1) It is sad how many people are against investment in space launch technology.
The narrative “Space is just a playground for billionaires” is not helped by those who focussed on sending themselves to orbit as an end goal, but why is space tech important?
The narrative “Space is just a playground for billionaires” is not helped by those who focussed on sending themselves to orbit as an end goal, but why is space tech important?
https://twitter.com/BBCNews/status/1448641526930698250
2) More broadly, space launch tech is innovating towards a 100x reduction in launch costs and increasing the ease of access to space.
Why does this matter?
Why does this matter?
3)
A) Disaster preparedness; With cheaper & quicker access to space we have better odds of addressing issues such as approaching asteroids & satellite wipeouts from solar storms. This is the same as investing in pandemic preparedness ahead of an unknown future event.
A) Disaster preparedness; With cheaper & quicker access to space we have better odds of addressing issues such as approaching asteroids & satellite wipeouts from solar storms. This is the same as investing in pandemic preparedness ahead of an unknown future event.
4) B) Internet access; ~4 billion people globally still do not have access to the internet. Satellites can help with this. Internet access can provide better access to education, communication, medicine and global jobs markets and ultimately help to reduce global poverty.
5) C) Mental health, inspiration, entertainment & unity; Elon:“Life cannot just be about solving one miserable problem after another, that can't be the only thing" "There need to be things that inspire you, that make you glad to wake up in the morning and be part of humanity."
6) D) Insurance policy for human civilisation & potentially consciousness as a whole; If we have human culture and Earth’s biological life backed up to another planet, all this history and diversity will not be wiped out by a catastrophic event on Earth.
7) E) Science; Many more space scientific experiments & telescopes will become affordable.
8) Is all of this more important than stopping global warming and ending poverty on Earth? No, but they are not mutually exclusive and can actually be synergistic.
9) SpaceX’s Starship and Starlink projects are a path to all of this, but do sub orbital tourist flights help too? Not directly, but Blue Origin’s tech can be iterated upon and funding space R&D and raising excitement about space generally is a good thing.
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