Instead of literally shooting excess cash into space, why don't we make Earth habitable for everyone? That's the future I'm looking forward too, not these nazi-adjacent fantasies of extending humanity's lebensraum to desolate, radiation-soaked environments.
Space bros like Musk always present their juvenile 50s sci-fi endeavors as some kind of grandiose, natural necessity for the human species - the continuation of what they so poorly understand as millions and millions of years of evolution. It's technological eschatology.
We should treat outer space as Antarctica: bar any kind of extractive activities there, a natural reserve for scientific investigations governed and managed in common by all humanity.
Also, for those who fear asteroid strikes or the sun going nova let me tell you about geology. The average background extinction rate of mammals is 1M years or so. We'll be long gone before even plate tectonics stops on Earth (est. 600M years).
There is no shame in going extinct and dying, both as a person and as a species. It is the way of all things.
Oh and guess why we need to leave space bodies untouched for science? Because of geology: none of these desolate places have been resurfaced by plate tectonics, and as such they contain unique, ancient clues to the emergence of life and consciousness in our solar system.
No later than this week, a remotely operated space machine collected samples from a distant asteroid. Why do you think scientists went to the trouble of designing OsirisRex?
Final point (for now): these space endeavors should be the object of protracted democratic deliberations, not the exclusive province of technocrats and moneybags. These machines will last longer than us. They are our parietal art.
As Carl Sagan once asked: "who speaks for Earth?"
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