@elaterite @the5thColumnist @504DR @chris_hayes @mike the recent commercial manned ~spaceflight is mostly about conspicuous consumption, but a civilizational capacity for living in space can support much more. The science in freefall we can do in the ISS is a start. The ecosystem knowledge we’d need to make an orbital habitat that doesn’t need constant resupply would have applications in almost everything.
@elaterite @the5thColumnist @504DR @chris_hayes @mike it’s not developing that capacity that’s wasteful, it’s allocating all of our resources to systems that destroy our lifesupport ecosystems on “spaceship earth” and deprive nearly all of our people of the means to seek anything more than survival. If we stopped doing that, then we could build most of the things that today we can only dream of, and I don’t think that’s a waste