The commercialisation of space

WarPigs

WarPigs

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FCN Regular
Very niche however I’d love to know people’s thoughts, alongside the pros/cons to the perceived commercial interest in space.
To kick off my view is a strong no, one interesting matter that is often over looked is space junk ie what we do to our oceans but on steroids. This would make some gravitational fields near impossible to circumnavigate in the future.
 
Humans ain't leaving earth for anything other than very short flights outside of scientific exploration. I say commercialize it, but WITHOUT any public funds whatsoever.
 
Stanthropical said:
Humans ain't leaving earth for anything other than very short flights outside of scientific exploration. I say commercialize it, but WITHOUT any public funds whatsoever.
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Interesting. Only issue on that front is by it being entirely privately funded there wouldn’t be much public holding in space infrastructure. If it ever came to the apocalyptic scenario of leaving Earth then public entities wouldn’t be ready. Then again this is the most hypothetical scenario ever ha! Humans will implode Earth before they realise they’ve even done it.
 
There's no apocalyptic scenario allowing for humans to leave earth. There's no life-sustaining conditions outside of our planet. The reason we evolved here is because everything we need is here. Even if there are life-sustaining planets far, far away out there, they're likely suited only for the life forms on those planets. The whole thing is a fantasy, like time-travel first though of in some story book in late 1800's.
 
WarPigs said:
Very niche however I’d love to know people’s thoughts, alongside the pros/cons to the perceived commercial interest in space.
To kick off my view is a strong no, one interesting matter that is often over looked is space junk ie what we do to our oceans but on steroids. This would make some gravitational fields near impossible to circumnavigate in the future.
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I wonder if any of the space junk is worth anything? Here's an old tidbit I found interesting.

In 1996, a French satellite was hit and damaged by debris from a French rocket that had exploded a decade earlier.

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/news/orbital_debris.html
 
Well, to me, commercializing space is just our next natural progression as we have always strived to understand and conquer our surroundings. It's already known that there are valuable to us minerals on some asteroids that come near us. Mining asteroids, the moon, nearby planets will most assuredly become the norm. We will become an interplanetary species. Not because there are other planets out there just like earth, but because we have the means to manipulate these planets to make them habitable for us.
 
I believe there are some benefits to commercialize space such as asteroid mining and things that generally will help bring us resources. After all, one asteroid and all life on Earth goes extinct lol
 
I’ve always cringed at the idea of commercializing space. Massive philosophical and moral issues aside, it would probably be a market that only the ultra-mega rich participate in. The barrier of entry to space travel is so high that any market surrounding it would be close to a monopoly.

It is not good for us to get used to the idea of having more than one planet to exploit.

Space may be huge, but the portion we inhabit is not. We already have issues with there being too much space junk in our orbit. This is being kept under control by the fact that not that many people can enter space to begin with.
 
Well in my opinion, space would be the the most logical next step for us to explore and harness (especially when we look at the density of elements we can find in some asteroids or what could be found on planets in other systems) but like many said before it would just make some private companies richer.

Like the person before said, there is also the problem of pollution (we already having issues with pollution on our only planet so I don’t even want to think what could possibly be done if we had another planet just for harvesting ressources).

“Conquering” space is at the moment a great idea and people dream about it, I’ll be honest if I had the opportunity to be among the pioneers to start a colony on Mars ( which is the most likely scenario in the future, at first), I would go even if there is no guarantee of coming back. But the remains fiction for now, with the exception of asteroids mining I don’t think we can properly settle other planets while we are still struggling on our home one (with all the wars etc).

And of course there’s the technological limitations, nuclear fission is good but I don’t think we could venture in space without a new source of energy. And we would also need alloys, a steady source of food for the duration of the travels because cryogenic sleep or FTL travels aren’t gonna be a thing before a lot of time if even possible.

TL;DR: Space exploration is humanity’s logical next step, but it risks worsening inequality and pollution. While colonizing other planets is a great idea, it’s still far beyond our current technological and societal capabilities. For now, asteroid mining seems more realistic than true interplanetary settlement but we gotta do it well for the benefit of humanity and not just some corporations.
 
Vaelan said:
Well in my opinion, space would be the the most logical next step for us to explore and harness (especially when we look at the density of elements we can find in some asteroids or what could be found on planets in other systems) but like many said before it would just make some private companies richer.

Like the person before said, there is also the problem of pollution (we already having issues with pollution on our only planet so I don’t even want to think what could possibly be done if we had another planet just for harvesting ressources).

“Conquering” space is at the moment a great idea and people dream about it, I’ll be honest if I had the opportunity to be among the pioneers to start a colony on Mars ( which is the most likely scenario in the future, at first), I would go even if there is no guarantee of coming back. But the remains fiction for now, with the exception of asteroids mining I don’t think we can properly settle other planets while we are still struggling on our home one (with all the wars etc).

And of course there’s the technological limitations, nuclear fission is good but I don’t think we could venture in space without a new source of energy. And we would also need alloys, a steady source of food for the duration of the travels because cryogenic sleep or FTL travels aren’t gonna be a thing before a lot of time if even possible.

TL;DR: Space exploration is humanity’s logical next step, but it risks worsening inequality and pollution. While colonizing other planets is a great idea, it’s still far beyond our current technological and societal capabilities. For now, asteroid mining seems more realistic than true interplanetary settlement but we gotta do it well for the benefit of humanity and not just some corporations.
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Nerd
 
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