This is a science communication problem. People really think that space tourism will lead to colonizing the moon and mars and they don't understand how a lack of magnetic fields and atmospheres affect the possibility of that. Just no conception of engineering timelines, material costs, reality... - ThreadSky

acollierastro.bsky.social • 42 days ago

This is a science communication problem. People really think that space tourism will lead to colonizing the moon and mars and they don't understand how a lack of magnetic fields and atmospheres affect the possibility of that. Just no conception of engineering timelines, material costs, reality...

Reposted from Angela Collier

i hate this take so much.

"billionaires are just first, the price will go down and soon we can all destroy the planet for 11 minutes in space"

so stupid.

Comments

davidcon.bsky.social•41 days ago

So many people seem to not realize just how absurd the idea of space colonization at any kind of scale is. Like just having a colony on the moon that could support a few hundred people would likely be the most expensive endeavor in human history

matesrsen.bsky.social•41 days ago

I do think it's a worthy goal to try and become the kind of society and civilization that could undertake such a project - we just have to do that part *first*.

davidcon.bsky.social•41 days ago

Yeah I think it’s just only possible in a truly post-poverty/post-need society, and right now we feel impossibly far from that

robert-warren.com•42 days ago

in my opinion, working out ways to leave earth for another planet before working out how to live symbiotically on our own is one of the greatest admissions of human failure.

wrenrar.bsky.social•42 days ago

And we haven’t even really figured it out at all! We have no idea how to make other planets or space environments even as comfortable as a post-apocalyptic earth!

The idea of “escaping to the stars” is good in stories but that’s where it belongs.

digiacom.ratwaysanctuary.org•42 days ago

I think what saddens me more than anything is that when we finance NASA and explore space as a public scientific good, the results belong to all of us.

I feel so much pride in our publicly employed astronauts, engineers and all the others that make it possible.

Bezos et al. take that from us.

echocian.bsky.social•42 days ago

This urge to try to bend an uninhabitable planet to their will with tech that doesn't exist for a life that would be absolutely miserable while gleefully destroying the maybe-doesn't-exist-anywhere-else perfect one we're already on shows these people have absolutely no concept of reality

echocian.bsky.social•42 days ago

People who think this sounds good have literally never taken a walk in the woods and that's depressing.

apatheticapollo.bsky.social•42 days ago

I think pare of the problem is that even if you tell people "Colonizing Mars is basically impossible" they'll just be like "Scientists will figure it out" They have so little understanding of how science works that they assume it's basically magic and all it takes is the right spell.

anotherworld.bsky.social•38 days ago

I think another good example of what you're saying is when people talk about making a backdoor in cryptography but only for the "good guys". When experts explain that this is not feasible as a matter of mathematics, they are met with a similar response.

mopbucket.bsky.social•42 days ago

Hey now Bezos doesn't want to colonize moons and planets, he wants us all to live in big spinning tin cans floating in the void

What I'm saying is that we don't have to believe in one terrible idea, there are many terrible ideas to choose from

cartogriffi.bsky.social•42 days ago

Even if it were easy to colonize Mars, long term habitation at 1/3 the gravity has to wrack havoc on our physiology.

russellwrites.bsky.social•42 days ago

I don’t think we’re that close to having to worry about a moon or mars colony, just because there’s no infrastructure or realistic plans to create it right now. But I do think when they finally try, people don’t realize they’re going to trick poor people into dying in space, bc no billionaire

russellwrites.bsky.social•42 days ago

is giving up the vast privileges they have on earth to eat rehydrated strawberries and slowly lose their health to low gravity for the sake of “advancing humanity”

russellwrites.bsky.social•42 days ago

Which isn’t to say exploring space or funding efforts to figure out how humans could survive on other worlds is bad, just that going immediately from that to cities on another planet is a leap over a huge host of other problems space enthusiasts don’t want to talk about

thunderchild1898.bsky.social•41 days ago

Perfect fodder for another video but please do "Seinfeld" first...

patthemav.com•41 days ago

I feel like a broken record saying "That's not how this works. That's not how _any_ of this works!" for the best part of the past 20 years with regards to all kinds of technology. And it doesn't work because we're working against PR departments that very much want people to believe in such "magic".

swodude.bsky.social•42 days ago

Even the writers of the Total Recall remake understood the absurdity of colonizing Mars and went a different direction with the plot.

sturmlliouville.bsky.social•40 days ago

Affect the endeavour, make it hard etc but it won't make it impossible.

However the ballistic shots of Blue Origin won't move anything forward anyway

srijanp.bsky.social•42 days ago

daddy musk told me he is doing a unmanned in 2026 and manned flight in 2029. Im not the best at scienecesess but the number 1 super awesome american billionare has figured out all the little engineering timeline, material costs and... reality?? we live in a simulation bro.

srijanp.bsky.social•42 days ago

is climate change denial merely a science communication problem when there are conspiracies by oil companies funding the manufacture of denial? more importantly can science communicators tackle this by science communication alone?

tzujin.bsky.social•41 days ago

As people of earth we need to reaffirm the real meaning of the word 'necessary'.

baltusv.bsky.social•41 days ago

The only way humans follow a billionaire into a canned life on an inhospitable world is if they are fodder, bought and payed for, for some industrial process that can't be done by a machine. Mars isn't the New World, or even icy Greenland. It is truncated life in a can breathing machine-air.

tfox87.bsky.social•42 days ago

I hear a space elevator is only a few decades away! Surely then!

adamzn.bsky.social•41 days ago

It’s basically an expensive amusement park ride. The idea that this leads cheaply and inevitably to space colonization is dumb. The problems and the costs to overcome them won’t scale linearly.

transcendkaia.bsky.social•42 days ago

Space tourism also just seems like another techbro ploy to siphon funds away from actual space research projects...

justinb541.bsky.social•42 days ago

This is a direct result of Kerbal Space Program including space tourism missions, they helped normalize the idea that tourism is a natural thing for a space program to do.

icyseamonster.bsky.social•42 days ago

I love the idea of colonizing the moon and mars. But you’re so damn right about the difficulty and that these bs stunts, or musk’s bullshit behavior is not the way that happens. Just ignores the hard work that would be really necessary to do it. But billionaires need their god complex I guess

all4democracy.bsky.social•42 days ago

Death to SpaceX! All glory to NASA!

holymittens.bsky.social•42 days ago

If the billionaires all want to go colonize Mars, I am all for it

rrwscott.bsky.social•42 days ago

preach. space tourism isn't going to lead to anything other than more space tourism... up until they have an Oceangate-type scandal.

noanarcocapitalism.bsky.social•42 days ago

i made a joke how if Roko the supergod AI is awakens tomorrow he woud analyze google in 3 seconds
Roko: Oh crap im going to die in 7 billioin years
Roko: o crap i depend on this meat mofo.
Roko: o crap I cant escape this planet
Elon: how do i get to mars Roko?
Roko: pay your taxes you dumb cunt.

aklotz.bsky.social•42 days ago

Highly recommend @zachweinersmith.bsky.social 's book for a less-technical deep dive into the logistics

portamali.bsky.social•42 days ago

Second this! A City in Mars has a bit of a depressing verdict for space fans, but it's a very accessible and cool look into the practicalities of it.

(Also, the book has 2 authors @weinersmith.bsky.social ;)

madscitool.bsky.social•42 days ago

Apparently Elon wants to skip the moon and go straight to mars. I'm sure this has nothing to do with the lunar lander he was contracted to build being behind schedule and possibly against the laws of physics.

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