more often that way.

Edited May 19, 2015 by SciMan

[Pipcard]

Optimism is thinking we'll have entire settlements on Mars in the next hundred years. You see a lot of speculation about this on places like the SpaceX subreddit. (I really want to see whatever their Mars Colonial Transporter is.)

Realism is thinking we'll have an expedition of a few people to Mars in a few decades. This might be mostly by NASA, or an international effort, and it is the scenario that I feel is most likely.

Pessimism is thinking we'll never go to Mars until the very end of this century, or not for the next hundred years or more. I've seen a few posts like that on here.

Edited May 19, 2015 by Pipcard

[Bill Phil]

That last one isn't quite pessimistic, pessimistic is "not in this millenia".

Personally, I think that it'll take a big event to get people to start exploring the solar system with manned spacecraft. And I mean something as big as or bigger than WWIII...

[Kibble]

Optimism and pessimism are similar in that they make potentially irrelevant assumptions. Realistically, we will send human beings to the planet Mars in this millennium. Optimistically, an extant space program will be the ones to do it - pessimistically, extant space programs won't.

[AaronLS]

Just look at NASA. Getting forced to waste almost 40 years of its existence. The trend is that not much more will come about.

If anything, this is more evidence that what is happening now politically will just as easily be reversed in the near future, rather than an indication of a trend. The movement of political influence and the opinions of the public follow trends which are often short lived. Both should be viewed as chaotic systems. You could say that the brain and therefore emotions that govern such decisions are fully deterministic systems, but in the absence of being able to accurately model these extremely complex systems, one should consider emotions to be unpredictable.

Therefore I wouldn't call what is happening now politically a trend, at least not in terms of anything long term. The rational that governs these decisions usually involves limited sampling of facts, very little modelling of how their decisions will impact the future, and the measures by which they determine the value of endeavors is not always the same. Often times they measure the value of funding based on strategic or "accomplishment" value, rather than scientific value.

Whether or not this "trend" lasts long term, gets significantly worse, or gets significantly better, is up to the whim of people, which are usually very short lived trends.

[tater]

Realism is supposed to be in-between optimism and pessimism.

That's like saying rationality is supposed to be in between happiness and sadness. Being realistic is not a value judgement, it is being rational, not emotional.

[ZetaX]

Most "space pessimists" seem to bring up political or economic factors that make whatever space idea somebody proposes look hopeless.

Examples: "Skylon won't ever fly because it's not profitable." "You can't use an Orion drive in space because of the various nuclear weapons treaties." "Manned missions to Moon or Mars are too expensive to ever fly in our lifetime." Etc. Etc. Etc.

Nice strawmen you are using there, with the majority of the examples being such where the conclusion is wrong and all of them portraying a very naive version of politics or economy...

With the low amount of wars going on right now, wouldn't it be a good idea to direct some of that money to something that has the potential to advance the human race as a whole? War's not even a zero sum game, anyways. It's a NEGATIVE sum game. All sides lose something in a war, some just lose less than others.

Trading a mutual loss for a mutual gain is a no-brainer, right? Or am I having too much faith in humanity again?

And another fallacy: you are comparing space travels with wars. Apart from them being hard to compare (try stopping/preventing war without spending any money on that), it is a false dichotomy. There are so many things (e.g. cancer research, humanitarian aid, heck even computer science probably counts) that will give a much higher benefit for all humanity than a few persons making footprints on mars. We can try to get there when we fixed a lot of much more pressing problems and run out of ideas how to significantly increasy the total happiness.

[FishInferno]

Optimism is "SpaceX will go to Mars in 5 years without any problems at all."

<-- I am right about here

Realism is "SpaceX will go to Mars in 10-15 years, after having learned from some failures along the way."

Pessimism is "SpaceX will never do anything because nobody is interested."

[PB666]

On the forum for a game that promotes ideas of space exploration and colonization, I see many posts talking about how "reusable launch vehicles will never be economical because mass production and labor costs are more important" and "we will never have flight rates high enough for affordable space travel" and "space colonization will never be practical" and "humans will never go to Mars in this century, or never at all."

Now I do see the point about colonization being impractical. It's true that the most extreme environment on Earth (not counting the deep ocean) will still be better than Mars or the Moon, so how can we avoid having "all our eggs in one basket?"

But I get tired of this letdown attitude, that we will never get anywhere. That it will always be a pointless endeavor. Especially when it's on a forum like this one.

You seem to answer your own question. A mars push is a romantic notion, but until you have Ph.D. boots on martian soil, it will naer amount to much. The private ventures are packaging suicide missions and selling them as huts on tropical islands.

Good science is often built on little tiny steps. We have a lot to learn about surviving in low vacuum environments, add to this extended survival without physical support from earth and top this off with living in a climate in which photosynthetic EM is 1/10th that of Earth. It would take the resources, I estimate, of 20 LEO missions to retreive on neo-martian and bring them back to earth. There are better places to learn how to deal with these problems than Mars (e.g.Phobos or an asteroid).

[PakledHostage]

But I get tired of this letdown attitude, that we will never get anywhere. That it will always be a pointless endeavor. Especially when it's on a forum like this one.

The idea that space exploration/travel is hard and expensive and that we need to be practical about it is only a "letdown attitude" if you yourself interpret it that way. One can be realistic about the pace of progress while doing what one can to ensure that development continues, so that one day we can achieve our dreams. Even if all one can offer is voting for/encouraging your parents to vote for politicians that support funding for big science.

As engineers and professionals in related fields, some of us may wave our hands and guess that it will take many many years before we manage to lay the technological foundations required for spaceflight to be economical enough for some of the missions that have been envisioned to actually happen. That doesn't mean we aren't busting our butts working toward that ultimate goal today, and it certainly doesn't mean that we're pessimistic or have a "letdown attitude".

Edited May 19, 2015 by PakledHostage

[AngelLestat]

This title should be "space realists."

No, just the opposite, the pessimists make in fact bad predictions based on ignorance, they just project the current space progression time line which is something very silly to do. Those 45 years of space inactivity are based in many factors which does not follow a trend line.

There are many aspects that will grow exponential after certain changes.

Many of those pessimist ignore technology changes, business / economics, political and public interest.

Also sometimes people is just pessimist because they always bet against new things, that way they have less chances to be wrong when they want to give an opinion without bother in use their heads first.

Bill Gates should start his own space program. It's not like he's going to do anything else with that money.

But you need talent more than money to be successful in something.

[Pipcard]

The idea that space exploration/travel is hard and expensive and that we need to be practical about it is only a "letdown attitude" if you yourself interpret it that way. One can be realistic about the pace of progress while doing what one can to ensure that development continues, so that one day we can achieve our dreams. Even if all one can offer is voting for/encouraging your parents to vote for politicians that support funding for big science.

As engineers and professionals in related fields, some of us may wave our hands and guess that it will take many many years before we manage to lay the technological foundations required for spaceflight to be economical enough for some of the missions that have been envisioned to actually happen. That doesn't mean we aren't busting our butts working toward that ultimate goal today, and it certainly doesn't mean that we're pessimistic or have a "letdown attitude".

Okay, I understand now.

[AngelLestat]

The idea that space exploration/travel is hard and expensive and that we need to be practical about it is only a "letdown attitude" if you yourself interpret it that way.

That is not a rule, it will not be expensive and hard for always..

You are thinking that the NASA way is the only way...

Is impossible to be less cost and time effective than that.