Despite the hype Musk is pushing in the right direction.

[Taleric]

I visited KSC recently and saw the spectacular launch on the west coast. What a great past ten years to be a space fan.

Better catch this live feed while it is up. https://youtu.be/aBr2kKAHN6M

[Mason11987]

I visited KSC recently and saw the spectacular launch on the west coast. What a great past ten years to be a space fan.

Better catch this live feed while it is up. https://youtu.be/aBr2kKAHN6M

Saw it live, it was completely incredible.

[Gunnerman21]

Absolutely amazing... quick gif here to explain:

Spoiler

Show

Double boost-back landing with an additional booster landing on the droneship in the ocean. This will eventually lead us to airline style use of rockets, land and refuel and take off again.

[FlowerChild]

Yeah, it's super cool (sad to realize the crossfeed plans got dropped along the road though), and Elon Musk is quite an entertaining individual, but my enjoyment of anything SpaceX does is inevitably tempered by the realization that privatization of space exploration is likely to set us up for a dystopian nightmare down the road.

Does anyone really want to colonize another planet when every aspect of their existence (or lack thereof) will then fall solely under the jurisdiction of a corporation? That sounds a lot like the Aliens universe, which never struck me as a particularly pleasant place to live.

I hope that won't wind up being the case, and people will fight to retain their basic human rights as we move out into the stars. But at least initially, I think people will be so ecstatic for a chance to explore space, that they'll probably let such things fall by the wayside until they notice the warranty on their habitat just expired and it may fail any minute due to planned obsolescence in an uber-monopoly, a couple of hundred million miles from home.

[Taleric]

I am sure the Weyland Corp has nothing but the utmost respect for our liberties, safety and livelyhood ;)

Yeah very good point FC. I think the risk is in those early centuries with populations under 100k and massive travel times.

With the work in entanglement we will have much quicker communications but the travel might take forever.

Being optimistic after a few centuries if things go bad the human spirit will most likely prevail and any new home would continue the endless struggle for freedoms and justice. In all cases new planets will inevitably declare their own governance.

[Sarudak]

With the work in entanglement we will have much quicker communications but the travel might take forever.

AFAIK this is a common misunderstanding and under known physics entanglement cannot be used to transmit data faster than light. Although we certainly haven't figured out all physics.

Does anyone really want to colonize another planet when every aspect of their existence (or lack thereof) will then fall solely under the jurisdiction of a corporation? That sounds a lot like the Aliens universe, which never struck me as a particularly pleasant place to live.

I'm sure that there will be bumps along the road although I am optimistic that people will come to mutually beneficial arrangements. That said I think this work is critical. There is no evidence that there is any other intelligence (or even life) anywhere else in the universe and I think it would be horribly sad if the light of consciousness were to go out.

[ElectroBot]

Does anyone really want to colonize another planet when every aspect of their existence (or lack thereof) will then fall solely under the jurisdiction of a corporation? That sounds a lot like the Aliens universe, which never struck me as a particularly pleasant place to live.

I hope that won't wind up being the case, and people will fight to retain their basic human rights as we move out into the stars. But at least initially, I think people will be so ecstatic for a chance to explore space, that they'll probably let such things fall by the wayside until they notice the warranty on their habitat just expired and it may fail any minute due to planned obsolescence in an uber-monopoly, a couple of hundred million miles from home.

Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy (which tells the story of colonizing the red planet as well as the impact to Earth) goes a bit into this and a global catastrophe does cause the metanational corporations to change to a better form.

There always hope (except in BtW :P).

[FlowerChild]

I'm sure that there will be bumps along the road although I am optimistic that people will come to mutually beneficial arrangements. That said I think this work is critical.

I am not an optimist by any stretch, but I think that it's a fair point that time is the most valuable commodity to our species, and getting off planet is a good way to acquire more. So, I agree with you that the work is critical, and how exactly it is achieved is a secondary consideration.

It would have been nice to establish more humanitarian social structures capable of taking the journey with us, but given enough time, we will have opportunity to establish them later.

There is no evidence that there is any other intelligence (or even life) anywhere else in the universe and I think it would be horribly sad if the light of consciousness were to go out.

On the bright side, if we're the only consciousness, the very concept of sadness will go right along with us into the void, so no worries.

[Daisjun]

Double boost-back landing with an additional booster landing on the droneship in the ocean. This will eventually lead us to airline style use of rockets, land and refuel and take off again.

The additional booster crashed into the ocean unfortunately. Still an amazing achievement and a landmark moment in human history.

I literally got chills when I saw the boosters land though. The whole thing was spectacular, it didn't look real.