this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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I love astronomy and astrophysics and the academic side of space research. However I am anti-space travel because we're already surrounded by artificiality: everywhere there's roads, power lines, introduced species, houses, wayward trash, the constant roar of traffic in the distance (and I live in a rural area!). Even the forests are not real: they're monoculture tree farms. Many stars are not real: they're satellites. But at least the moon is real, until we start building moon bases and mining facilities and stain its surface with light pollution. How can I be "pro-space" when everyone from space agencies to corporations seem so giddy to colonize the one mostly-untouched beautiful thing left--something that anyone anywhere on earth can gaze upon--and besmirch it too with humanity's influence?
Yeah I also think that during the climate crisis we need to be more focused on keeping earth habitable than finding a way off. Like I really do think that long term goals should include space colonization! And I support going to space more from time to time to better understand things. But I see space tourism and attempts to use space as a dick measuring contest and attempts to use space as a backup plan when our ecosystems collapse and no. I love space, I’m glad we did so much space research and I want some of it to continue. But how could we ever hope to build the long term space flights we’d need to get past earth when we can’t stabilize environment on the planet we evolved on. We can’t terraform mars until we can prevent the destruction of earth.
I guess it’s not that I oppose spending money going to space it’s that I think we need to be diligent with it and treat it as the scientific venture it is, not the capitalist and tourist venture many want it to be.
Exploring space will help with those problems. The way I see it if we can figure out how to settle Mars or the Moon, we will figure out better solutions for settling our own planet.
We are not going to colonize all of space, at least not anytime soon.