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Joined 9 months ago
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Cake day: October 6th, 2023

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  • I totally agree. I know a teacher who who likes to say:

    “I believe there really is no such thing as a dumb question. As long as it’s an honest question (not rhetorical or sarcastic), then it’s a genuine request for more information. So even if it’s coming from a place of extreme ignorance, asking a question is an attempt to learn something, and the effort should be applauded.”




  • Yeah, I think that really it wouldn’t be the “global community” that ends up saving the world in an asteroid impact scenario.

    It would likely be an organization that could operate on its own without endless committees. Say, the Chinese space agency, or SpaceX, or the Indian space agency. Someone would decide to just do it, without getting the whole world’s approval for the mission. Then the whole world would complain that the effort was made without any international cooperation or oversight. And the organization that literally saved the world would get chewed out by everyone because inevitably the plan will not have worked perfectly.

    But I’m not worried, because even billionaires don’t want to die. Someone would do something.



  • As a species, we aren’t going to spread out there.

    Well not with that attitude!

    Yeah, space is hard and yeah mistakes have been made along the way. But things are definitely changing. Reusable rockets are nearly here… Between spaceX, rocket lab and stoke aerospace, there is real potential for these rockets to work. Hell, SpaceX has already conducted a successful orbital test flight.

    With reusable rockets we’ll start to see a drastic reduction in the cost to get to orbit, probably by two orders of magnitude, but possibly even more. With the cost down people will reassess the value of space and the resources available there. In other words, people will start doing more in space, and getting more from space. Resource collection, refining and specialized manufacturing are three most likely industries to start expanding into space. Once there is work to be done there it will begin to make sense for people to live there.

    As a species, we aren’t going to spread out there.

    Not today, no. But within my lifetime, I expect we will. Remember, change is usually slow and this would constitute the most profound change in human history.







  • Why would you think that?

    When I fire up the grill, I don’t do calculations on how much weight in CO2 I’m putting into the air and then extrapolate that to find the total mass of CO2 that grills generate globally. I usually just make burgers.

    That space engineer made sure that they were on the right side of the rocket equation and they made it to orbit (which is hard on its own).

    I agree that thorough environmental studies really ought to be happening, but I’m not surprised that aspects got missed.