I’ve definitely turned into the paranoid nutcase within my friend group in recent years, I hate that everything is “smart” nowadays requiring an app/internet connection & account, just to do basic things that didn’t require any of that before.
What’s some things currently making you ramble like an old man?
I’ve noticed this trend as well. These far-left people hate the ultra rich so much that they are demonizing the whole idea of space tourism. It’s infuriating because just like nearly everything else, development costs are very high and only early adopters can really afford the latest bleeding edge products.
Do these people think that some 50" 4K TV today could be had for just a few hundred bucks, if they weren’t going for many thousands 5 years ago? That’s simply how the breakdown of costs works out. You need rich people to buy into something at low volumes, so the masses can afford those things at higher volumes but lower prices in the future.
Musk and Bezos absolutely are douchebags, but realize that without their space companies, we’d be decades away from regular space travel. I love NASA and all, but their goal is space exploration, not space tourism. We need the ultra rich to pay for the development of space tourism to drive down costs.
This is a horrible take. Absolutely awful, ultra-capitalist drivel. Why does every action or accomplishment have to be viewed through the lense of economic benefit? Not even holistic or utilitarian, just stakeholders and making the ultra-wealthy even wealthier… Who gives a fuck about space tourism? What the hell does that give us as a species?
The original comment about the importance of aerospace and space exploration is absolutely correct, but the idea that the end goal is space tourism is more than enough to make me turn against it also. The end goal is exploration, technological advancements, and a greater understanding of how our universe works. We should be taxing the ever-loving shit out of sociopaths like Musk and Bezos and feeding some of that in to NASA, and ESA, so scientists can make discoveries for us all, rather than businessmen making discoveries so they can exploit, gatekeep, and profit off it.
You can say that about tourism as a whole.
Exactly what I was thinking. Like what the fuck is space tourism going to do for us?
If you weren’t so utterly braindead, you’d understand that if the cost to bring tourists up to space drops, that drops the cost to bring more scientists and equipment up to space as well which would lead to a massive growth in discoveries.
Except that you are so caught up in your tiny little world of hate, that you can’t possibly expand it enough to understand that things cost money, and thus reducing what things cost, makes it that much better for institutions like NASA. One of the single biggest concerns of setting up a new space telescope or sending a rocket to a comet or a trip to Mars is money. It isn’t the only concern, but it is a massive one. Driving down those costs by increasing a launch schedule, trying out reusable rockets and investing a bunch to allow space tourism, helps everything space-related.
You’re not smart enough to come back here and admit how wrong you were.
Obviously things cost money, you patronising jackass, but pining all your hopes on CEOs and the ultra-wealthy to cut in to their own profit margins for the sake of humanity makes you more braindead than I am. It’s scientific innovation that drives discovery, cost reduction, and economic growth, not profit-hoarding conglomerates.
A large portion of our discoveries and inventions in the past fifty years or more are building on top of innovations made during the 60s, 70s, and 80s by NASA’s launches. Electrical engineering, structural engineering, communications and data, materials sciences, all needed to be advanced for space travel. Handing this responsibility off to SpaceX just leads to all the data, discoveries, innovations, and corollaries being patented, trademarked, and locked away to make sure no competitor can take advantage of it.
Shell knew climate change was going to devastate the planet over 50 years ago. Did they capitalise on that opportunity to develop green and renewable energy first and completely dominate that market for the betterment of themselves and the planet? No. They locked down that information, spread misinformation for decades, and made short term profiteering decisions to advance their own individual careers. Now we’re watching the planet slowly burn. So sure, let’s trust the corporate pigs.
My god you really do believe all this capitalist bullshit. Listen, things have material and labor inputs. Those material and labor inputs could be applied elsewhere, so there are opportunity costs. But the idea that the solution is to create extraneous services that can only be afforded by people who are hoarding our medium of exchange is missing the forest for the trees. If the real problem was that we didn’t have enough paper money to pay for shit, the communists have a great answer for that and it’s called abolishing private property. End of hoarding.
Now we have all the paper money we need because no one is hoarding it. And yet, and yet, we still have labor and material inputs and those inputs could be used elsewhere.
So NOW, under communism, we get to make decisions not based on what sociopathic hoarders want but instead based on what society needs. Do we need to figure out the safety challenges for gold plated toilets on Mars, or should we maybe focus on some other aspects of space research. Because if we follow what the sociopathic hoarders want, we’re not getting efficiency, we’re getting maximal waste.
I don’t think your conclusion is accurate. Space Tourism didn’t contribute to the first fifty years of technological advancement. You can’t use it as the basis for future unknown advancement.
That is true, the first fifty years are to be attributed to being better and faster than the other side just for the chance to be better at blowing them up.
There’s nothing like the motivation that comes from an actual rival.