Is it really necessary to send humans to those places just to get the knock-on benefits? Couldn’t we do those things directly, without going there?

It seems to me that, today, those who have the money to spend on these endeavors would only do so if there were perceived short-term benefits to themselves. That means they plan to exploit the resources, or increase their own power somehow.

I know the good engineers that make this happen are doing it for the challenge and in the pursuit of knowledge, and I know that’s why we poors support it, but that doesn’t “pay the bills.” What is the motivation behind the money? Why are they really doing this?

  • bitteroldcoot@piefed.social
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    5 days ago

    In the case of musk and his billionaire friends, they just want to escape the consequences of their actions and become above the law. Basically they want to be a king, with no laws restraining them.

    • half_built_pyramids@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      It’s also a good distraction, doubt they actually think people will live on the moon or Mars

      Someone else pointed out that you could set off every nuke that has ever existed and the earth would still be more hospitable than mars

      To repeat myself a little, it’s all a distraction from making things better here, like the bezoes quote about getting 10,000 Einsteins in the future by expanding in the solar system, and it’s like dude, you might have 100 Einsteins pissing in bottles in your warehouse right now but they can’t afford school or groceries or rent

      • Soggy@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        Or in the words of Stephen Jay Gould,

        “I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”

      • NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        The Moon and Mars are not a distraction. It’s been a Nasa goal for a long time to go to Mars. Politics has stopped us from doing it for a very long time. We’re lucky we got to put probes around it and rovers on the ground.

      • Cousin Mose@lemmy.hogru.ch
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        4 days ago

        getting 10,000 Einsteins in the future by expanding in the solar system

        This is incredibly random but I’ve been wondering lately what might happen if we colonized a place where comparatively speaking time moves much faster than on Earth.

        In theory you could bring back years of advancement in a shorter timespan, but this is obviously just a pipe dream.

        • pulsewidth@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          Interstellar is just a movie, mate. There is no such planet, time passes at the same rate everywhere - ie the caesium standard.

          Time dilation is a thing, but as far as I’m aware it’s not possible to travel someplace, pass any greater amount of time, and then return as though less time had passed - that’s time travel. It’s theoretically impossible, at least with current technology and understanding of relativity. Great movie though.

          Edit: downvote if you don’t understand that time dilation isn’t magic, and you can’t travel back through time.

          • illi@sh.itjust.works
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            4 days ago

            As far as we know, traveling through time backwards is impossible.

            Traveling through time forwards is very much possible though - in fact we are doing exactly that right now!

            • pulsewidth@lemmy.world
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              4 days ago

              I explicitly said ‘return back as though less time had passed’ - i.e. backwards time travel - was theoretically impossible.

              I never claimed travel forward though time was not.

              • illi@sh.itjust.works
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                4 days ago

                It’s not about returning back in time - it’s just one place would travel forward slower than another place.

                • pulsewidth@lemmy.world
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                  4 days ago

                  You’re telling me what I was talking about? Returning back in time is exactly the comment I was responding to.

                  This is incredibly random but I’ve been wondering lately what might happen if we colonized a place where comparatively speaking time moves much faster than on Earth.

                  In theory you could bring back years of advancement in a shorter timespan, but this is obviously just a pipe dream.

                  This goal is impossible for the reasons I explained.

                  • AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works
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                    4 days ago

                    You need to work on reading comprehension.

                    The concept being brought up is that we could compress years or centuries of research into a small time frame and ‘bring it back’ to our world, not go back in time. Obviously nonsense, but not actually physically impossible.

          • Cousin Mose@lemmy.hogru.ch
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            4 days ago

            I didn’t get the idea from the movie, I’m talking about how time passes differently depending on the pull of gravity; and that’s why I kind of alluded to this being theoretical at best. I don’t actually think it’s feasible to find an enormous planet just to have time pass more quickly.

            • hornywarthogfart@sh.itjust.works
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              4 days ago

              The problem is that your return to Earth would slowly move you back down the dilation losing the gains.

              You can take two routes to a restaurant. One is very short but curvy and has a slow speed limit. The other is a really long straight shot with high speed. You can think of your scenario as such a case where even though the straight path is longer, it takes the same “time” to get to the restaurant.

              You would be taking the faster, longer route while Earth takes the windy slow route but as you arrived back you would still be in sync.

              Edit to add: Spacetime is a single thing which is why the above behavior the case.

              • AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works
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                4 days ago

                That’s not how time dilation works. Astronauts that have spent significant time on the ISS have experienced — however marginally — less time than their identical twins on Earth.

            • pulsewidth@lemmy.world
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              4 days ago

              Yep, and as I said, the return trip with all the rapidly evolved super-geniuses would be the impossible part of the plan.

              You can’t travel someplace else - experience say 100 years, and then travel back to your place of departure and have had only 20 years passed. That’s fundamentally impossible.

              • AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works
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                4 days ago

                have had only 20 years passed

                Have had only 20 years pass in the local frame of reference, not the frame of the evolved super geniuses. Thus everybody on earth gets to enjoy the benefits, if there are any.

      • MisterD@lemmy.ca
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        4 days ago

        The rich don’t need to live there. The just need to get there ASAP. If they can’t live… oh well.

    • stoy@lemmy.zip
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      5 days ago

      I just wished they got the fuck on with it and left earth already, so we can turn off their radio coms and start fixing things

    • nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de
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      3 days ago

      That already seems to be the case, I’m with the other commenters who think it’s a distraction and/or window dressing for their horrible actions here on earth.