Capitalism is not the right system for Space Exploration

reply to post by coolcatt


Capitalism/Feudalism/Imperialism is very effective at making weapons, ergo capitalism is the best system to "exploit" space. Awesome.

Unfortunately, capitalism if left unchecked will eventually extinguish all higher life forms on the planet. Can't have it all I guess.

May I ask what the heck our rovers have been doing on Mars if it isn't exploration???

Are they mining gold there?

reply to post by inverslyproportional


And now, we have the ability to Identify the human genome. By tracing it back and forward in time, there is evidence that explain the origin of the creation story from the book of genesis, found when they studied the human genetic material.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Originally posted by MarioOnTheFly
reply to post by Atzil321

 

How do you explain all the exploration and discovery of the past 50 years then? Almost exclusively carried out by the United States.

As the OP already established. Concerning space exploration...the only thing that was done was over 40 years ago. Considering that we landed people on the moon in 1969...in 2012...(almost 50 years later) we have unmanned probes on Mars. Not much of a progress if you ask me, in exploration context.

We are mostly doing surveillance...no real space exploration projects. The moon is so close...we should have some bases out there already...if for nothing else...than for easier exploration further in to space.

honestly all this kind of talk, so tell me would establishing a presence in space with no understanding of anything in space be better? do you really wish to send people out there in ignorance just to build fancy bases? we've done far more than send a few probes to mars, our "surveillance" has allowed us to discover asteroids, solar systems, planets and moons, it has let us know where water and ice is, what dangers might be out there, it has helped make planned future exploration safer and more focused, allowed us to map the universe, made improvements to rocketry and navigation, i could go on and on but i think you get the picture.

what is "real space exploration" to you, blindly reaching farther and farther into space in total ignorance? what little value is life to you that you think carelessly risking lives to do fancy(pointless) space projects in ignorance is a better way to do things?

your issue is with people not sharing the same ambition towards space, not being as one in mind. why force your ambition and desire on others if they want other things in general? i desire a great many things about developing and exploring space like yourself but most others really don't care about space or science, we are a relative minority in our desire, that's why so little is dedicated towards it, most people only care about it when there's a great success or something fancy to show off, not so much the getting there or the progression afterwards.

reply to post by MarioOnTheFly


Hubble...

Kepler planet hunter.

Landing a robot on mars.

New Horizons probe (10 years and more than 3 billion miles to pluto/outer solar system)

Mars Surface HiRISE

SOHO

voyager

This list could just go on and on....

reply to post by Atzil321


It only shows us, that we aren't even able to leave our solar system. That it is only costing a fortune, and that we aren't much further then some observation we've made and learned from our technological advancement, we aren't the only planet around. More important even, we are one of countless possible worlds.

However, we don't seem to be able to rise above greed, and fear. Greed what gets worse in a capitalistic society, and fear, because of our own species, cause they got funny ideas, or a different skin color... Which causes us to hate.
Even worse, fear is making us better to manipulate, for greedy people's best interests.

If we would have a group mentality, like we are all one. When that happens, then we will be able to make are dreams come true.
It happened before, and it's documented even.

reply to post by Xenoglossy


To be honest I dont think Capitalism is the problem...

While your examples are valid, the issue remains in how technology advanced throughout the yers, noting that Capitalism has had better results in technology advancement.

I think the shattered government planet we have now is a bad system to explore space.

I think if we are to leave this planet, it should be as a united planet and not subsets of it.

Colonization or Extraterrestrial contact should be done as citizens from Earth and not as citizens from Russia, The United States or the Peopel's Republic of China.

reply to post by Xenoglossy


Yes, Soviet Russia had a lot of firsts.

Name one country that has done more in space exploration than the US in the last couple of decades. It is neither Russia nor China.

It's the U.S. -- in number of missions executed, research and data returned, pretty much any way you want to measure it.

The future of space exploration will be private, and there's where capitalism comes in.

IMO

reply to post by Xenoglossy

The bottom line is that the government (nor anyone else) has the right to take my money by force (taxes) and use it on space exploration or most things for that matter.

If YOU think that space exploration is a good idea, thats GREAT. Donate your own money to the cause.

Dont force me to.

Simple.

Originally posted by ButterCookie

Originally posted by inverslyproportional

Originally posted by Sinter Klaas
reply to post by Xenoglossy

 

I agree.

We will only be capable of space exploration, if we can work together, as a single entity.

I've got lots of reasons that this is what it takes, and reason to believe, it got stopped dead in it's tracks, before we even existed.

But that's another story.

Tower of babel, thats the reason why.

" Look at these men, they are of one language, and one purpose, there is nothing they desire that they will not accomplish."

It was way in the "way back", long before we remember today, that we were sundered from eachother, fo the purpose of keeping us busy fighting ourselves, and thus keeping us from our rightful place in the pantheon of the universe.

We men, we all dream of being GODS, because we SHOULD be.

Only WE are stopping our ascent to the heavens, only WE are capable of impeding OUR progress. The human mind knows no bounds, men have only the chains they place on themselves.

Sad but true.......

True story........

Absolutely!!

A lot of people may not understand what you are saying, but I do.

The Tower of Babal incident described the humans working together as one toward a goal of space exploration, in which the 'gods' (aka Extraterrestrials) did not agree with.

"Look at them. We must go down and confound their tongues..."

I am glad that it was not lost on all, you obviously understand exactly what I was saying.

I am not religious, in the sense that I believe a "GOD" is all powerful and created everything, I just believe the biblical stories have historical merit, and that there is much truth, about our origins and ancient past locked away in their tomes.

They fear our abilities. Our boundless minds, our unbreakable spirit, our ability to overcome any and all obsticles.

So they used the only thing that could keep us down forever against us, ourselves.

They turned our focus inward, concentrated on what men could do to men, instead of what man could do in the heavens.

We really are, and should be GODS, we arent because we would rather spend our time worrying about defending ourselves from our own brothers.

Fear not, the singularity is coming, we will be one again.

The only question though, is will there just be another sundering, like the events we see playing out today for instance.

Always a wedge is being driven between us all, always focusing on our differences, never on our similarities, that is very curious to me.

Why would a human always try to divide his own people?

Would a human do this?

If not, who would? And for what purpose?

reply to post by phishyblankwaters


It is nevertheless interesting that it did not bother them to have them possibly orbiting the moon or stay at the moons surface but it did the Russians (the first in lunar orbit and mulch everything else from woman cosmonaut to first lunar robot).

Capitalism or the economic system is not the problem, the problem is political conviction (backbone) and multi-generational vision (China), the economic and ownership right would help motivation (the international law against claims, has had a huge impact in the lack of motivation) Imagine if the US could claim the lunar surface using the same legal system in use on Earth (the fact that they manage to put this into law at the time they were seeming in the forefront of the technical capability is stranger than fiction, it would have been like Spain seeking an international agreement with the other nations to avoid claims after proving the existence of the Americas and its capability to reach them..) it is not only strange but out of character. We are talking about the US a nation that has been about expanding bellicosely from the Spanish war (Cuba, Philippines) till today...

Compare education, disease research, space exploration, etc, to the US military budget. Imagine we allocated those kind of resources and energy to space exploration what we could achieve....what we would have already achieved. We have our priorities skewed. Or at least, the people of influence.

Greed would be great fuel for space exploration, if only we were greedy for exploration.

Originally posted by ButterCookie

Originally posted by inverslyproportional

Originally posted by Sinter Klaas
reply to post by Xenoglossy

 

I agree.

We will only be capable of space exploration, if we can work together, as a single entity.

I've got lots of reasons that this is what it takes, and reason to believe, it got stopped dead in it's tracks, before we even existed.

But that's another story.

Tower of babel, thats the reason why.

" Look at these men, they are of one language, and one purpose, there is nothing they desire that they will not accomplish."

It was way in the "way back", long before we remember today, that we were sundered from eachother, fo the purpose of keeping us busy fighting ourselves, and thus keeping us from our rightful place in the pantheon of the universe.

We men, we all dream of being GODS, because we SHOULD be.

Only WE are stopping our ascent to the heavens, only WE are capable of impeding OUR progress. The human mind knows no bounds, men have only the chains they place on themselves.

Sad but true.......

True story........

Absolutely!!

A lot of people may not understand what you are saying, but I do.

The Tower of Babal incident described the humans working together as one toward a goal of space exploration, in which the 'gods' (aka Extraterrestrials) did not agree with.

"Look at them. We must go down and confound their tongues..."

Absolutely, I couldn't agree more.
This fits quite well with the other recordings of genetic manipulation of humans. Not that it is directly a genetic thing, but I think such a mass rewriting of languages in brains would take similar levels of biological tech. Or a massive slaughter of populations with a heavy force to populate and control language learning in many geographically separated areas. (the former seems more likely from a highly advanced alien society that seems to prefer having others do their work for them)

reply to post by namehere

your issue is with people not sharing the same ambition towards space, not being as one in mind. why force your ambition and desire on others if they want other things in general?

It's not about what we want...it's about what needs to be done. Our population is rising. In 50-100 years time, resources on this "rock" probably won't be sufficient to sustain the civilization in it's current form. It's about the species. Unless some catastrophic event happens and the population decreases...


So you see...it is the only thing that really matters...all those "other things in general" are just a distraction from the real issue.

But don't get too anxious about all this...I'm simply pipe dreaming...

Originally posted by gladtobehere
reply to post by Xenoglossy

 

The bottom line is that the government (nor anyone else) has the right to take my money by force (taxes) and use it on space exploration or most things for that matter.

If YOU think that space exploration is a good idea, thats GREAT. Donate your own money to the cause.

Dont force me to.

Simple.

That's exactly the reasoning that will lead to us never accomplishing anything which doesn't promise immediate profits.

Also: check out this pic, you might find it enlightening

Originally posted by Xenoglossy
Once the USA accomplished that and it became obvious that Russia couldn't do the same, the whole reason for the US-space exploration collapsed.

And the soviets were too sad to send their own man to the moon :3

Anyway, a modern example would be COMMUNIST China. They are pressing for a manned moon mission and are rapidly advancing their space technology.
Could USA beat them if they wanted to? Most likely, yes.
Will they ever beat China? Most likely, no, never! Did you hear that? NEVER!
The NASA's president servers at the presidents' pleasure, and NASA's policy has (or is going to) be changed very soon because the congress is cancelling the asteroid mission (all the effort into it goes *POOF*) and has cut their budget whilst setting a target to get to the moon. In 2-4 years they will change policy again, and all progress will disspear once again.

The only incentive for going to space (in a capitalist system) is asteroid mining. Planetary Resources is funded by billionaires and has support from google, so that might work. It is also going to launch a public ARKYD-100 space telescope for $1 million. Although it is publicly funded, they will be paying for the launch. A moon depot may be required to get materials to earth cheaper. It might be economical to have a couple of people up there, since that would actually be more efficient than 100% robot operated resource depot. That paves way for space tourism and valaa you got a capitalist space enterprise.

This also shows that crowd-funding for space exploration WORKS! Just look at Copenhagen Suborbitals. They are developing new, CHEAP systems. Their yearly budget is around...not more than 100,000. So eventually, it is possible. When China gets a man on the moon, what happens? Will they retreat to LEO? Perahaps a capitalist system is better than a communist system in the long term. Also, don't forget that although the Chinese space budget might be 3 billion, it is the same as if NASAs' budget was 300 billion since things are so cheap in China. Not bad quality either. I have a feeling the Chinese export the crap and keep the best stuff closer to themselves.

This is one area where truth seems to be in the middle.

On the one hand, there would be very little manned spaceflight without public money. There is no profit to be made in space.

But we can also see how inefficient, bureaucratic and stagnant state agencies are. Under their reign, humanity did not achieve much in manned spaceflight since the Apollo days. And the future looks bright for private space companies such as SpaceX, Bigelow or SpaceDev.

The conclusion is, space exploration is best served by public-private parterships, where the public provides funds and maybe some basic research, and private sector provides the execution of the space program.

reply to post by Xenoglossy


I don't doubt that an economic system plays a role in the exploration of space. Sure, all sorts of earthly and human factors come into play to hinder us. Politics and economics and other concerns are only a part. It is complicated.

I liken our current exploration of space to ancient mans first ventures into travel by water. At first, man would only travel on rivers. Going into the open ocean was suicide. As technology and knowledge increased man was able to go into the ocean and travel by staying within sight of the coasts. Once again, as technology and knowledge increased man felt it safe to travel away from the coasts. Finally, man developed the technology and knowledge to cross the oceans. It was a process that took thousands of years.

Now, I don't think it will take thousands of years to master space travel. However, we are in the infancy of this venture. We are like the first ancient men that decided to travel on rivers. We have a long way to go before we master the art of traveling the solar system(river). Much longer before we can actually cross the galaxy(ocean).

reply to post by DarthMuerte


Fully agree, if the capital finance companies though they could make a return on something that involved blasting people into outer space, and selling light bulbs to martians, they would do it, no question.

HOWEVER. and it is a BIG however. Capital venture is driven by risk. Risk of failure, risk of loss, risk of death etc. At the moment, the modes of transport and the possibility of obtaining the ROI on any such endeavor, considering the current (massive) costs involved in space travel, will (for the time being) forgo any such investment attempts.

This is why we need the likes of Branson. he is not a capitalist, the people who work for him are. He is a modern day captain Scott, who lives for the adventure. If he and hos boy can get that Virgin Galaxy thing off the ground, in a safe and reliable way (which reduced risk) you will start to see more and more captial investment heading in that direction.

reply to post by Xenoglossy

Government is a gigantic failure.

No other entity has a history of consistent failures and still allowed to exist. They destroy or bankrupt everything they touch from social security to student loans to the value of the dollar. You name it, they've ruined it.

There is no arguing that government is overflowing with waste, corruption and inefficiency. Yet people with your belief system insist that we give them more responsibilities and more of our money.

Again, if you want a space program (or anything else for that matter), find a like minded group of individuals and donate your money to the cause. Do not force anyone else to.

As far as your link, its a wonder that Americans were able to achieve anything without government invading every aspect of our lives.