Some of you are crazy about space colonization now! I can dig it; it’s always been a dream for me, as well. Still, elsewhere I talk about the harm this mindset may be wreaking, upon the chances that our grandchildren may actually do it well!
For example the “Artemis Program” aims to repeat a lunar footprint stunt that NASA accomplished 50+ years ago, on a useless sandbox of poison dust. Sure it was a proud feat, especially with 1960s tech and it set a new symbolic benchmark for what humans are capable-of! But we should suck space budgets dry to check a few symbolic milestones, when the same funding could get us started with asteroid mining, where the actual riches are?
I say leave the ‘bar-moonzvah’ – (‘today I am a man!!’) – symbolism stuff to the Apoll-wannabe kiddies, while we raise our gaze much higher.
Now comes a book by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith, creators of one of the best online series of one page, science friendly comix – SMBC – Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. Their earlier book – Soonish: The Emerging Technologies that’ll Improve and/or Ruin Everything – was very incisive! Now they have “A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?”
Source: CONTRARY BRIN: News from SPAAAAACE! Oh, and Fermi Paradox & Comets & Uplift!
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