one month passes...
a friend of mine posted this, based on an essay from author David Gerr0ld, and ugh, I wanna be sick. dude has been a great friend to me for years, is a Trump-hating liberal, but man, this is such.....*vomit*:
"I am fairly disappointed in some of you.
No, this is not me being snarky. I'm serious.
A lot of you love sci-fi movies, and stories about the future. And yet, some of you sound like you've all been programmed by John Birch Society, go back to the 1950s, this is not God's will, anti-technology luddites.
Yes, it's funny that the vehicle Jeff Bezos took to the edge of space looks like a penis.
But so many of you mocking him for it, as if the entire thing that he did ends now that he took his ride, and it was all for the gratification of a billionaire's ego.
Yes, he's an asshole. Yes, he should pay his workers better. Henry Ford was an anti-semite. Thomas Edison was a thief. Gene Roddenberry had a bunch of affairs. Guess what, sometimes the people who push our society forward are assholes.
This is not about the fact that a really rich dude did something selfish to show he had a big dick. Yes, that's part of it, but this thing doesn't end with him, and almost every one of you is missing that.
This is about the amazing possibility of space flight, and what it means for the journey that our species needs to take.
Even the most conservative estimates on NASA from the 1960s and 1970s show that every dollar spent on the space program brought back eight to ten dollars worth of investment in the rest of the economy.
You use any of these things?
Memory foam mattresses
Scratch resistant glasses
Baby formula
Dustbusters
UV blocking sunglasses
Radial tires
Freeze dried fruit
Foil blankets
Invisalign
Solar cells
Pool Purification Systems
Home Insulation
Wireless headphones
CAT Scans
Computer mice
Camera phones
Portable computers
GPS
oh, and yeah, THE INTERNET.
Thank the space program. None of those existed until NASA and their partners had to invent them.
(And note that there was tremendous criticism of the Apollo program at the time for wasting money.)
Look what's happened to our space program from the 1980s to the 2010s. Less progress, less dreams, less vision. Private industry, rather than government, with goals, is obviously a part of our future. We've seen just how badly the government handles long term vision, especially when the GOP runs it.
We needed public investment initially to get us over and through the dangerous beginnings in the truly massive investment at the beginning. But now that the technology is more available, private investment is where we will get the diversity of applications that public infrastructure does not bring. Or at least does not bring easily.
The great inventors and progressive forces of the past were also likely the "billionaires" of their time in many cases. They had the CAPACITY to create and achieve - however it was possible for them. The same is happening now.
Yes, space tourism will be a thing for the rich for a while, but so was air travel. Seriously, until the late 1960s it was prohibitively expensive for anyone but the very well off to fly. (The average person in the 1950s would pay up to 5% of his yearly salary for a chance to fly one way from NYC to Chicago.)
Having private industry investing in space will create competition to provide lower prices and increased services — and that will be a good thing in the long run, for everyone.
Having more access to space means we can have more access to scientific progress.
We can talk about employers paying a living wage and
billionaires paying their fair share of taxes. Those are all valid conversations to have.
But it's also important to recognize that when billionaires invest in grand projects like this, it's not just a dick-measuring contest, it's not just a giant thrill-ride, it's a genuine expression of human ambition.
When people are hurting to pay rent and you don't go to the doctor because of the cost, I get why this shit can make you mad.
It's easy to see it as wealth-flaunting. It's easy to resent it. Especially when the long-term benefits are still beyond this horizon. The benefits of the Apollo program weren't immediately obvious either.
But technology does trickle down. And as a result of our investment in space last century, we have tools available to us today that will make it possible to design and build a better future for ourselves and our children.
As Alvin Toffler noted in his book Future Shock, not only is the rate of change accelerating, but the rate of acceleration is accelerating. One small example: In less than 20 years, we have gone from NTSC to 4K television. Microprocessors have made most of our machines far more efficient. And our computers give us near-global communication skills. 20 years ago, we could imagine this stuff, but people had to design, develop, engineer, and market these advances. The smartphone is less than 15 years old, but we not only take it for granted, most of us can't live without it.
So ... yeah. The privatization of space is one more piece of evidence that our technological abilities are advancing at an incredible rate.
And one more thing.
"He needs to spend that money on Earth!"
Um, he did.
His company created thousands of jobs — designers, researchers, engineers, developers, testers, and all the support systems and people running them necessary to test and retest every piece of necessary technology. And that made it necessary for the creation of additional support systems to create the spaces for all these people to work, designing, developing, engineering, testing and retesting. All of those jobs were filled by qualified, dedicated people.
And they're not just doing it for joy rides. They're doing it to demonstrate that space is accessible.
Those jobs that they created, all that expertise will be applied to creating the next generations of reusable craft which will make access to orbit easier and less expensive. It will enable larger payloads. It will enable additional explorations of the moon and probably Mars as well. This is the foundation on which future development will be built.
I would have hoped that those of you who grew up watching Star Trek would see past the simple media narrative of rich guys = bad and recognize that progress is sometimes made by people we don't like. And be excited for what this could mean.
― making splashes at Dan Flashes (Neanderthal), Thursday, 22 July 2021 14:48 (two years ago) link