5 ms·

Eh, the future of space travel and exploration is very bright.

jacquesm 3y ago
I'm not so sure about that. Humanity is turning ever more inward and education is getting worse and worse with the peak somewhere in the 1950's. If we have a bright future in space travel none of the countries with launch capability today look like they will be the ones driving it.
- fsmv 3y ago
  It's not the countries anymore. The future is starship.
- manicennui 3y ago
  There are many, many unmanned missions happening now making amazing discoveries. Cassini was nothing short of mind blowing. I'm somewhat sympathetic to your claims, and I wish more people were intellectually curious, but there are very likely more people in absolute numbers performing scientific research now than ever.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    I'll believe it when I see it. For now the Voyagers are the only thing out there that are expanding our envelope of influence, everything else is just data and will eventually evaporate. Think about it from a non-solar system perspective. Nothing we've done since Voyager has had any effect outside of our solar system and if we don't change our attitude it is quite likely that nothing ever will. Everything else we've done will long term only be a little bit of radiation, some of it structured but so far below the noise floor it will be unrecoverable.
    - yreg 3y ago
      That's a strangely high bar. As if Voyager had some nonnegligible effect outside of the Solar system.
      - jacquesm 3y ago
        If something like Voyager would arrive from outside our Solar system it would be the event of the millenium.
        kadoban 3y ago
        There's every possibility that neither Voyager will ever arrive anywhere ever again. If they do, it's going to be after our galaxy collides with another, and the place they arrive at may not even exist yet. https://www.space.com/predicting-voyager-golden-records-distant-future https://www.space.com/predicting-voyager-golden-records-dist...
        lIl-IIIl 3y ago
        While the Milky Way galaxy is on course to collide with Andromeda galaxy in 4.5 billion years, that will not make Voyager's arrival anywhere more likely, since the stars are far enough apart that they will not be affected. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda%E2%80%93Milky_Way_collision https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda%E2%80%93Milky_Way_...
        kadoban 3y ago
        My understanding is that it just makes it less predictable once that happens. We don't know exactly where all those stars are, and it gets chaotic once they start interacting. It probably is a _bit_ more likely as well, you suddenly have ~2x the stars near you and some of them are moving much faster relative to you, it's just not a sure thing by any means.
        yreg 3y ago
        Well so would be picking up radio signals like the ones we emit. And while the probability that someone will be able to pick these signals up is low, it is still almost infinitely greater than that of someone finding one of the Voyagers out there.
    - Robotbeat 3y ago
      New Horizons is also on its way out of the solar system, and it is still potentially encountering celestial bodies out there.
    - matwood 3y ago
      IMO, throwing out more Voyager like probes is not really the next step in humanities evolution towards space. It was a good step in the 70s, but now we're working to the lay the foundation and hope that one day space travel can be nearly routine as air travel is today. Higher volume of launches, bringing down the costs, etc... will allow hundreds and thousands of Voyagers to be sent out aimed at specific, distant locations. You may dislike Musk, but SpaceX is pushing getting to space forward.
    - telotortium 3y ago
      Launching more Voyagers is like tossing heavy metal disks into a random deep-sea part of the ocean and hoping one of them lands next to a benthic creature that can miraculously appreciate its significance. Not only is God more plausible, so is the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
      - jacquesm 3y ago
        God and the Flying Spaghetti Monster aren't real. But Voyager is.
        mlrtime 3y ago
        You missed the pun.
- dotnet00 3y ago
  I don't see where you're getting this from? It's so blatant that things are only improving, the US is running so many high profile missions, SpaceX alone has launched almost 100 times this year, Starship testing is proceeding well, we're reasonably on track for a long term human presence on the Moon, we're gradually preparing for Mars, China is managing to maintain its own space station, India is closing in on its own crewed spaceflight capability, South Korea achieved orbit last year and so on. The only people saying that the countries with launch capability right now will not be the ones driving space travel are those who have (ironically) paid zero attention to the developments in progress.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    What I'm getting this from? Reading the news for the last 40 years or so. Watching the new generation and their education levels. Seeing how science is now 'the enemy' rather than the future. > SpaceX alone has launched almost 100 times this year, Starship testing is proceeding well, we're reasonably on track for a long term human presence on the Moon, we're gradually preparing for Mars, China is managing to maintain its own space station, India is closing in on its own crewed spaceflight capability, South Korea achieved orbit last year and so on. Yes, we had all that and then some. Somewhere between the 60's and the 80's we took a detour and since then we've been losing momentum ever faster. I'm not one of the believers in Elon Musk, his Mars Colony is just a way to get people to do what he wants them to do. China has so many internal issues that I highly doubt they will be able to sustain any long term efforts and India may well be the future, though it would have to deal with a lot of internal problems as well if it is to happen. South Korea 'achieved orbit' on a SpaceX rocket, not by their own power. You can label all of this as progress and in terms of volume launched into space it is impressive, but it doesn't move the needle in terms of actual progress towards anything much larger. It's like the software people with 30 times one year of experience, we're getting really good at redoing the years between 1939 and 1969. But we haven't progressed to 1990 even once. 1977: peak humanity.
    - kortilla 3y ago
      [flagged]
- akokanka 3y ago
  China Will. Their education is mint. Current US education model is too soft and weak. Perfect for war meatballs not enough for space travel.
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  Just a reminder that the department of education did not exist until 1980. Disagree on the trajectory of space travel though.
- sharma-arjun 3y ago
  This is only true in the western world. Globally, education has been trending upwards, at least until the pandemic. What is happening is a noticeable decline in the levels of trust in education and science. Generally, in the rich world, education used to be assumed to be a necessarily good allocation of resources, and whether you accessed it or not was largely a function of your wealth. Now, in some pockets of the world, this is no longer true. I also think that space travel will only see a revival in public interest if it provides viable economic value or becomes a renewed front for competing nationalism, neither of which appear to be extremely likely in the short term. Up to that point, I think it'll continue to be a playground for billionaires.
AndrewKemendo 3y ago
For who but the gilded?
- dotnet00 3y ago
  You could've said the same for air travel in the early days.
  - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
    Well, we don’t have great figures on this but there are some estimates that only 20% of the human population has ever flown on an airplane. That seems like it’s a pretty heavily “gilded only” type of thing especially if you look at percentage distributions of flight frequency and by class.
    - tobyjsullivan 3y ago
      Where are you setting the bar for something to be commonly accessible? Only about 60% of the world’s population has reliable access to clean drinking water. 18% of people own a car. Compared to those numbers, 20% of people flying seems downright common - especially considering many people likely never fly simply because they have nowhere worth going (relative to cost).
      - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
        Yeah, it’s unconscionable that that such a small percentage of the population have access to clean, drinking water, given its triviality and creating So yes 100% of the population having clean water seems like the low bar As to flying, it’s probably good there aren’t more flyers
BizarreByte 3y ago
There remains a fairly good chance that Voyager will be the last surviving thing in the universe made by humans. It may not be our pinnacle, but it might be our legacy.
- basementcat 3y ago
  Pioneer 10, 11, New Horizons and some upper stages would like to have a word. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_objects_leaving_the_Solar_System https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_objects_l...
dclowd9901 3y ago
Where do you find your optimism? Looks to be turning into yet another cynical cash grab to me.

I'm not so sure about that. Humanity is turning ever more inward and education is getting worse and worse with the peak somewhere in the 1950's. If we have a bright future in space travel none of the countries with launch capability today look like they will be the ones driving it.

fsmv 3y ago
It's not the countries anymore. The future is starship.
manicennui 3y ago
There are many, many unmanned missions happening now making amazing discoveries. Cassini was nothing short of mind blowing. I'm somewhat sympathetic to your claims, and I wish more people were intellectually curious, but there are very likely more people in absolute numbers performing scientific research now than ever.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  I'll believe it when I see it. For now the Voyagers are the only thing out there that are expanding our envelope of influence, everything else is just data and will eventually evaporate. Think about it from a non-solar system perspective. Nothing we've done since Voyager has had any effect outside of our solar system and if we don't change our attitude it is quite likely that nothing ever will. Everything else we've done will long term only be a little bit of radiation, some of it structured but so far below the noise floor it will be unrecoverable.
  - yreg 3y ago
    That's a strangely high bar. As if Voyager had some nonnegligible effect outside of the Solar system.
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      If something like Voyager would arrive from outside our Solar system it would be the event of the millenium.
      - kadoban 3y ago
        There's every possibility that neither Voyager will ever arrive anywhere ever again. If they do, it's going to be after our galaxy collides with another, and the place they arrive at may not even exist yet. https://www.space.com/predicting-voyager-golden-records-distant-future https://www.space.com/predicting-voyager-golden-records-dist...
        lIl-IIIl 3y ago
        While the Milky Way galaxy is on course to collide with Andromeda galaxy in 4.5 billion years, that will not make Voyager's arrival anywhere more likely, since the stars are far enough apart that they will not be affected. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda%E2%80%93Milky_Way_collision https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda%E2%80%93Milky_Way_...
        kadoban 3y ago
        My understanding is that it just makes it less predictable once that happens. We don't know exactly where all those stars are, and it gets chaotic once they start interacting. It probably is a _bit_ more likely as well, you suddenly have ~2x the stars near you and some of them are moving much faster relative to you, it's just not a sure thing by any means.
      - yreg 3y ago
        Well so would be picking up radio signals like the ones we emit. And while the probability that someone will be able to pick these signals up is low, it is still almost infinitely greater than that of someone finding one of the Voyagers out there.
  - Robotbeat 3y ago
    New Horizons is also on its way out of the solar system, and it is still potentially encountering celestial bodies out there.
  - matwood 3y ago
    IMO, throwing out more Voyager like probes is not really the next step in humanities evolution towards space. It was a good step in the 70s, but now we're working to the lay the foundation and hope that one day space travel can be nearly routine as air travel is today. Higher volume of launches, bringing down the costs, etc... will allow hundreds and thousands of Voyagers to be sent out aimed at specific, distant locations. You may dislike Musk, but SpaceX is pushing getting to space forward.
  - telotortium 3y ago
    Launching more Voyagers is like tossing heavy metal disks into a random deep-sea part of the ocean and hoping one of them lands next to a benthic creature that can miraculously appreciate its significance. Not only is God more plausible, so is the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      God and the Flying Spaghetti Monster aren't real. But Voyager is.
      - mlrtime 3y ago
        You missed the pun.
dotnet00 3y ago
I don't see where you're getting this from? It's so blatant that things are only improving, the US is running so many high profile missions, SpaceX alone has launched almost 100 times this year, Starship testing is proceeding well, we're reasonably on track for a long term human presence on the Moon, we're gradually preparing for Mars, China is managing to maintain its own space station, India is closing in on its own crewed spaceflight capability, South Korea achieved orbit last year and so on. The only people saying that the countries with launch capability right now will not be the ones driving space travel are those who have (ironically) paid zero attention to the developments in progress.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  What I'm getting this from? Reading the news for the last 40 years or so. Watching the new generation and their education levels. Seeing how science is now 'the enemy' rather than the future. > SpaceX alone has launched almost 100 times this year, Starship testing is proceeding well, we're reasonably on track for a long term human presence on the Moon, we're gradually preparing for Mars, China is managing to maintain its own space station, India is closing in on its own crewed spaceflight capability, South Korea achieved orbit last year and so on. Yes, we had all that and then some. Somewhere between the 60's and the 80's we took a detour and since then we've been losing momentum ever faster. I'm not one of the believers in Elon Musk, his Mars Colony is just a way to get people to do what he wants them to do. China has so many internal issues that I highly doubt they will be able to sustain any long term efforts and India may well be the future, though it would have to deal with a lot of internal problems as well if it is to happen. South Korea 'achieved orbit' on a SpaceX rocket, not by their own power. You can label all of this as progress and in terms of volume launched into space it is impressive, but it doesn't move the needle in terms of actual progress towards anything much larger. It's like the software people with 30 times one year of experience, we're getting really good at redoing the years between 1939 and 1969. But we haven't progressed to 1990 even once. 1977: peak humanity.
  - kortilla 3y ago
    [flagged]
akokanka 3y ago
China Will. Their education is mint. Current US education model is too soft and weak. Perfect for war meatballs not enough for space travel.
nonethewiser 3y ago
Just a reminder that the department of education did not exist until 1980. Disagree on the trajectory of space travel though.
sharma-arjun 3y ago
This is only true in the western world. Globally, education has been trending upwards, at least until the pandemic. What is happening is a noticeable decline in the levels of trust in education and science. Generally, in the rich world, education used to be assumed to be a necessarily good allocation of resources, and whether you accessed it or not was largely a function of your wealth. Now, in some pockets of the world, this is no longer true. I also think that space travel will only see a revival in public interest if it provides viable economic value or becomes a renewed front for competing nationalism, neither of which appear to be extremely likely in the short term. Up to that point, I think it'll continue to be a playground for billionaires.

AndrewKemendo 3y ago

For who but the gilded?

dotnet00 3y ago
You could've said the same for air travel in the early days.
- AndrewKemendo 3y ago
  Well, we don’t have great figures on this but there are some estimates that only 20% of the human population has ever flown on an airplane. That seems like it’s a pretty heavily “gilded only” type of thing especially if you look at percentage distributions of flight frequency and by class.
  - tobyjsullivan 3y ago
    Where are you setting the bar for something to be commonly accessible? Only about 60% of the world’s population has reliable access to clean drinking water. 18% of people own a car. Compared to those numbers, 20% of people flying seems downright common - especially considering many people likely never fly simply because they have nowhere worth going (relative to cost).
    - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
      Yeah, it’s unconscionable that that such a small percentage of the population have access to clean, drinking water, given its triviality and creating So yes 100% of the population having clean water seems like the low bar As to flying, it’s probably good there aren’t more flyers

BizarreByte 3y ago

There remains a fairly good chance that Voyager will be the last surviving thing in the universe made by humans. It may not be our pinnacle, but it might be our legacy.

basementcat 3y ago
Pioneer 10, 11, New Horizons and some upper stages would like to have a word. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_objects_leaving_the_Solar_System https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_objects_l...

dclowd9901 3y ago

Where do you find your optimism? Looks to be turning into yet another cynical cash grab to me.