Sim Kern Profile picture
20 Jul, 19 tweets, 4 min read
"One reason we find the fantasy of outer space colonization so irresistible is the prospect of starting fresh. Our global society is enormously complicated, with baked-in bigotries and illogical ways of doing things that seem impossible to untangle here on Earth.🧵
On another planet, we assume we could start over and get it right. Realistically, though, there’s no leaving our messiness behind, no matter how many light-years away we travel. I can’t think of a better illustration for this than the fact that the moon is already a toilet /
When people think of what astronauts left behind on the moon, they might picture Buzz Aldrin planting an American flag. But I picture all the literal shit we left up there. Because NASA, unlike any respectable hiker, didn’t value “packing out waste”. /
The pooping protocol for Apollo astronauts involved wearing adhesive bags stuck to their asses, which notoriously tore out pubic hairs when removed. They sealed the bag – hoping nothing escaped to float around the lunar module – and crushed an antibacterial capsule inside /
mushing it around with their poop to prevent a future biohazard. Then they chucked the bag out the airlock. Over the course of the Apollo missions, we planted five flags on the moon and ninety-six bags of human excrement. /
We also left a plaque on the Lunar Lander reading, “We came in peace for all mankind” – never mind that at the time, the US was carpet-bombing villages in Vietnam, killing kids with napalm. /
Anywhere we travel, we’ll be bringing all our shit – literal and figurative – with us. And as any Apollo astronaut can tell you, shit is much easier to deal with on Earth than in space. /
If you care deeply, as I do, about the long-term goals of space science, it’s imperative to put a stop to the world-eating overconsumption that creates billionaires, rather than indulging their pet projects. /
For now, the best thing we could do to ensure humanity’s long-term survival in space is to figure out living sustainably here on earth. If you’re a sci-fi lover like me, think of it this way: we are already living on a magnificent spaceship uniquely suited to our needs. /
It is enormous, big enough to bring all our friends and family along. It has excellent gravity and radiation shielding in the form of a breathable atmosphere. It comes with a nearly-unlimited renewable energy source – the Sun – which should last us another billion years or so /
Our spaceship is peopled with more than eight million different alien life forms for us to study, whose behaviors and languages and intelligences we’re only beginning to understand. These other-species friends provide us with air, food, medicines, water filtration.../
some even sing for us, perfume our air, and make our ship breathtakingly beautiful.

Unfortunately, we have a plethora of captains on this ship, and they’re mostly awful. /
Duty rosters are largely assigned based on racial hierarchies and nepotism. For half a century, our science officers have been shouting, “We’re running the engines too hot!” But the captains didn’t listen, or they did and decided to lie about it, assuring us everything was fine/
Now the warp core is overheating, and the life support is failing, but our captains keep saying, “Faster, faster! More speed, more extraction, more profit!” Because these captains have been CHARGING us for the service of driving our spaceship into meltdown. /
They've hoarded obscene amounts of ship's resources, so their crew quarters look like a dragon's lair while millions of their crewmates kids' starve. /
Now all the water is poisoned, the corridors are full of trash, a vicious disease is ripping through the ship, and the life support is so bad on decks 43-56 that hundreds of people are cooking alive in the heat. /
Meanwhile, a few of our captains have started taking joyrides on pitiful little escape-pods. Anyone can see they have no chance of escaping our sorry, shared fate, yet still they spend piles of resources on these pet projects rather than fixing the mess they’ve made of our ship/
And then they have the audacity to tell us that their efforts are for the common good. These are terrible captains. This is like one of those episodes where the chief science officer must relieve the captain of duty, or everyone dies. /
Except we don’t have a protocol like that in place.
Maybe we should try mutiny.

Read my full piece in the @Independent: independent.co.uk/voices/bezos-m…

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More from @sim_kern

3 Jul
Some folks in the comments seem to think a moon/Mars colony is possible. Not in our lifetimes, friends. NASA has been planning the Artemis mission for years, and will continue planning it for years more, and that's going to send astronauts to the moon for a week. ONE week.
Artemis is also not fully funded yet by congress and is enormously technically difficult, so it's not even a given that it's going to happen. So no, no moon Maralago or Mars Maralago either. It's much easier to keep people alive in low earth orbit than farther away.
Also, cancer. Without an atmosphere protecting them, astronauts are exposed to far more radiation than on earth. The longer you're up there, the more likely it is you develop cancer. At this point, I don't think I need to tell you how far away we are from space hospitals.
Read 5 tweets
3 Jul
If any of you are under the impression that our billionaires might succeed in "escaping" to space, while the world burns, let me put those fears to rest with what I know from being the spouse of a NASA flight controller. 🧵
For a half-dozen people to exist up on the ISS, it takes a ground team of thousands of people, constantly problem-solving how to keep them alive. Their quality of life is bouncing around in a narrow tube with the same 5 people who can't really bathe for months. /
Every minute of their day is micromanaged so they can survive. They follow strict exercise regimens to keep their bones from turning to goo. They spend a ton of time studying systems and conducting repairs on equipment that's continually breaking because SPACE WANTS TO KILL YOU /
Read 18 tweets
19 Jun
I don't know who needs to hear this, but:

Punishment doesn't work.

Like every type, for every age of person. No exceptions. We have over a century of research proving this.

And the younger a kid is, the more devastating the long-term impacts on their mental health will be.
Prompted by hearing about someone who gives their 2yo time-outs multiple times a day for developmentally appropriate behaviors. 😡
Allow natural consequences to occur. Talk to your kids about why you don't want them to do X behavior. Redirect them from destructive and unsafe behaviors. If they're too young to talk to, sorry, you just have to wait until they grow up.
Read 22 tweets
9 Oct 20
Y'all were interested in eco-fascism yesterday, so let's talk about the ways in which US society is already creeping towards eco-fascism. Underlying philosophies that could someday rationalize climate-motivated human rights abuses & even genocide are already mainstream here 1/
In an eco-fascist society, the most marginalized people will bear the heaviest sacrifices for the climate. Any time you see the government or polluting corporations sending a message that "it's all up to you" as an individual to address climate change, that's a red flag 2/
We can only halt climate change by drastically curtailing carbon emissions by major industrial polluters. When the people in power, who are supposed to represent you, fail in this duty & blame you instead? That's gaslighting, paving the way for eco-fascism. 3/
Read 13 tweets
31 Mar 20
If teachers are assigning grades right now, what they are grading is PRIVILEGE. Without the equalizing force of the school-building and its services, limited as they are, teachers are grading on access to technology, wifi, food and housing security, and ableism. 1/
School districts have a moral obligation to promise right now that everyone will be promoted to the next grade. Otherwise, they will only be punishing poverty and neurodiversity, needlessly heaping anxiety onto already struggling children.
Holding back every kid who won't succeed at online learning will not only be a logistical nightmare, it will further stratify class, racial, and ableist differences in our ed system, leaving an entire generation of our less-privileged students traumatized.
Read 10 tweets
18 Mar 20
To all the folks trying to recreate school at home, with highly structured schedules & worksheets: we teach that way in schools because of CROWD CONTROL, not because it's the best way to learn. Kids have a rare opportunity here to engage in deep, authentic learning instead. 1/
So here's some ideas of what this could look like instead. For science, take nature walks in a park/bike path, and talk about the water cycle, ecoystems, and biological processes you see. Start a garden. Collect bugs. Set up a science experiment.
English class? Just read, obviously, but also--challenge your kid to write a book! If they're little--draw a picture book. If they're big, write an entire novel. Help them edit it and query an agent for it when they're done.
Read 26 tweets

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