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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. From housetop Work

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Speaker 1: Dot Cargo. Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert lamp and I am Christian Sagar.

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Speaker 1: We're going to kick off here with a quote from

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Speaker 1: the late great Carl Sagan sort of set the tone

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Speaker 1: for this episode. We were wanderers from the beginning, from

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Speaker 1: nine percent of the tenure of humans on Earth, we

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Speaker 1: were hunters and foragers, wandering on the savannahs and the steps.

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Speaker 1: Even after four hundred generations in villages and cities, we

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Speaker 1: still remember. The open road still calls like an almost

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Speaker 1: forgotten song of childhood. We invest far off places with

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Speaker 1: a certain romance. The appeal I suspect has been meticulously

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Speaker 1: crafted by natural selection as an essential element in our

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Speaker 1: long term survival. That was a a lark, Carl Sagan.

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Speaker 1: I'm all right, like I said, I think uh, I

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Speaker 1: think Chuck has the best one in the house. Toufforts. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I like that. I was. I was sitting here giggling

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Speaker 1: the whole time, tracking not to laugh into the microphone.

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Speaker 1: So that's an appropriate quote for us to start this

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Speaker 1: episode with, because we are going to be talking today

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Speaker 1: about all well, not all, but various anti space exploration movements,

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Speaker 1: whether they be religious, political, economic, Uh, there's there's a

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Speaker 1: largic Yeah, yeah, it turns out there's quite a bit

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Speaker 1: of them. And uh, you know, I don't think we'd

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Speaker 1: classify Carl Sagan as being among them, obviously, no, but

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Speaker 1: he kind of sets the stage I think by like that.

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Speaker 1: That's a quote from him that kind of captures the

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Speaker 1: overall optimism for space and enthusiasm for space that you know,

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Speaker 1: I want to definitely get out there for my own part,

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Speaker 1: I'm I am definitely a space optimist of space enthusiast.

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Speaker 1: I think there are several key arguments for space exploration

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Speaker 1: and our investment in space exploration. I mean, namely, uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, pushing the technology, ensuring the long term survival

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Speaker 1: of the human race, and giving us the ability to

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Speaker 1: even protect the planet like in the in movies. As

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Speaker 1: I've said before, saving the world is an everyday occurrence

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Speaker 1: for hero but to actually save the world, our ability

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Speaker 1: to protect the planet from near Earth objects, from meteorites, comments, etcetera,

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Speaker 1: like that is as close as we can realistically get

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Speaker 1: to saving the planet in a short term, tangible way

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Speaker 1: against mass extinction. I think if you had asked me

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Speaker 1: before we did all the research for this episode, I

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Speaker 1: would have said something similar. And now I'm on the fence. Uh. And,

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Speaker 1: which is sad to me because in personal anecdote, like

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Speaker 1: I grew up as a little kid, I wanted to

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Speaker 1: be an astronaut. That was like my thing as a

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Speaker 1: long kid, and my parents bought me all those books

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Speaker 1: of like you know, those like giant like uh um

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Speaker 1: fold up books of like the interior of the Space

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Speaker 1: Shuttle looks like, or like how to become an astronaut,

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Speaker 1: stuff like that. Uh. And I remember very specifically being

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Speaker 1: a kindergartener in the classroom. I was in New Hampshire

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Speaker 1: at the time when the Challenger exploded, and Christie mcculloff

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Speaker 1: was a New Hampshire teacher that was aboard the Challenger,

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Speaker 1: and so at the time it was you know, a

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Speaker 1: really big deal is super upsetting, and but I was

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Speaker 1: still like so into the whole astronaut thing. Uh. And

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Speaker 1: now look at me now, I you know, I talked

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Speaker 1: about science on podcasts and write horror stories about demons.

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Speaker 1: I I don't know if I ever achieved my dreams.

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Speaker 1: You're rarely go into space at all. No, No, it's

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Speaker 1: it's few and far between. I got to talk to

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Speaker 1: uh Elon Musk and Richard Branson about that, but yeah,

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Speaker 1: I don't know, Like reading all of this information, I

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Speaker 1: got to say, there are some compelling arguments against it too,

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Speaker 1: I would agree. And you know, I think the important

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Speaker 1: thing about this because some of you might be listening

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Speaker 1: and you're you're thinking, you're like me, You're like, oh,

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Speaker 1: I'm I'm already one board space question and I'm not

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Speaker 1: really interested in the counter arguments. But I think it's

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Speaker 1: it's healthy to explore the arguments against the things that

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Speaker 1: we value, because hey, that gives you a chance to,

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Speaker 1: you know, hold on a little tighter, do the things

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Speaker 1: you do believe in, question the things you believe in,

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Speaker 1: and you know, maybe end up with a more balanced perspective.

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Speaker 1: I agree, And after you know, going through this and

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Speaker 1: what we're going to present to you today, I can

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Speaker 1: tell you that they're there are definitely like like weak

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Speaker 1: points in the armor of both of the arguments that

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Speaker 1: sort of make you go, okay, like maybe we could

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Speaker 1: refine this here. They're like, let's let's really nail down

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Speaker 1: why we're going into space and then like for some

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Speaker 1: of the arguments against it too, like they need to

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Speaker 1: be refined as well. You know, it's a little a

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Speaker 1: little loose sometimes, especially like so the one that really

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Speaker 1: got us got the ball rolling for us on this

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Speaker 1: was an article that we're going to talk about at

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Speaker 1: the end of the podcast that is called the Manifesto

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Speaker 1: from the Committee to Abolish Outer Space. And it reads

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Speaker 1: like a total like farcical, dadist sort of I don't know,

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Speaker 1: anti capitalist manifesto sort of joke from the nineteen seventies, right, Um,

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Speaker 1: but there is some like if you read real deeply

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Speaker 1: on it, there is some logic between the lines. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: you know, I thought it was worth reading through to

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Speaker 1: promote discussion. Yeah, yeah, totally. And that's why this is

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Speaker 1: ultimately all about. We're we're gonna provide you with some arguments.

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Speaker 1: You take those, combine them with what you already know,

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Speaker 1: which already believe, and then you can give us feedback

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Speaker 1: on how that may have changed your viewpoint, how that

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Speaker 1: caused you to double down any viewpoint, etcetera. So, before

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Speaker 1: we dive into the various sort of categories of anti

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Speaker 1: space arguments, there was one article that I read that

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Speaker 1: i'd like to use as like a cap off for

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Speaker 1: us to start with. And this was written in by

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Speaker 1: a guy named Gary Westfall, and it's called The Case

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Speaker 1: against Space uh. And it's in it's it's actually in

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Speaker 1: a science fiction journal called Science Fiction Studies. Uh. It

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Speaker 1: was issued seventy two. If you want to go look

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Speaker 1: it up. Um. And he basically says, look like, I'm

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Speaker 1: part of the sci fi community. I love science fiction.

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Speaker 1: I'm a science fiction writer. I teach science fiction. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And I have been in love with the idea of

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Speaker 1: going to space for decades now, but lately, like my

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Speaker 1: enthusiasm for it has waned. Uh. And he says there

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Speaker 1: have been different supportive arguments for space travel in recent

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Speaker 1: error eras right, So you can sort of break it

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Speaker 1: down from the fifties and sixties to the seventies and

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Speaker 1: eighties and then up to his point in the nineties.

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Speaker 1: And I think as we go on today, we'll see

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Speaker 1: some more in the the ats and the teens that

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Speaker 1: we're existing in now. But uh, he said, the fifties

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Speaker 1: and the sixties, they were all philosophical arguments, right, humanity

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Speaker 1: must venture into an occupy outer space so that we

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Speaker 1: can fulfill our inherent drive for exploration and inhabit unknown realms.

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Speaker 1: Not because it is easy, that it is hard. Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: Well Kennedy didn't have a Boston accent. He had a

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Speaker 1: he had a Kennedy accent. Yeah, but I can try.

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Speaker 1: Uh you know what. No, I'm not gonna I could

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Speaker 1: do his brother. I had a bad ice cube anyways. Okay,

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Speaker 1: But to continue on, this is basically like the Star

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Speaker 1: Trek argument, right, like like a new life, new civilizations, YadA, YadA.

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Speaker 1: It's kind of a manifest destiny kind of yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: which is a good way to put it. Um. In short,

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Speaker 1: he says, this is an exact quote. In short, the

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Speaker 1: history of our species powerfully suggests that progress will come

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Speaker 1: from continued stable life on Earth and that a vast

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Speaker 1: new program of travel into space will lead to a

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Speaker 1: new period of human stagnation. And interestingly enough, he then

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Speaker 1: quotes the exact quote that you put above from Carl Sagan.

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Speaker 1: Then he says, Okay, then in the seventies and eighties

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Speaker 1: was shifted right because the whole philosophical thing wasn't really

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Speaker 1: working out anymore, and it became a practical economic argument,

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Speaker 1: and it was something like this that outer space will

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Speaker 1: solve our many problems, uh, the ones that are confronting

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Speaker 1: us here on Earth, and that people will step forward

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Speaker 1: to solve these problems and we're gonna make a lot

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Speaker 1: of money doing it. It's kind of an industrial uh

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Speaker 1: trickle down economics kind of you, which sort of velcrow

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Speaker 1: as the star. Right, look at this. We have velcro

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Speaker 1: because of space, And isn't your life better because of velcro?

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Speaker 1: Velcro is perfect? Yeah, I forgot all about that. Uh,

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna like it's just gonna be us thinking about

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Speaker 1: like all the like space stuff from our childhood, like velcrow,

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Speaker 1: tang and like freeze dried ice cream suppose. Yeah. Um,

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Speaker 1: But here's his quote about that one. He says, thus,

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Speaker 1: when people were unmoved by calls to fulfill the basic

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Speaker 1: destiny of manity, which is the exploration one, it was

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Speaker 1: hoped that the magnetic allure of the dollar sign would

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Speaker 1: draw them into the space camp. And they were talking

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Speaker 1: about everything from gathering free energy from the Sun to

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Speaker 1: mining key metals on the moon, building space factories that

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Speaker 1: would make big money, developing and selling life saving medicine

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Speaker 1: and devices. And that is something that's going to come

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Speaker 1: up later in this podcast as well. Then in the

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Speaker 1: nineties we switched again, right, And this is what I

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Speaker 1: like to call the Armageddon argument, which is basically the

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Speaker 1: movie Armageddon. We need to go into space for defensive

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Speaker 1: reasons and for prevention. We need to make sure a

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Speaker 1: massive asteroid doesn't strike Earth and kill all of us,

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Speaker 1: or even better, we move into space. The asteroid can

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Speaker 1: hit Earth and destroy if it doesn't matter because we've

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Speaker 1: colonized other planets, right And I that's one that I

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Speaker 1: especially think it's still a very compelling argumentation. It's a

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Speaker 1: big picture argument. And that's one of the things about

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Speaker 1: any of this because when you're trying when you're looking

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Speaker 1: at space, you're talk thinking about you're talking about space exportation,

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Speaker 1: you're talking about a massive megaproject, and you get they

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Speaker 1: have all these different ideas of what it means, what

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Speaker 1: the benefits are, what are the short term versus a

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Speaker 1: long term and what does it mean to see this

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Speaker 1: as an extension of culture? Yeah, yeah, I agree, And

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Speaker 1: so like I said, like I guess what I'm looking

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Speaker 1: for is by the end of this podcast that I'll

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Speaker 1: be able to be convinced back to my five year

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Speaker 1: old self who was enamored with the idea of being

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Speaker 1: an astronaut. But uh, Westfall basically uses the rest of

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Speaker 1: this this article to make arguments against those three cases,

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Speaker 1: um and he He basically finds that there's no compelling,

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Speaker 1: immediate reason why we should accelerate our space programs. He says, yeah,

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Speaker 1: sure would be fine for us to go into outage space,

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Speaker 1: but we've got much more pressing issues to deal with

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Speaker 1: here on Earth, all right, So let's segue from that

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Speaker 1: into and this was brand new to me. You educated

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Speaker 1: me on this for for this episode, that there are

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Speaker 1: religious reasons to go to space. Yeah, there or at

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Speaker 1: least the case has been made um and granted you

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Speaker 1: you don't see as much of this anymore, at least

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Speaker 1: in mainstream arguments. But but it's still pretty interesting. I've

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Speaker 1: been long fascinated by by space religion and the idea

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Speaker 1: like what happens to our beliefs when we actually take

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Speaker 1: them into space, or just what do we do? What

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Speaker 1: happens when we take old beliefs essentially old cosmologies, I

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Speaker 1: mean maybe even like Babylonian cosmologies, and we try to

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Speaker 1: hold onto those sometimes without without daring to tinker with them.

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Speaker 1: In an age of modern cosmological understanding. Very Jodorowski like

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Speaker 1: that that that's like a big theme of his and uh,

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Speaker 1: what is it meta barons and that that university sort

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Speaker 1: of created around that was a wild universe. Um. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So so there are various examples of this. Um. You know,

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Speaker 1: there's some religions of Hinduism instantly comes to mind. They

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Speaker 1: have displayed an amazing ability to adapt supernatural cosmologies to

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Speaker 1: agree with new information on the nature of the universe. Um.

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Speaker 1: But other examples stand out to exemplify religions uh, sometimes

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Speaker 1: unflinching refusal to change in the face of scientific advancement. Geocentricism.

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Speaker 1: You know, there's no way anything but the earth can

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Speaker 1: be the center of creation. Uh. And speaking of creation creationism,

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Speaker 1: there's no there's no way that this uh, that any

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Speaker 1: of this scientific data and these these scientific theories about

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Speaker 1: the origin of species can be any different from this

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Speaker 1: ancient text that I still hope, right, Why I bother

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Speaker 1: to go looking? We know we have the gnosticism here already. Yeah. So,

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Speaker 1: of course, so it's not that all that surprising that

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Speaker 1: certain religious groups or certain religious individuals have spoken out

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Speaker 1: to varying degrees against space exploration and space travel or

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Speaker 1: or raise some very particular religious questions about it. UM.

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Speaker 1: One that I found very thought provoking occurred in two

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Speaker 1: thousand twelve, and this this came from the General Authority

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Speaker 1: of Islamic Affairs and Endowment SPATWA Committee UH. And and

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Speaker 1: I do want to to UH to clarify that this

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Speaker 1: is UH. This is just one single United Arab Emirates committee. UM.

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Speaker 1: They were not They're not speaking speaking all of Islam. UM.

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Speaker 1: This is just one committee speaking out here. But they

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Speaker 1: were mainly interested with what a one way mission to

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Speaker 1: Mars would mean UH from an Islamic perspective. So this

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Speaker 1: is of course the whole idea of the first settlers

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Speaker 1: to Mars are essentially on a suicide mission. Well, just

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Speaker 1: that constitutes suicide? And if so, UH does the Koran

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Speaker 1: speak out against it when it says do not kill

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Speaker 1: yourselves or one another. Indeed, Allah is to you've ever merciful.

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Speaker 1: And they were argumenting that, yeah, Muslims should not go

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Speaker 1: on this journey. But the but there even more remarkable

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Speaker 1: part of this was and this was brought up is

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Speaker 1: the notion that some Muslims might take the trip to

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Speaker 1: Mars in order or to quote escape punishment or standing

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Speaker 1: before Almighty Allah for judgment that I don't quite understand,

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Speaker 1: but I guess like I'm also not like an Islamic scholar,

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Speaker 1: but I would assume that even if they died on

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Speaker 1: the mission to Mars, they would still face judgment from

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Speaker 1: Allah well after life. That that's where it gets crazy, right,

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Speaker 1: because if you if you leave Earth, does that mean

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Speaker 1: you were leaving God's domain? Is each God is God

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Speaker 1: only lord over a single planet? Um? I think the

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Speaker 1: most would argue that that a that a modern depiction

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Speaker 1: of God is a God of all creations, and therefore

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Speaker 1: if you if you take him off on one world,

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Speaker 1: you can't just go to the next and claim immunity. Um.

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Speaker 1: And I think that was the the idea that that

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Speaker 1: one out here, But it's so much science fiction spins

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Speaker 1: off of this very simple idea that we're getting into

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Speaker 1: today of should we or shouldn't we go into space?

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Speaker 1: You know, like immediately thinking of you and I were

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Speaker 1: just talking about this book the other day, Uh, Mary

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Speaker 1: Doria Russell's book The Sparrow. Yeah, I have not read it,

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Speaker 1: but it's been on my to read list for a

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Speaker 1: while really fascinating sci fi book about you know, the

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Speaker 1: idea of the future sending Catholic Jesuit priests along with

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Speaker 1: a team to a new planet where they found alien

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Speaker 1: life so that they can be missionaries basically and teach

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Speaker 1: them about the Catholic faith. Uh. And of course everything

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Speaker 1: goes horribly awry, but it's it's fascinating, yeah, but it's

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Speaker 1: also sort of an argument or it ends up sort

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Speaker 1: of being an argument for not doing such a thing. Well, um,

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Speaker 1: we'll get the Catholics in a minute. But by my

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Speaker 1: next example comes from the Church of Jesus Christ of

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Speaker 1: Latter day Saints, which, you know, a lot of people

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Speaker 1: might not think that Mormons are going to really come

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Speaker 1: up when we talk about space ready religions, but as

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Speaker 1: a relative newcomer to the religious world marketplace, Uh, they

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Speaker 1: were really preloaded for the space age from the beginning.

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Speaker 1: As pointed out by Roger D. Lonnia's curator of the

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Speaker 1: Smithsonian's planetary Exploration programs in his paper A Western Mormon

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Speaker 1: in Washington, d c. You have a couple of key

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Speaker 1: attributes to the Mormon faith that that make it perfect

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Speaker 1: for space. It's grounded in frontier religion kind of giving

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Speaker 1: back to that spirit that that that that that quote

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Speaker 1: from Sagan capture uh and uh. And so you see,

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Speaker 1: you see this idea, you know, you're gonna push the frontier. Uh,

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Speaker 1: not not only the frontiers on Earth, but you're gonna

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Speaker 1: push the frontiers in space as well. Yeah. And that

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Speaker 1: was primarily through a guy named Dr James C. Fletcher,

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Speaker 1: who I believe was Mormon. Uh. He was also NASA's

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Speaker 1: administrator from nineteen seventy one and nineteen seventy seven and

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Speaker 1: then again from six to nineteen eighty nine, very influential

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Speaker 1: on the Space Shuttle program and other space exploration research. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: he was big into set as well. He considered all

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Speaker 1: of this, uh, you know, part of his Mormon faith

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Speaker 1: that he should push these ideas because Mormon cosmology also

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Speaker 1: involves a universe full of worlds without number that are

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Speaker 1: inhabited by intelligent beings. So, in other words, earthlings are

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Speaker 1: not the only creatures in Mormon cosmology. It comes pre

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Speaker 1: loaded with the idea that yes, there are other worlds

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Speaker 1: under God's domain that are also liberated by the same savior,

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Speaker 1: and they have they have people on them or something

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Speaker 1: like people you know, Um, so you don't have to

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Speaker 1: worry about discovering alien life and having as much of

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Speaker 1: a uh, you know, a religious um you know, apocalypse

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Speaker 1: in the mind. So the opposite version of this in

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Speaker 1: like sci fi fantasy type of stuff. I have to

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Speaker 1: I don't know why, but this is just immediately popping

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Speaker 1: into my head. There's this recent storyline in the Thor

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Speaker 1: comic books where um Thor realizes that like every planet

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Speaker 1: with sentient life has its own pantheon of gods, right,

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Speaker 1: and so like he's part of the Norris pantheon of gods.

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Speaker 1: But he flies into space and he goes to another planet,

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Speaker 1: and it turns out like this planet had its own pantheon,

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Speaker 1: but somebody had been murdering all of their deities. So

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Speaker 1: Thor takes it upon himself to also become their new deity.

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Speaker 1: You know. Uh, it's just interesting, Like this is just

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Speaker 1: like amazing springboard for fertile, imaginative ideas for science fiction. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and heed it is. Now it's interesting with with Thor

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Speaker 1: of course, because he's a part of a pantheon of

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Speaker 1: god's apposed to a monotheistic model, Yeah, which is mainly

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Speaker 1: what we're talking about here. Both the Islamic and Mormon examples.

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Speaker 1: Now to return to the Church of Latter day Saints.

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Speaker 1: Uh not. Everyone in the history of the Church has

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Speaker 1: been super on board with space exploration. In nineteen fifty seven,

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Speaker 1: just a few short years before the first human ventured

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Speaker 1: into space, prominent Mormon Joseph Fielding Smith remarked that quote,

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Speaker 1: it is doubtful that man will ever be permitted to

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Speaker 1: make any instrument or ship to travel through space and

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Speaker 1: visit the Moon or any distinct planet. And in nineteen

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Speaker 1: sixty one, the same year, the Cosmonautori Gargan made history,

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Speaker 1: I mean the first man in space. Uh. Smith further stated,

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Speaker 1: we will never get a man into space. This is

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Speaker 1: of course before before he went up. Um, we will

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Speaker 1: never get a man into his face. The Earth is

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Speaker 1: man's fear, and it was never intended that he should

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Speaker 1: get away from it. The Moon is a superior planet

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Speaker 1: to the Earth, and it was never intended that men

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Speaker 1: should go there. You can write it down in your

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Speaker 1: books that this will never happen. Well, boy, was he wrong,

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Speaker 1: or or maybe it's all been a lie. Right, It's

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Speaker 1: like the shin I'm surprised nothing came up about the

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Speaker 1: Shining conspiracy, the idea that we faked the moon landing.

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Speaker 1: I think that that plays into some of the attitudes

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Speaker 1: will get out, you know, the the nineteen some of

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Speaker 1: the early skepticisms that we could do it, and then

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Speaker 1: when we did do it, Uh, you had to double

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Speaker 1: down on your beliefs and say, well, no, way that

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Speaker 1: we actually did. I should probably explain what I mean.

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Speaker 1: I just threw that out there, like that's common knowledge

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Speaker 1: or whatever. This is more along the lines of our

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Speaker 1: our colleagues over at stuff they don't want you to know.

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Speaker 1: But so the idea that the idea goes like this,

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Speaker 1: well it should be noted, this is a this is

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Speaker 1: a fake conspiracy theory because they created conspiracy theory that

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Speaker 1: nearly but people fascinating the people got really into it.

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Speaker 1: You've seen about it. Yeah, So, like the the idea

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Speaker 1: goes that the moon landing and all of our space

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Speaker 1: exploration has been faked, and that in particular the moon

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Speaker 1: landing was shot and faked by Stanley Kubrick, and subsequently

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Speaker 1: the shining is a metaphorical thematic apology to his wife.

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Speaker 1: I think for committing the act of lying to the

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Speaker 1: public about what happened on the Moon. Yeah, it's it's

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Speaker 1: it's elaborate, and it's such a neatly constructed, elaborate conspiracy

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Speaker 1: theory that you can't help but find it, find it fascinating. Um.

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Speaker 1: But doubting the moon landing, that, of course, is a

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Speaker 1: very real thing. And and I do think that that

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Speaker 1: that spirit is echoed and some of the stuff we're

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Speaker 1: gonna discuss here in a bit now. I do want

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Speaker 1: to mention one more thing about Joseph Fielding Smith, and

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Speaker 1: that is that later on his um his grandson, writing

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Speaker 1: about about all of this, uh he uh, he made

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Speaker 1: a case that that one of the points that Smith

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Speaker 1: was making was that if you went to another world,

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Speaker 1: you've discovered that they had the same Savior, they had

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Speaker 1: the same God, and therefore you wouldn't have to have

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Speaker 1: faith anymore. That that that by visiting another planet, you

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Speaker 1: could confirm the existence of God and therefore remove the

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Speaker 1: importance for faith and the human experience. UM okay, I

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Speaker 1: don't like just taking that from like a sort of

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Speaker 1: like debate logical perspective. I don't know that I necessarily

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Speaker 1: agree just because another species evolved to have a monotheistic

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Speaker 1: religion that that confirms the existence of a God. I

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Speaker 1: don't know. I'd have to hear more. It's an it's

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Speaker 1: an interesting idea. I imagine it would require a deeper

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Speaker 1: discussion of Mormon theology. I guess, as our colleague Holly

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Speaker 1: Fry often says, I require more data. Yeah, but but

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Speaker 1: I do. I do find the Mormon faith very interesting

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Speaker 1: and it's in its space ready nature. Though as we've

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Speaker 1: explored here that it still doesn't mean you're gonna not

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Speaker 1: encounter some some problems when you bring your faith into

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Speaker 1: an everly, ever increasingly space age. Oh yeah, yeah, certainly.

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Speaker 1: Now some other examples here. Scientist David Rittenhouse insisted back

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Speaker 1: in seventeen seventy five that quote, the doctrine of a

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Speaker 1: plurality of worlds is inseparable from the principles of astronomy.

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Speaker 1: But this doctrine is still thought by some pious persons

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Speaker 1: to militate against the truths asserted by the Christian religion.

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Speaker 1: A two thousand fourteen University of dat And study found

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Speaker 1: that Evangelical Protestants are much sure Jesus will return in

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Speaker 1: the next forty years than the humans will make significant

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Speaker 1: strides and space exploration. Huh. That seems to me to

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Speaker 1: be one of those things that's cyclical, is that like

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Speaker 1: every generation feels like they're just on the cusp of

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Speaker 1: revelations or or whatever kind of end of the world

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Speaker 1: apocryphal story occurring. Yeah, And I mean that's just I

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Speaker 1: think the nature of any kind of you know, very

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Speaker 1: evangelic or very fundamentalist movement is that you're going to

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Speaker 1: be more more focused on on the short term and

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Speaker 1: the religious version of the world given, not the next life.

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Speaker 1: I don't necessarily have any problem with that so long

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Speaker 1: as like, like you said, like they're focusing on like

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Speaker 1: earthly problems, you know, taking care of earthly problems. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they're investing in space X. And certainly that ties into

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Speaker 1: some of the secular arguments we're gonna explore this um.

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Speaker 1: This particular study was carried out by University of day

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Speaker 1: and Political Science Assistant Professor Joshua Ambrose Ambrosius, who used

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Speaker 1: data from the General Social Survey and three Puce surveys

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Speaker 1: to compare knowledge interest in support for space exploration among Catholics, Evangelical,

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Speaker 1: mainline Protestants, Jews, Eastern religions, and agnostics, and the key

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Speaker 1: findings were that that were as follows, Evangelicals, who account

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Speaker 1: for one quarter of US population, are the least knowledgeable, interested,

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Speaker 1: in supportive of space exploration. Interesting, Jews and members of

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Speaker 1: Eastern traditions are more attentive and supportive. Uh. Also, no

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Speaker 1: matter where you're talking about, clergical support is important. So Evangelicals,

426
00:24:26,720 --> 00:24:29,560
Speaker 1: for instance, were twice as likely to recognize the benefits

427
00:24:29,600 --> 00:24:33,240
Speaker 1: of space exploration if their pastors speak positively about science

428
00:24:34,280 --> 00:24:38,360
Speaker 1: and UM. And of all the Christian faiths, Catholics, Uh,

429
00:24:38,840 --> 00:24:41,840
Speaker 1: they seem to have the most the most openness and

430
00:24:41,880 --> 00:24:45,199
Speaker 1: so they've all read the sparrow. Yeah. Well, I mean

431
00:24:45,240 --> 00:24:48,760
Speaker 1: that Vatican has um. They have an astronomer, they have

432
00:24:48,920 --> 00:24:51,520
Speaker 1: they have an interest in space. They occasionally have meetings

433
00:24:51,560 --> 00:24:53,480
Speaker 1: where they discuss, Hey, what happens when we speak to

434
00:24:53,640 --> 00:24:57,480
Speaker 1: speak with aliens? So exactly. Well, I would assume that

435
00:24:58,520 --> 00:25:02,040
Speaker 1: you would be like adapt the same kind of methodologies

436
00:25:02,040 --> 00:25:06,399
Speaker 1: that you use for missionary work in other countries in

437
00:25:06,440 --> 00:25:11,000
Speaker 1: the same way as you would for first contact. Right. Yeah,

438
00:25:11,040 --> 00:25:13,159
Speaker 1: And and if someone wanted to get kind of critical,

439
00:25:13,200 --> 00:25:16,480
Speaker 1: and certainly this is a critical episode, you might say

440
00:25:16,520 --> 00:25:22,880
Speaker 1: that the Catholic Church historically, UH is interested in large megaprojects,

441
00:25:22,960 --> 00:25:29,160
Speaker 1: we would dubious price tags and questionable benefits for the massage. Right, Well,

442
00:25:29,200 --> 00:25:32,160
Speaker 1: they've certainly got the pocketbook capable of doing it. But yeah,

443
00:25:32,200 --> 00:25:34,280
Speaker 1: I mean I think that that was sort of the

444
00:25:34,359 --> 00:25:37,000
Speaker 1: argument of the Sparrow was that like in the future,

445
00:25:37,119 --> 00:25:40,560
Speaker 1: governments were wouldn't be able to fund such a thing,

446
00:25:40,640 --> 00:25:43,239
Speaker 1: so they had to turn to the Catholic Church in

447
00:25:43,359 --> 00:25:47,600
Speaker 1: order for the funding, subsequently leading to Jesuit missionaries being

448
00:25:47,600 --> 00:25:50,679
Speaker 1: included on every mission. Yeah. So I guess basically you

449
00:25:50,680 --> 00:25:52,960
Speaker 1: can you can boil all of this down by saying

450
00:25:53,000 --> 00:25:56,119
Speaker 1: that when you have a supernatural worldview, even if you

451
00:25:56,160 --> 00:26:00,920
Speaker 1: have just like a basic mythological background to your world view, um,

452
00:26:00,960 --> 00:26:03,600
Speaker 1: there's a there's a potential risk to it in taking

453
00:26:03,720 --> 00:26:08,080
Speaker 1: your culture into space, taking your mindset into a space age,

454
00:26:08,119 --> 00:26:09,760
Speaker 1: and so therefore there's going to be a certain amount

455
00:26:09,760 --> 00:26:12,280
Speaker 1: of resistance. All Right, we're gonna take a quick break,

456
00:26:12,280 --> 00:26:15,000
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we're gonna get into some economics.

457
00:26:21,080 --> 00:26:24,399
Speaker 1: All Right, we're back. We're going to discuss some economic

458
00:26:24,480 --> 00:26:28,679
Speaker 1: anti space arguments. Alright, So, as we've talked about on

459
00:26:28,680 --> 00:26:31,639
Speaker 1: the show many times before, pretty much any time we

460
00:26:31,680 --> 00:26:34,639
Speaker 1: talked about space, but I'm thinking of like our rods

461
00:26:34,680 --> 00:26:37,760
Speaker 1: from God episodes space mirrors, Like any time we talk

462
00:26:37,800 --> 00:26:41,560
Speaker 1: about launching something into space, it is super expensive, right,

463
00:26:41,640 --> 00:26:45,000
Speaker 1: that's right. I mean some of the figures here are

464
00:26:45,040 --> 00:26:49,040
Speaker 1: just are truly astronomical. Um, I'm gonna lay out unintended. Yeah,

465
00:26:49,200 --> 00:26:50,840
Speaker 1: I'm gonna lay out a few here. And these came

466
00:26:50,840 --> 00:26:55,480
Speaker 1: from an article UM from the Space Review. First of all,

467
00:26:55,520 --> 00:26:58,280
Speaker 1: Apollo program, this was of course one of the big

468
00:26:58,280 --> 00:27:02,600
Speaker 1: ones UM, and went for fifteen years ninety nineteen seventy three.

469
00:27:03,000 --> 00:27:06,760
Speaker 1: It cost twenty point four billion, and if we simply

470
00:27:06,800 --> 00:27:10,640
Speaker 1: added yearly spending all up, we were we're took looking

471
00:27:10,680 --> 00:27:14,920
Speaker 1: at a round a hundred and nine billion in modern currency. UH.

472
00:27:15,040 --> 00:27:17,560
Speaker 1: That brings that breaks down to nine point nine billion

473
00:27:17,600 --> 00:27:22,120
Speaker 1: per flight with each lunar land and costing eighteen billion dollars. UH.

474
00:27:22,240 --> 00:27:26,440
Speaker 1: Sky Lab, the Skylab space station program, that cost UH

475
00:27:26,600 --> 00:27:29,359
Speaker 1: two point two billion in the money of the time,

476
00:27:29,520 --> 00:27:32,280
Speaker 1: that would be a ten billion in two thousand ten dollars.

477
00:27:32,560 --> 00:27:35,920
Speaker 1: And and that was across its nine year existence nineteen

478
00:27:35,960 --> 00:27:39,320
Speaker 1: sixty six through nineteen seventy four. Meanwhile, the Space Shuttle

479
00:27:39,359 --> 00:27:43,760
Speaker 1: program cost roughly one hundred ninety eight point six billion

480
00:27:43,800 --> 00:27:46,520
Speaker 1: in two thousand ten dollars um. A lot of the

481
00:27:46,560 --> 00:27:47,959
Speaker 1: sources I was looking at this came from a two

482
00:27:47,960 --> 00:27:49,720
Speaker 1: thousand ten articles, so you can, you know, you can

483
00:27:49,760 --> 00:27:51,680
Speaker 1: boost that those prices a little bit in your head.

484
00:27:51,880 --> 00:27:54,000
Speaker 1: I noticed that as well though, doing the research that

485
00:27:54,320 --> 00:27:56,040
Speaker 1: a lot of this I think it takes time to

486
00:27:56,119 --> 00:27:59,040
Speaker 1: gather these this information, so we don't have a lot

487
00:27:59,080 --> 00:28:03,639
Speaker 1: of data that's like right up to like you know, June. Now,

488
00:28:03,920 --> 00:28:07,520
Speaker 1: the I S S is an entirely different scenario to

489
00:28:07,680 --> 00:28:10,760
Speaker 1: to look at. NASA may have spent the equivalent of

490
00:28:10,920 --> 00:28:13,399
Speaker 1: seventy two point four billion on the I S S

491
00:28:13,440 --> 00:28:16,440
Speaker 1: as of two thousand ten. So I've also read other accounts,

492
00:28:16,440 --> 00:28:19,040
Speaker 1: including some more recent ones. They'd argue that the station's

493
00:28:19,040 --> 00:28:22,040
Speaker 1: true cost is somewhere between a hundred and a hundred

494
00:28:22,040 --> 00:28:25,560
Speaker 1: and fifty billion dollars or I've also read accounts that

495
00:28:25,640 --> 00:28:28,960
Speaker 1: make an argument that it's just kind of difficult to calculate.

496
00:28:29,000 --> 00:28:31,800
Speaker 1: It might be incalculable. Wow, Yeah, I think I have

497
00:28:31,920 --> 00:28:35,040
Speaker 1: notes in here later on about the I S costs.

498
00:28:35,040 --> 00:28:36,960
Speaker 1: But so we'll at the when we get to those,

499
00:28:37,000 --> 00:28:40,440
Speaker 1: we can compare and contrast but that sounds right to me.

500
00:28:40,480 --> 00:28:44,720
Speaker 1: I mean it was again no pun intended, astronomically expensive.

501
00:28:45,600 --> 00:28:48,120
Speaker 1: So Westfall, the guy I brought up at the beginning,

502
00:28:48,720 --> 00:28:52,560
Speaker 1: he uh comes to the economic argument. Now. Remember this

503
00:28:52,640 --> 00:28:55,480
Speaker 1: is the argument that he said was primarily made in

504
00:28:55,520 --> 00:28:59,040
Speaker 1: the seventies and eighties. Right, it's worth the investment because

505
00:28:59,120 --> 00:29:01,480
Speaker 1: we're gonna make all this money, man, like all these

506
00:29:01,480 --> 00:29:04,600
Speaker 1: technologies that we create that will bring back to Earth.

507
00:29:04,680 --> 00:29:08,640
Speaker 1: It's going to be totally worth it. Uh. And he says, yeah,

508
00:29:08,720 --> 00:29:11,680
Speaker 1: but we observe a cycle in this literature, right that

509
00:29:11,720 --> 00:29:15,600
Speaker 1: they first they announced that someone has developed the quote

510
00:29:15,760 --> 00:29:19,040
Speaker 1: perfect plan for space exploration. Right, maybe it's a new

511
00:29:19,120 --> 00:29:23,760
Speaker 1: rocket chip or something that's cheaply ineffective. Or then other

512
00:29:23,800 --> 00:29:26,520
Speaker 1: people start to examine this perfect plan and they find

513
00:29:26,520 --> 00:29:28,360
Speaker 1: a few little problems. They go, well, wait a minute,

514
00:29:28,360 --> 00:29:30,960
Speaker 1: that rocket chip actually cost fifty times what you you

515
00:29:31,000 --> 00:29:35,200
Speaker 1: announced originally, right. Uh. And then they find oh, there's

516
00:29:35,200 --> 00:29:41,120
Speaker 1: a rate of failure. Uh, maybe we shouldn't do this yet,

517
00:29:41,680 --> 00:29:44,800
Speaker 1: or maybe this thing is gonna crash and scatter radioactive

518
00:29:44,880 --> 00:29:48,280
Speaker 1: dust all over Australia or something like that, right, um.

519
00:29:48,360 --> 00:29:51,040
Speaker 1: And so as these objections start to mount, the people

520
00:29:51,040 --> 00:29:53,840
Speaker 1: who proposed it in the first place stopped talking about it,

521
00:29:53,880 --> 00:29:58,040
Speaker 1: and then they immediately shift to another new perfect plan

522
00:29:58,160 --> 00:30:00,440
Speaker 1: that they talk about. So this is the cycle of

523
00:30:00,840 --> 00:30:05,280
Speaker 1: that he accounts for and argues against that you see

524
00:30:05,320 --> 00:30:09,320
Speaker 1: in these economic arguments that you know that like I'm

525
00:30:09,360 --> 00:30:12,640
Speaker 1: thinking right now of like Elon Musk and SpaceX right,

526
00:30:12,680 --> 00:30:14,800
Speaker 1: like that's probably the current one that we're seeing where

527
00:30:14,800 --> 00:30:16,400
Speaker 1: it's like, how we can totally do this, We're gonna

528
00:30:16,480 --> 00:30:19,280
Speaker 1: land this. What's the most recent thing, like they landed

529
00:30:20,440 --> 00:30:22,480
Speaker 1: a space rocket on a platform in the middle of

530
00:30:22,520 --> 00:30:24,760
Speaker 1: the ocean, like what like a month or two ago. Yeah,

531
00:30:24,800 --> 00:30:27,000
Speaker 1: there was a talking about the whole Dragon programmer. I

532
00:30:27,000 --> 00:30:29,080
Speaker 1: think it's Dragon too at this point. I wrote something

533
00:30:29,120 --> 00:30:31,920
Speaker 1: about it for how stuff works now, uh, and it's

534
00:30:31,920 --> 00:30:35,440
Speaker 1: pretty impressive technology. But yeah, this is the latest where

535
00:30:35,440 --> 00:30:38,080
Speaker 1: where the you know, the the proponents of this were saying,

536
00:30:38,120 --> 00:30:40,640
Speaker 1: this is this is how we're getting to Mars. This

537
00:30:40,760 --> 00:30:43,320
Speaker 1: is the this is the vehicle, and it just takes

538
00:30:43,320 --> 00:30:45,240
Speaker 1: further development to get it where we needed. So it's

539
00:30:45,240 --> 00:30:48,280
Speaker 1: the new perfect plan that we're working on. Yeah, essentially

540
00:30:48,280 --> 00:30:51,000
Speaker 1: here semi perfect. Yeah, yeah, it is. It is the

541
00:30:51,040 --> 00:30:54,880
Speaker 1: new perfect plan. Now some additional anti space arguments were

542
00:30:54,880 --> 00:30:57,760
Speaker 1: presented in Engineering and Technology magazine back in two thousand

543
00:30:57,840 --> 00:31:02,520
Speaker 1: eleven by Cornish explore U been Handbury tennyson um. And

544
00:31:02,560 --> 00:31:05,480
Speaker 1: he was taking the anti space argument in a pro

545
00:31:05,640 --> 00:31:08,280
Speaker 1: con article that was that was pretty interesting. It was

546
00:31:08,320 --> 00:31:10,160
Speaker 1: kind of cool. They like laid him out like right

547
00:31:10,240 --> 00:31:12,560
Speaker 1: next to each other, the pro and the con argument

548
00:31:12,640 --> 00:31:14,440
Speaker 1: at the bottom. It was sort of like, so where

549
00:31:14,480 --> 00:31:16,720
Speaker 1: how have you been convinced? Yeah? Which one? Which one

550
00:31:16,760 --> 00:31:20,640
Speaker 1: do you side with? So here a couple of quotes

551
00:31:20,720 --> 00:31:22,760
Speaker 1: here that I have to read. He says, the amount

552
00:31:22,800 --> 00:31:25,520
Speaker 1: of money being spent on space researches in the billions,

553
00:31:25,520 --> 00:31:28,840
Speaker 1: and it has achieved extraordinarily little except for a bit

554
00:31:28,880 --> 00:31:33,240
Speaker 1: of improved technology, which would probably have come about anyway

555
00:31:33,240 --> 00:31:35,880
Speaker 1: by other means. I guess he means that we could

556
00:31:35,880 --> 00:31:38,000
Speaker 1: have had velcro without going into space, right, Yeah, we

557
00:31:38,040 --> 00:31:42,480
Speaker 1: probably could have built velcro without also going into space. Yeah. Meanwhile,

558
00:31:42,520 --> 00:31:44,960
Speaker 1: he says, we we have no shortage of crisises here

559
00:31:44,960 --> 00:31:49,160
Speaker 1: on Earth. Economic environmental, we've got deforestation, we've got global

560
00:31:49,200 --> 00:31:52,040
Speaker 1: clim climate change going on. Uh. He says we should

561
00:31:52,080 --> 00:31:55,320
Speaker 1: be spending these colossal sums of money on sustainability and

562
00:31:55,360 --> 00:31:58,280
Speaker 1: management of the human population. He said, quote, if you

563
00:31:58,320 --> 00:32:00,960
Speaker 1: put the money that is wasted in in space into

564
00:32:01,040 --> 00:32:04,760
Speaker 1: the hands of climatologists, you could have lasting benefits for mankind.

565
00:32:04,840 --> 00:32:07,840
Speaker 1: I don't think space science is bad science. I just

566
00:32:07,880 --> 00:32:11,240
Speaker 1: think it's a waste of time. Yeah, And Henbury Tennyson's

567
00:32:11,440 --> 00:32:15,640
Speaker 1: argument is really him considering space research a gross waste

568
00:32:15,680 --> 00:32:19,040
Speaker 1: of time, money, and effort that could be used to

569
00:32:19,080 --> 00:32:21,520
Speaker 1: do other things like manage our own planet, which you know,

570
00:32:21,680 --> 00:32:24,520
Speaker 1: that's something that we we already saw in the religious arguments.

571
00:32:24,560 --> 00:32:27,080
Speaker 1: Now it's popping up again and the the economic ones.

572
00:32:27,480 --> 00:32:29,880
Speaker 1: He says, this is interesting because I had not heard

573
00:32:29,880 --> 00:32:32,720
Speaker 1: this before, and it's it sounds a little pseudo e

574
00:32:32,840 --> 00:32:35,160
Speaker 1: to me. But but we'll see what you and the

575
00:32:35,200 --> 00:32:38,880
Speaker 1: listeners think. He says that all civilizations collapse after five

576
00:32:38,960 --> 00:32:42,040
Speaker 1: hundred years, and that this is usually because of their

577
00:32:42,160 --> 00:32:46,080
Speaker 1: greed to development and leads to the extinction of their culture.

578
00:32:47,040 --> 00:32:51,760
Speaker 1: Uh so, I don't know. I mean, okay, sure, let's

579
00:32:51,840 --> 00:32:55,360
Speaker 1: for the sake of this argument say that that's true, um,

580
00:32:55,400 --> 00:32:58,840
Speaker 1: and that our ambitions towards space are a sign of

581
00:32:58,880 --> 00:33:02,080
Speaker 1: our own event will collapse, that we're we're closing in

582
00:33:02,160 --> 00:33:04,600
Speaker 1: on the end of our our time. Yeah, I mean,

583
00:33:04,600 --> 00:33:09,080
Speaker 1: I've certainly read some material about the collapse of civilizations,

584
00:33:09,160 --> 00:33:12,960
Speaker 1: and yeah, I don't think that the five year estimate

585
00:33:13,040 --> 00:33:16,760
Speaker 1: is that far off. And that being said, a collapsing

586
00:33:17,040 --> 00:33:20,480
Speaker 1: civilization doesn't mean now what it used to me, and like,

587
00:33:20,480 --> 00:33:23,240
Speaker 1: like used to it meant some another army is going

588
00:33:23,280 --> 00:33:26,520
Speaker 1: to rise up and defeat you, and they might solve

589
00:33:26,560 --> 00:33:29,960
Speaker 1: the early just leave an empty city behind. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly,

590
00:33:30,000 --> 00:33:34,600
Speaker 1: whereas now we sort of just have like uh, fallen empires,

591
00:33:34,720 --> 00:33:38,760
Speaker 1: right right. But then but then space itself is I mean, granted,

592
00:33:38,800 --> 00:33:42,360
Speaker 1: there are a very few major players in the game,

593
00:33:42,680 --> 00:33:45,960
Speaker 1: but it is an international game, with newer players making

594
00:33:46,000 --> 00:33:47,960
Speaker 1: strides more and more every day, and that's part of

595
00:33:47,960 --> 00:33:51,080
Speaker 1: the problem, as some people argue to but both actually

596
00:33:51,120 --> 00:33:53,440
Speaker 1: they argue that it's part of the problem and what

597
00:33:53,600 --> 00:33:56,680
Speaker 1: makes it good, and we'll get into that later as well.

598
00:33:57,160 --> 00:33:59,720
Speaker 1: The last thing that he says here is because in

599
00:33:59,760 --> 00:34:01,760
Speaker 1: this is another thing that comes up in both sides

600
00:34:01,760 --> 00:34:05,320
Speaker 1: of the argument, because of population issues. Basically, because like

601
00:34:05,360 --> 00:34:08,879
Speaker 1: there's too many people on Earth, we should instead concentrate

602
00:34:09,520 --> 00:34:12,280
Speaker 1: all these funds that we're throwing into space exploration into

603
00:34:12,320 --> 00:34:16,120
Speaker 1: food production and rainmaking technology. I wonder what he would

604
00:34:16,160 --> 00:34:19,759
Speaker 1: have thought of Willem Reich in his Cloudbusters. But but yeah,

605
00:34:19,880 --> 00:34:22,560
Speaker 1: so the other the other side to that argument, as

606
00:34:22,560 --> 00:34:25,399
Speaker 1: we'll see, is basically, we should go into space because

607
00:34:25,440 --> 00:34:27,520
Speaker 1: there's a population problem, so we can get all of

608
00:34:27,560 --> 00:34:31,000
Speaker 1: these people off of Earth and colonize other planets and

609
00:34:31,040 --> 00:34:34,200
Speaker 1: take the resources from those planets. Yeah, it's like it

610
00:34:34,280 --> 00:34:37,840
Speaker 1: depends on how optimistic your view of humanities future in

611
00:34:37,880 --> 00:34:41,399
Speaker 1: space happens to be. If you think we can create um,

612
00:34:41,440 --> 00:34:44,400
Speaker 1: you know, arcs to send off to other planets, or

613
00:34:44,440 --> 00:34:47,160
Speaker 1: if you think that it's just so far off that

614
00:34:47,280 --> 00:34:50,200
Speaker 1: it's it's not even remotely an answer to even our

615
00:34:50,320 --> 00:34:54,040
Speaker 1: even our longer term problems. So good old stuff to

616
00:34:54,040 --> 00:34:56,840
Speaker 1: blow your mind. Regular Richard Feynman shows up in this

617
00:34:56,960 --> 00:35:00,880
Speaker 1: literature to who we have infamously talked about before in

618
00:35:00,960 --> 00:35:05,200
Speaker 1: his Bathtub Adventures or his sorry hot Tub Adventures criticizing

619
00:35:05,440 --> 00:35:09,960
Speaker 1: um reflexology. What episode was that on, I'm trying to

620
00:35:10,000 --> 00:35:13,160
Speaker 1: remember now. Was it on Cargo cult Science? Yes, it was,

621
00:35:13,320 --> 00:35:17,400
Speaker 1: because he coined the term cargo cultures. Yeah. His his

622
00:35:17,520 --> 00:35:21,200
Speaker 1: major thing is that human space travel and particular in

623
00:35:21,280 --> 00:35:25,080
Speaker 1: particular has never achieved any major scientific break THEWS or

624
00:35:25,120 --> 00:35:27,359
Speaker 1: had not of course during his lifetime. Yeah, that sounds

625
00:35:27,400 --> 00:35:29,440
Speaker 1: about right for Fineman though, and his like kind of

626
00:35:29,560 --> 00:35:33,520
Speaker 1: angle of criticism of how science is approached. But you know,

627
00:35:33,840 --> 00:35:36,080
Speaker 1: I was with him on the cargo cult science thing. Well,

628
00:35:36,120 --> 00:35:38,480
Speaker 1: you know this, this is one of those arguments that

629
00:35:38,520 --> 00:35:40,759
Speaker 1: I often find pretty compelling, and I've heard others make

630
00:35:40,800 --> 00:35:44,840
Speaker 1: it as well, And especially as the technology has advances,

631
00:35:44,920 --> 00:35:48,319
Speaker 1: we've gotten to a point where the near future technology

632
00:35:48,480 --> 00:35:51,640
Speaker 1: is uh, you know, perhaps even even further along than

633
00:35:51,920 --> 00:35:54,759
Speaker 1: than Fineman could have possibly imagined. You know, when we're

634
00:35:54,760 --> 00:35:58,520
Speaker 1: talking about our ability to engage with VR increased communication

635
00:35:58,680 --> 00:36:02,080
Speaker 1: between when robots, I mean, Joe and I did a

636
00:36:02,080 --> 00:36:04,600
Speaker 1: recent episode talking about some of the plans for exploring

637
00:36:04,719 --> 00:36:08,279
Speaker 1: the Jovian moons, and so many of those are predicated

638
00:36:08,400 --> 00:36:11,359
Speaker 1: on the use of probes that are been controlled by

639
00:36:11,400 --> 00:36:15,719
Speaker 1: this particular communication hub that's sending information back to us.

640
00:36:16,040 --> 00:36:19,120
Speaker 1: And it does make you raise the question do we

641
00:36:19,239 --> 00:36:22,960
Speaker 1: need to engage in the costly, dangerous endeavor of sending

642
00:36:22,960 --> 00:36:26,360
Speaker 1: a human out there for largely symbolic reasons like a

643
00:36:26,440 --> 00:36:29,719
Speaker 1: human concett in a steel container here on Earth and

644
00:36:29,760 --> 00:36:32,279
Speaker 1: watch this on a screen, or we can take him

645
00:36:32,360 --> 00:36:34,720
Speaker 1: or her and put them in an enclosed steel box

646
00:36:34,920 --> 00:36:37,960
Speaker 1: to watch it on a screen. Um, you know, kind

647
00:36:38,000 --> 00:36:40,240
Speaker 1: of like, why do I need to go to China?

648
00:36:40,280 --> 00:36:43,080
Speaker 1: I can walk to watch a documentary about it? Well,

649
00:36:43,360 --> 00:36:47,200
Speaker 1: except you can go to China, right and um but no,

650
00:36:47,320 --> 00:36:49,399
Speaker 1: but no, that's a that's a good counter argument as well.

651
00:36:49,440 --> 00:36:51,360
Speaker 1: It's like and it gets back to some people to

652
00:36:51,440 --> 00:36:53,480
Speaker 1: make that argument when you say why I haven't like

653
00:36:53,560 --> 00:36:56,800
Speaker 1: for some Americans, I like, I I've certainly met people

654
00:36:56,800 --> 00:36:59,440
Speaker 1: before who go why do you travel so much? I'm like, oh,

655
00:36:59,560 --> 00:37:01,279
Speaker 1: you know, you get to see new sites and learn

656
00:37:01,320 --> 00:37:04,320
Speaker 1: about new people, and it expands your ideas about the world.

657
00:37:04,320 --> 00:37:06,400
Speaker 1: And they're like, hey, I can get all that stuff

658
00:37:06,440 --> 00:37:08,680
Speaker 1: watching the travel channel. Yeah, but you can't catch a

659
00:37:08,719 --> 00:37:12,360
Speaker 1: weird flu watching and that's part of my travel experience.

660
00:37:12,440 --> 00:37:14,400
Speaker 1: But I don't come back with some sort of weird bug.

661
00:37:14,520 --> 00:37:19,480
Speaker 1: Then I know I didn't actually explore so A really grounded,

662
00:37:19,719 --> 00:37:24,480
Speaker 1: sort of very like logical look at the economic argument

663
00:37:24,520 --> 00:37:30,640
Speaker 1: was conducted actually in by the US Congressional Budget Office, UH,

664
00:37:30,680 --> 00:37:35,160
Speaker 1: and they performed what they say is a nonpartisan analysis

665
00:37:35,440 --> 00:37:39,160
Speaker 1: for Congress to review the economic benefits of what we

666
00:37:39,200 --> 00:37:42,160
Speaker 1: would get out of eliminating the space program, and this

667
00:37:42,160 --> 00:37:47,719
Speaker 1: would be from the years. The proposal is specifically to

668
00:37:47,920 --> 00:37:51,560
Speaker 1: terminate human space exploration. So it's important to say that because,

669
00:37:51,560 --> 00:37:53,880
Speaker 1: like as Robert was just saying, we can send up

670
00:37:54,160 --> 00:37:56,680
Speaker 1: unmanned probes and stuff like that right Like we're using

671
00:37:56,760 --> 00:38:00,239
Speaker 1: radio waves right now to map Jupiter in particular, so

672
00:38:00,280 --> 00:38:03,040
Speaker 1: we can see sort of what the geography of the

673
00:38:03,080 --> 00:38:05,840
Speaker 1: planet is like underneath all those spots. Yeah, I mean

674
00:38:05,920 --> 00:38:08,400
Speaker 1: that's the other I mean, even getting me on probes

675
00:38:09,000 --> 00:38:12,520
Speaker 1: and robots, I mean just pure sensors, pure telescope technology,

676
00:38:12,760 --> 00:38:15,840
Speaker 1: Like the human eye is not gonna is not going

677
00:38:15,920 --> 00:38:17,960
Speaker 1: to be able to glimpse these things. We need the

678
00:38:18,280 --> 00:38:21,160
Speaker 1: We need the eye of technology to glimpse and understand

679
00:38:21,160 --> 00:38:25,279
Speaker 1: these things. That's the that's the lens. That's important. So

680
00:38:25,280 --> 00:38:29,040
Speaker 1: the Congressional Budget Office says, look, this proposal would allow

681
00:38:29,480 --> 00:38:33,480
Speaker 1: NASA to continue its aeronautics and its robotics missions. That

682
00:38:33,600 --> 00:38:36,600
Speaker 1: you know, we're not cutting that out, just the human stuff. Now.

683
00:38:36,680 --> 00:38:39,480
Speaker 1: They found by crunching the numbers that this would save

684
00:38:39,880 --> 00:38:45,720
Speaker 1: seventy three billion dollars in that time span from three

685
00:38:46,160 --> 00:38:50,160
Speaker 1: They argue that because most space missions use electronics and

686
00:38:50,200 --> 00:38:53,359
Speaker 1: information technology, that there's no need to send humans into

687
00:38:53,400 --> 00:38:56,680
Speaker 1: space because the instruments don't need the people there to

688
00:38:56,760 --> 00:39:00,440
Speaker 1: operate them. And by using quote robots, I think robots

689
00:39:00,480 --> 00:39:03,040
Speaker 1: is a bit of a strong term here, but that

690
00:39:03,080 --> 00:39:06,400
Speaker 1: won't put human life in danger either, right Uh. And

691
00:39:06,440 --> 00:39:08,759
Speaker 1: it would actually decrease the cost. Because we make the

692
00:39:08,760 --> 00:39:11,360
Speaker 1: missions one way, we don't have to figure out a

693
00:39:11,400 --> 00:39:13,920
Speaker 1: way to bring them back and bring them back safely,

694
00:39:14,160 --> 00:39:16,600
Speaker 1: and that's a huge cost. Yeah, a one way mission

695
00:39:16,600 --> 00:39:20,799
Speaker 1: to Mars, uh isn't nearly as scarier thing when it's

696
00:39:20,800 --> 00:39:26,080
Speaker 1: just a robot. Robot Matt Damon. So yeah, robot Matt.

697
00:39:27,840 --> 00:39:31,960
Speaker 1: He's going to science the beep out of this. I

698
00:39:31,960 --> 00:39:33,960
Speaker 1: mean that's actually a pretty you know, when you think

699
00:39:33,960 --> 00:39:36,680
Speaker 1: about that movie, which was great, like most, I mean,

700
00:39:36,719 --> 00:39:39,160
Speaker 1: the whole thing that all the problems depend on the

701
00:39:39,200 --> 00:39:41,800
Speaker 1: fact that you sent a human there, and then there's

702
00:39:42,000 --> 00:39:45,600
Speaker 1: all of this you know, symbolic power and sending him

703
00:39:45,640 --> 00:39:48,880
Speaker 1: there and all this additional cost and keeping him alive

704
00:39:48,960 --> 00:39:52,000
Speaker 1: there and then and getting him back. Whereas it's just

705
00:39:52,040 --> 00:39:54,600
Speaker 1: a robot, you just write it off like any other robot.

706
00:39:54,640 --> 00:39:57,799
Speaker 1: We've sent out into his face. Yeah. Yeah, which some

707
00:39:57,840 --> 00:40:00,560
Speaker 1: people argue that's a problem too, especially lay along the

708
00:40:00,760 --> 00:40:05,520
Speaker 1: sort of pollution slash anti capitalist lines. But anyways, to

709
00:40:05,560 --> 00:40:11,040
Speaker 1: finish it off the this congressional article, they specifically added, look,

710
00:40:11,080 --> 00:40:14,040
Speaker 1: there's also arguments against this too, and here's what they are.

711
00:40:14,320 --> 00:40:18,120
Speaker 1: That eliminating human space flight would end the progress that's

712
00:40:18,160 --> 00:40:21,200
Speaker 1: necessary to send humans to Mars, leading right into that

713
00:40:21,280 --> 00:40:25,719
Speaker 1: Martian uh analogy. And also that there is possibly a

714
00:40:25,760 --> 00:40:30,200
Speaker 1: scientific advantage to having human beings on the I S

715
00:40:30,200 --> 00:40:33,839
Speaker 1: S to conduct experiments in micro gravity. That's true, that's

716
00:40:33,840 --> 00:40:36,000
Speaker 1: a good one. We kind of it's easy to forget

717
00:40:36,080 --> 00:40:38,120
Speaker 1: I S S and and all the work that goes

718
00:40:38,120 --> 00:40:41,239
Speaker 1: on there when we start thinking about these more futuristic

719
00:40:41,320 --> 00:40:44,120
Speaker 1: visions of sending humans to other planets. Now. On the

720
00:40:44,160 --> 00:40:49,200
Speaker 1: other hand, in two thousand eight, Freakonomics hosted a basically

721
00:40:49,200 --> 00:40:52,840
Speaker 1: like a round table of a bunch of space exploration

722
00:40:53,320 --> 00:40:57,520
Speaker 1: experts with the theme is space exploration worth the cost?

723
00:40:57,920 --> 00:40:59,400
Speaker 1: And I'm not going to break it down by like

724
00:40:59,440 --> 00:41:01,160
Speaker 1: each one. You can go look at it yourself. It's

725
00:41:01,200 --> 00:41:04,920
Speaker 1: pretty interesting, but they pretty much came down totally in

726
00:41:04,960 --> 00:41:07,640
Speaker 1: favor of space exploration and there are reasons where that

727
00:41:07,680 --> 00:41:12,040
Speaker 1: space exploration stimulates children to enter into stem fields. The

728
00:41:12,160 --> 00:41:16,440
Speaker 1: returns on investments generate royalties from patents and licenses. But

729
00:41:16,719 --> 00:41:19,239
Speaker 1: what's interesting is that all that money goes back into

730
00:41:19,280 --> 00:41:22,440
Speaker 1: the US Treasury instead of into NASA. So some of

731
00:41:22,480 --> 00:41:24,880
Speaker 1: them were arguing, Hey, you know, if you made it

732
00:41:25,000 --> 00:41:28,520
Speaker 1: so that the money that's generated from the technology that's

733
00:41:28,560 --> 00:41:31,920
Speaker 1: invented by NASA goes back into NASA, NASA will be

734
00:41:31,960 --> 00:41:36,800
Speaker 1: self funding. Then uh. And also this was a weird argument.

735
00:41:36,840 --> 00:41:39,640
Speaker 1: I thought. Uh. One guy said, well, we spend a

736
00:41:39,719 --> 00:41:41,680
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty four billion dollars a year in the

737
00:41:41,760 --> 00:41:44,400
Speaker 1: United States on alcohol, so why shouldn't we spend that

738
00:41:44,440 --> 00:41:47,200
Speaker 1: kind of money on going into space? See, and this

739
00:41:47,280 --> 00:41:49,600
Speaker 1: is this is where we get into an argument. We

740
00:41:49,640 --> 00:41:52,600
Speaker 1: see with science a lot that sounds to me like

741
00:41:52,640 --> 00:41:54,840
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that I would see in Facebook comments.

742
00:41:54,920 --> 00:41:56,719
Speaker 1: And then people will say, oh, but where is this

743
00:41:56,880 --> 00:41:58,919
Speaker 1: lost flight? How come we can do this? We can't

744
00:41:58,960 --> 00:42:02,799
Speaker 1: find that? Uh, you know the whole Really, we can

745
00:42:02,800 --> 00:42:05,160
Speaker 1: put a man on the moon. Why can't we achieve

746
00:42:05,320 --> 00:42:09,400
Speaker 1: this thing in our culture, in our life, either scientifically

747
00:42:09,560 --> 00:42:12,640
Speaker 1: or or or non science? Whatever is like a specific

748
00:42:12,719 --> 00:42:17,200
Speaker 1: current event type crisis. Curing cancer, it's another big one.

749
00:42:17,200 --> 00:42:19,600
Speaker 1: How Come how the argument is always like, oh, why

750
00:42:19,640 --> 00:42:21,719
Speaker 1: why aren't they curing cancer? I think, well, they can't

751
00:42:21,719 --> 00:42:26,439
Speaker 1: cure cancers. They're stopping wildfires. This is fluid dynamics. Yes,

752
00:42:26,880 --> 00:42:30,280
Speaker 1: this is a different realm. And just because just because

753
00:42:30,360 --> 00:42:34,040
Speaker 1: cancer research is hugely important and lives are are on

754
00:42:34,080 --> 00:42:36,360
Speaker 1: the line, it doesn't mean that these other areas of

755
00:42:36,400 --> 00:42:40,800
Speaker 1: scientific inquiry or not important, right right. Uh, they made

756
00:42:41,320 --> 00:42:44,640
Speaker 1: many more arguments in favor of space. So I'm gonna

757
00:42:44,640 --> 00:42:46,920
Speaker 1: throw some of these down here and then we'll keep

758
00:42:46,960 --> 00:42:49,360
Speaker 1: those in mind as we continue on with the arguments

759
00:42:49,440 --> 00:42:53,240
Speaker 1: against going into space. Uh. One is that it would,

760
00:42:53,239 --> 00:42:56,720
Speaker 1: of course allow us to establish human civilization on another world.

761
00:42:57,080 --> 00:43:00,520
Speaker 1: We talked already about the new technologies, but in particular

762
00:43:00,600 --> 00:43:03,399
Speaker 1: they gave us some examples saying we've developed a better

763
00:43:03,480 --> 00:43:06,920
Speaker 1: understanding of osteoporosis and balance disorder as a result of

764
00:43:06,960 --> 00:43:10,280
Speaker 1: sending people into outer space, and we've built new medical

765
00:43:10,320 --> 00:43:16,520
Speaker 1: devices such as digital mammography that generate wealth. Now now again,

766
00:43:16,600 --> 00:43:18,520
Speaker 1: like it's debatable is that going to the treasury, is

767
00:43:18,560 --> 00:43:21,760
Speaker 1: it going to NASA, or is it going into private hands? Also,

768
00:43:22,360 --> 00:43:26,920
Speaker 1: miniaturization of electronics devices for space flight led to our

769
00:43:26,960 --> 00:43:31,520
Speaker 1: present day computers and phones. So these are some tangible

770
00:43:31,520 --> 00:43:34,920
Speaker 1: examples of that kind of trickled down and technology that

771
00:43:35,040 --> 00:43:38,360
Speaker 1: we were discussing earlier. The other argument economically that I

772
00:43:38,360 --> 00:43:42,080
Speaker 1: thought was interesting was they said NASA's development in the South,

773
00:43:42,239 --> 00:43:46,600
Speaker 1: meaning the South of the United States, by establishing centers

774
00:43:46,760 --> 00:43:52,279
Speaker 1: or space flight operations, uh, that those brought economic economic

775
00:43:52,360 --> 00:43:56,560
Speaker 1: development into areas that previously didn't have them, basically providing jobs,

776
00:43:56,920 --> 00:44:01,200
Speaker 1: specifically thinking of Cape canaveral and Garda and Huntsville, Alabama.

777
00:44:01,320 --> 00:44:03,439
Speaker 1: It's also the reason you have like five or six

778
00:44:03,440 --> 00:44:06,360
Speaker 1: German restaurants in Huntsville, Alabama. It's like the mecca of

779
00:44:06,440 --> 00:44:10,200
Speaker 1: German restaurants in the entire region. All except for what's

780
00:44:10,200 --> 00:44:14,120
Speaker 1: the what's the fake German town here in Georgia Helen? Helen?

781
00:44:14,160 --> 00:44:16,520
Speaker 1: I think Helen only that is Helen is not a

782
00:44:16,520 --> 00:44:21,000
Speaker 1: destination for Yeah, if you if you're from the South,

783
00:44:21,040 --> 00:44:22,560
Speaker 1: have you ever been to Helen, Georgia, You know what

784
00:44:22,560 --> 00:44:25,920
Speaker 1: we're talking about. But it's like this little like touristy,

785
00:44:25,920 --> 00:44:28,759
Speaker 1: fake German village. It's kind of bizarre. Yeah, they do

786
00:44:28,840 --> 00:44:31,719
Speaker 1: have a good Thai restaurant data. By the way, in

787
00:44:31,760 --> 00:44:34,920
Speaker 1: the fake German town, there's a great rest there, just

788
00:44:35,200 --> 00:44:39,919
Speaker 1: f y I to local listeners. Other other reasons why

789
00:44:39,960 --> 00:44:44,000
Speaker 1: we where we should go is this is an interesting terminology.

790
00:44:44,480 --> 00:44:49,960
Speaker 1: It allows us to address global challenges with quote space solutions,

791
00:44:50,000 --> 00:44:53,920
Speaker 1: and one of those is the international context. So it

792
00:44:54,000 --> 00:44:58,600
Speaker 1: offers a venue for peaceful cooperation between nations. Uh. And

793
00:44:58,680 --> 00:45:02,480
Speaker 1: that results in a foreign policy boost and prestige to

794
00:45:02,560 --> 00:45:06,200
Speaker 1: those nations, right. Uh. And so the person who made

795
00:45:06,200 --> 00:45:10,320
Speaker 1: this argument says that it justifies the Cold War basically,

796
00:45:11,000 --> 00:45:13,319
Speaker 1: which again, like like I said at the top, some

797
00:45:13,360 --> 00:45:16,640
Speaker 1: of these arguments I find a little bit loose like that.

798
00:45:16,640 --> 00:45:19,000
Speaker 1: That one's kind of strange to me. You end up

799
00:45:19,040 --> 00:45:22,240
Speaker 1: kind of taking uh, it's you end up taking approaches

800
00:45:22,239 --> 00:45:25,080
Speaker 1: if you're playing a game of civilization right where you're

801
00:45:25,200 --> 00:45:29,080
Speaker 1: you're thinking, oh, well, this brought up my technology technology score,

802
00:45:29,160 --> 00:45:31,680
Speaker 1: but then also it lowered the risk level. And it's

803
00:45:31,719 --> 00:45:35,400
Speaker 1: just it gets it's helpful to take these these broad views,

804
00:45:35,560 --> 00:45:40,080
Speaker 1: but it's also it also creates its own problems with perspective. Yeah,

805
00:45:40,120 --> 00:45:43,640
Speaker 1: I think so as well. Another one is some again

806
00:45:43,800 --> 00:45:46,520
Speaker 1: sort of loose, right, but uh, well, you know, of

807
00:45:46,560 --> 00:45:48,560
Speaker 1: course we should keep doing this and spending these billions

808
00:45:48,560 --> 00:45:51,160
Speaker 1: of dollars because it will answer the are we alone? Question?

809
00:45:51,239 --> 00:45:54,080
Speaker 1: Which sure it will, and that that would be fascinating,

810
00:45:54,200 --> 00:45:57,200
Speaker 1: you know, that would be great headlines. Right. But do

811
00:45:57,239 --> 00:46:00,120
Speaker 1: we need to know are we alone? More than we

812
00:46:00,200 --> 00:46:03,960
Speaker 1: need to I don't know, feed the hungry? Yeah, stuff

813
00:46:04,000 --> 00:46:07,600
Speaker 1: like that is sort of where the economic argument gets tricky.

814
00:46:07,760 --> 00:46:10,520
Speaker 1: It's also one of those things. Um. Not to be

815
00:46:10,640 --> 00:46:12,799
Speaker 1: too much of a downer, but sometimes I think about

816
00:46:12,840 --> 00:46:15,080
Speaker 1: that and I think, well, it would be great to know,

817
00:46:15,520 --> 00:46:18,600
Speaker 1: but the answer can only mess us up, you know,

818
00:46:18,880 --> 00:46:21,080
Speaker 1: like the answers no, then oh I feel so alone.

819
00:46:21,080 --> 00:46:23,719
Speaker 1: If the answer is yes, well then it's whoa, what

820
00:46:23,760 --> 00:46:25,799
Speaker 1: does that mean for my sense of identity? What does

821
00:46:25,840 --> 00:46:28,680
Speaker 1: that mean for my faith? And then are they scary

822
00:46:28,800 --> 00:46:32,960
Speaker 1: or not? Should I now just be petrified of the

823
00:46:32,960 --> 00:46:36,680
Speaker 1: the Independence day version? Um? And then there's this, you know,

824
00:46:36,800 --> 00:46:39,520
Speaker 1: continual argument that we keep coming back to that ex

825
00:46:39,960 --> 00:46:43,000
Speaker 1: exploration is intrinsic to human nature, so of course we

826
00:46:43,040 --> 00:46:47,080
Speaker 1: have to fulfill our human nature right um. And whenever

827
00:46:47,160 --> 00:46:49,799
Speaker 1: I hear that, I can't help but think of the

828
00:46:49,840 --> 00:46:54,040
Speaker 1: Franklin Expedition into uh the Arctic because I did a

829
00:46:54,040 --> 00:46:56,960
Speaker 1: lot of research into that for another project, and that

830
00:46:57,040 --> 00:47:00,279
Speaker 1: was basically, you know, this pre space age that that

831
00:47:00,360 --> 00:47:03,719
Speaker 1: was their outer space, like being able to traverse the

832
00:47:03,760 --> 00:47:07,399
Speaker 1: Northwest passage. Uh. And they lost tons alive and spent

833
00:47:07,520 --> 00:47:10,120
Speaker 1: many a lot of money. They still don't know what happened. Well,

834
00:47:10,160 --> 00:47:12,440
Speaker 1: they sort of know what happened to the Franklin expedition.

835
00:47:12,520 --> 00:47:15,640
Speaker 1: But you know, there's there's many a horror story written

836
00:47:15,680 --> 00:47:19,919
Speaker 1: about the cannibalization that possibly went on on the icy

837
00:47:19,960 --> 00:47:23,439
Speaker 1: wastes of the North uh, purely so that we could

838
00:47:23,440 --> 00:47:29,560
Speaker 1: fulfill this need of human exploration. So there's that. Uh. Now,

839
00:47:29,600 --> 00:47:33,480
Speaker 1: one guy in particular, he says, quote asking if space

840
00:47:33,520 --> 00:47:37,319
Speaker 1: exploration with humans or robots are both is worth the

841
00:47:37,400 --> 00:47:41,360
Speaker 1: effort is like questioning the value of Columbus's voyage to

842
00:47:41,400 --> 00:47:45,080
Speaker 1: the New World in the fourteen nineties. Now, it's interesting

843
00:47:45,120 --> 00:47:48,480
Speaker 1: about that is one of the people that we're going

844
00:47:48,520 --> 00:47:52,640
Speaker 1: to talk about next actually makes that argument and says, yeah,

845
00:47:52,680 --> 00:47:54,719
Speaker 1: that was a bad thing too. Yeah, there are a

846
00:47:54,719 --> 00:47:57,120
Speaker 1: lot of compelling arguments that that was. That was a

847
00:47:57,160 --> 00:48:00,239
Speaker 1: bad thing. And it's kind of weird to say you

848
00:48:00,320 --> 00:48:03,160
Speaker 1: can't doubt this because doubting that is like second guessing

849
00:48:03,239 --> 00:48:06,160
Speaker 1: something that happened in the past. I can't really, I

850
00:48:06,200 --> 00:48:09,560
Speaker 1: can't change what happened with Columbus. You know, a lot

851
00:48:09,640 --> 00:48:12,600
Speaker 1: of aspects of that scenario sucked. But um, you know

852
00:48:12,960 --> 00:48:15,600
Speaker 1: I am in that flow of time. I'm not going

853
00:48:15,640 --> 00:48:17,719
Speaker 1: to go back and kill him. Yeah. I gotta say,

854
00:48:17,719 --> 00:48:20,160
Speaker 1: like a lot of these people in this Freakonomics roundtable,

855
00:48:20,560 --> 00:48:24,239
Speaker 1: you know, it was a couple of years ago now,

856
00:48:24,320 --> 00:48:27,520
Speaker 1: so maybe their their arguments would be different. But I

857
00:48:27,560 --> 00:48:31,279
Speaker 1: admire their enthusiasm for space travel, but some of their

858
00:48:31,400 --> 00:48:34,879
Speaker 1: arguments weren't very well thought out. And I think part

859
00:48:34,880 --> 00:48:36,880
Speaker 1: of it comes from, again just going from the broad

860
00:48:36,960 --> 00:48:40,040
Speaker 1: view to the smaller view and it ultimately being kind

861
00:48:40,040 --> 00:48:44,400
Speaker 1: of its own wicked problem. Right. Yeah, absolutely. Now, another

862
00:48:44,440 --> 00:48:46,080
Speaker 1: thing I want to point out here before we take

863
00:48:46,120 --> 00:48:49,880
Speaker 1: another break is that, you know, looking back, it's easy

864
00:48:50,000 --> 00:48:53,080
Speaker 1: to look back at the footage of of of the

865
00:48:53,080 --> 00:48:56,160
Speaker 1: the original space race and thinking, well, everybody was behind it.

866
00:48:56,680 --> 00:49:00,640
Speaker 1: There's just so much like political and public will that

867
00:49:00,719 --> 00:49:02,759
Speaker 1: was devoted for it. Of course, you were able to

868
00:49:02,760 --> 00:49:05,520
Speaker 1: pull off such a megaproject, and of course, to a

869
00:49:05,560 --> 00:49:07,960
Speaker 1: certain extent that's true. We were we were able to

870
00:49:08,000 --> 00:49:10,719
Speaker 1: do that kind of things that those pep we were

871
00:49:10,760 --> 00:49:15,200
Speaker 1: able to pull off landing humans on the Moon because

872
00:49:15,680 --> 00:49:20,120
Speaker 1: that political capital was there. However, Uh, I've found a

873
00:49:20,120 --> 00:49:23,359
Speaker 1: couple of sources that really drive home the fact that

874
00:49:24,239 --> 00:49:28,360
Speaker 1: public opinion polls conducted during the Apollo missions, um the

875
00:49:28,440 --> 00:49:30,520
Speaker 1: voices of critics that we can look back on, it

876
00:49:30,840 --> 00:49:34,120
Speaker 1: shows that not everyone was really as on board as

877
00:49:34,160 --> 00:49:37,120
Speaker 1: we sometimes like to think. Yeah, like I'm imagining like

878
00:49:37,160 --> 00:49:40,360
Speaker 1: the Archie Bunkers of the world probably didn't like get

879
00:49:40,400 --> 00:49:45,160
Speaker 1: as excited about the mission to the Moon as like

880
00:49:45,280 --> 00:49:47,640
Speaker 1: maybe the rest of us. Yeah. And in fact, if

881
00:49:47,640 --> 00:49:51,200
Speaker 1: some of this comes from space historian Roger Lanaias of

882
00:49:51,200 --> 00:49:53,360
Speaker 1: the National Inner Space Museum, who we mentioned earlier in

883
00:49:53,360 --> 00:49:57,360
Speaker 1: that piece about Dr James C. Fletcher, Yeah, he said, quote.

884
00:49:57,560 --> 00:50:00,640
Speaker 1: Polls do not support a contention that American embraced the

885
00:50:00,719 --> 00:50:04,360
Speaker 1: lunar landing mission. Consistently through the nineteen sixties, the majority

886
00:50:04,360 --> 00:50:07,000
Speaker 1: of Americans did not believe Apollo was worth the cost.

887
00:50:07,560 --> 00:50:10,239
Speaker 1: With the one exception to this poll to this a

888
00:50:10,320 --> 00:50:13,040
Speaker 1: poll taken at the time of Apollo eleven lunar landing

889
00:50:13,040 --> 00:50:17,320
Speaker 1: in July ninety nine, and uh, consistently throughout the decade,

890
00:50:17,560 --> 00:50:20,239
Speaker 1: forty five to sixty percent of Americans belief that the

891
00:50:20,280 --> 00:50:24,040
Speaker 1: government was spending too much money on space, indicative of

892
00:50:24,080 --> 00:50:27,640
Speaker 1: a lack of commitment to the spaceflight agenda. Yeah, so

893
00:50:27,680 --> 00:50:32,200
Speaker 1: that's sort of like our revisionist history, right, especially through

894
00:50:32,239 --> 00:50:35,160
Speaker 1: pop culture, like like, yeah, now we've got movies with

895
00:50:35,200 --> 00:50:38,200
Speaker 1: Tom Hanks where we sit around and celebrate how amazing

896
00:50:38,480 --> 00:50:42,719
Speaker 1: our ingenuity was for sending Apollo up there. But at

897
00:50:42,719 --> 00:50:47,600
Speaker 1: the time, Yeah, yeah, indeed, and uh has pointed out

898
00:50:47,640 --> 00:50:52,120
Speaker 1: in an excellent Atlantic article by Alexa c Magical. Could

899
00:50:52,360 --> 00:50:54,839
Speaker 1: that I recommend anyone check out. I'll include a link

900
00:50:54,840 --> 00:50:56,600
Speaker 1: to it on the landing page. For this episode, I

901
00:50:56,640 --> 00:51:00,200
Speaker 1: was titled the Moondoggle, The Forgotten Opposition to the Apollo Program.

902
00:51:00,320 --> 00:51:02,160
Speaker 1: Um He says, there was a fair amount of civil

903
00:51:02,239 --> 00:51:06,320
Speaker 1: rights criticism of the space program. So you had, for instance,

904
00:51:06,600 --> 00:51:09,480
Speaker 1: in the in the musical scene, you had the the

905
00:51:09,560 --> 00:51:12,960
Speaker 1: late great Gil Scott Heron who died in two thousand eleven.

906
00:51:13,560 --> 00:51:16,080
Speaker 1: You may know him for the Revolution will not be

907
00:51:16,120 --> 00:51:19,040
Speaker 1: telefol televised. Home is Where the Hatred Is. A number

908
00:51:19,080 --> 00:51:22,319
Speaker 1: of songs are this highly talented artists. Uh. He wrote

909
00:51:22,360 --> 00:51:24,280
Speaker 1: a couple of songs that were critical of the program,

910
00:51:24,320 --> 00:51:28,160
Speaker 1: most notably nineteen seventies Whitey on the Moon um, which

911
00:51:28,200 --> 00:51:32,319
Speaker 1: is probably the most notable example. But the it kind

912
00:51:32,320 --> 00:51:33,560
Speaker 1: of goes like this. I'm not gonna sing it, but

913
00:51:33,560 --> 00:51:35,719
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna quote it. He says, with all that

914
00:51:35,800 --> 00:51:38,200
Speaker 1: money I made last year for Whitey on the Moon,

915
00:51:38,440 --> 00:51:40,880
Speaker 1: how come there ain't no money here? White He's on

916
00:51:40,920 --> 00:51:43,279
Speaker 1: the moon. You know, I just about had my fill

917
00:51:43,400 --> 00:51:46,360
Speaker 1: of Whitey on the Moon. I think I'll I'll send

918
00:51:46,400 --> 00:51:50,200
Speaker 1: these dollar these doctor bills airmail special to Whitey on

919
00:51:50,239 --> 00:51:52,440
Speaker 1: the Moon. And of course what he's saying here is

920
00:51:52,480 --> 00:51:55,600
Speaker 1: that we're spending all of this money on well, on

921
00:51:55,719 --> 00:51:58,880
Speaker 1: sending white people to the moon on this space program.

922
00:51:58,960 --> 00:52:02,520
Speaker 1: That is not benefiting people who are suffering. It's not

923
00:52:02,560 --> 00:52:05,960
Speaker 1: and it's not benefiting UH, individuals who are still fighting

924
00:52:06,040 --> 00:52:08,719
Speaker 1: for their own civil rights, while all of this money

925
00:52:08,840 --> 00:52:14,920
Speaker 1: is is fighting to do really with with hardly tangible benefits,

926
00:52:14,920 --> 00:52:18,360
Speaker 1: certainly not to the common man. Ray Bradberry has a story,

927
00:52:18,840 --> 00:52:20,480
Speaker 1: I can't remember the title of it, that's in The

928
00:52:20,520 --> 00:52:25,040
Speaker 1: Illustrated Man that's along the lines of this too, Yeah,

929
00:52:25,080 --> 00:52:29,440
Speaker 1: where the premises that African Americans have basically moved to

930
00:52:29,640 --> 00:52:34,120
Speaker 1: Mars because civil rights issues on Earth were so horrific,

931
00:52:34,600 --> 00:52:38,400
Speaker 1: and then white people on Earth had mind all the

932
00:52:38,520 --> 00:52:43,640
Speaker 1: resources and we're starving and they needed help. So they Uh,

933
00:52:43,719 --> 00:52:46,040
Speaker 1: it's about like a rocket man coming to Mars. He

934
00:52:46,160 --> 00:52:48,960
Speaker 1: lands on Mars, and some of the people on Mars

935
00:52:48,960 --> 00:52:51,600
Speaker 1: are like, why should we accept these people? Why should

936
00:52:51,640 --> 00:52:54,359
Speaker 1: we help them? Ultimately, the community comes together and says,

937
00:52:54,360 --> 00:52:56,239
Speaker 1: of course we're gonna We're gonna take care of So

938
00:52:56,360 --> 00:53:00,960
Speaker 1: essentially Bradberry wrote an afro futurist pete. That's interesting. Yeah,

939
00:53:01,120 --> 00:53:03,480
Speaker 1: it's an incredible story. Off to go, I'll go look

940
00:53:03,480 --> 00:53:06,520
Speaker 1: that up because I I found I find afro futurism

941
00:53:06,520 --> 00:53:10,799
Speaker 1: a very interesting area. Yeah, you have this convergence of

942
00:53:10,800 --> 00:53:13,600
Speaker 1: of enthusiasm for space and science fiction but also the

943
00:53:13,640 --> 00:53:16,640
Speaker 1: civil rights movement. Yeah, there was stuff like that even

944
00:53:16,640 --> 00:53:19,160
Speaker 1: in like the old EAC comics in the late fifties.

945
00:53:19,719 --> 00:53:22,040
Speaker 1: In fact, like one of the reasons this is an

946
00:53:22,080 --> 00:53:26,040
Speaker 1: interesting little side note, one of the reasons why horror

947
00:53:26,040 --> 00:53:31,120
Speaker 1: comics were banned in the fifties and why the Comics

948
00:53:31,120 --> 00:53:34,920
Speaker 1: Code was created was because EAC comics had a story

949
00:53:35,200 --> 00:53:37,440
Speaker 1: that was a sci fi story where at the end

950
00:53:37,440 --> 00:53:40,200
Speaker 1: of the story, the an astronaut takes off his helmet

951
00:53:40,360 --> 00:53:43,279
Speaker 1: and it's a black man and it's you know, the

952
00:53:43,800 --> 00:53:46,240
Speaker 1: people writing it were meant to be a civil rights

953
00:53:46,560 --> 00:53:52,960
Speaker 1: promotional story, but the black man was sweating. There was

954
00:53:53,080 --> 00:53:56,440
Speaker 1: a bead of sweat dripping down his face in the panel.

955
00:53:56,640 --> 00:53:59,560
Speaker 1: And the people who were against the story at the

956
00:53:59,600 --> 00:54:03,000
Speaker 1: times said that that was like too primal or something

957
00:54:03,080 --> 00:54:05,919
Speaker 1: like that, and that you know that the comic book

958
00:54:05,960 --> 00:54:09,239
Speaker 1: was pushing boundaries too far by showing the sensuality of

959
00:54:09,280 --> 00:54:13,080
Speaker 1: the humanity of this astronaut. Huh, yeah, that is fascinating.

960
00:54:13,600 --> 00:54:17,320
Speaker 1: So hey, Gil Scott Heron wasn't alone. Yeah, indeed, um,

961
00:54:17,400 --> 00:54:20,319
Speaker 1: and certainly they were. Yeah, it went beyond just just

962
00:54:20,600 --> 00:54:24,480
Speaker 1: you know, the work of your artists. Um. In Black

963
00:54:24,480 --> 00:54:27,239
Speaker 1: protesters marched on Cape Canaveral to protest the launch of

964
00:54:27,280 --> 00:54:31,759
Speaker 1: a Paula fourteen. Uh. Then civil rights leader Jose Williams, who,

965
00:54:31,760 --> 00:54:35,560
Speaker 1: of course we have Jose Williams here in Atlanta. Yeah,

966
00:54:35,600 --> 00:54:38,600
Speaker 1: he framed this as a protest against quote, our nation's

967
00:54:38,640 --> 00:54:42,520
Speaker 1: inability to choose humane priorities, which gets down to the

968
00:54:42,760 --> 00:54:46,160
Speaker 1: economic argument again, right, Like it's just truly a priority

969
00:54:46,239 --> 00:54:49,160
Speaker 1: and what's more important to us. Yeah, clearly, if you

970
00:54:49,160 --> 00:54:51,279
Speaker 1: look at the way that the budget breaks down, the

971
00:54:51,280 --> 00:54:55,760
Speaker 1: war is tremendously more. Yeah, and that is war. Robert

972
00:54:55,840 --> 00:55:00,560
Speaker 1: defense that's often used as an argument for space exploration is, Look,

973
00:55:01,160 --> 00:55:03,960
Speaker 1: if you spent just a fraction more of what you

974
00:55:04,000 --> 00:55:07,759
Speaker 1: spend on the war in the Middle East on space exploration,

975
00:55:08,480 --> 00:55:11,360
Speaker 1: then we would we'd experience all of these tangible benefits

976
00:55:11,440 --> 00:55:13,799
Speaker 1: as as opposed to just the merre tangible benefits of

977
00:55:13,800 --> 00:55:15,960
Speaker 1: military research. Yeah. I think about the Star Wars and

978
00:55:16,040 --> 00:55:18,440
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about the movie, the Star Wars program

979
00:55:18,560 --> 00:55:21,680
Speaker 1: research done in the eighties. That's combining both worlds. It's

980
00:55:21,719 --> 00:55:26,080
Speaker 1: the space exploration world combined with militarization, which we talked

981
00:55:26,120 --> 00:55:29,600
Speaker 1: about with the Weapons in Space episode. Yeah. Now that

982
00:55:29,600 --> 00:55:33,120
Speaker 1: that Alexacy Madrigal article that mentioned he he spends a

983
00:55:33,120 --> 00:55:35,400
Speaker 1: lot of time talking about the work of his Israeli

984
00:55:35,480 --> 00:55:41,240
Speaker 1: American sociologist uh Amatali at Ziani uh and his fifty

985
00:55:41,280 --> 00:55:45,279
Speaker 1: four book The Moondoggle, Domestic and International Implications of the

986
00:55:45,280 --> 00:55:48,959
Speaker 1: Space Race, And in this book at the only laid

987
00:55:48,960 --> 00:55:52,840
Speaker 1: out scientific opposition to the space race as a cash

988
00:55:52,920 --> 00:55:56,440
Speaker 1: and crash approach to science, and he argued that, based

989
00:55:56,440 --> 00:55:58,520
Speaker 1: on the opinions of various scientists that he spoke to,

990
00:55:58,920 --> 00:56:02,400
Speaker 1: space should only be pursued in balance with other scientific

991
00:56:02,440 --> 00:56:05,000
Speaker 1: and technological pursuits, and shouldn't be pursued in a manner

992
00:56:05,040 --> 00:56:09,239
Speaker 1: that weakens other scientific endeavors. One of the facts that

993
00:56:09,560 --> 00:56:12,279
Speaker 1: cited here um in the book, and then cited by

994
00:56:12,320 --> 00:56:15,360
Speaker 1: Magical is that of every three dollars spent on research

995
00:56:15,360 --> 00:56:18,160
Speaker 1: and development in the United United States in nineteen three,

996
00:56:18,560 --> 00:56:21,760
Speaker 1: one went for defense, one for space, and the remaining

997
00:56:21,880 --> 00:56:25,799
Speaker 1: one for all other research purposes, including private industry and

998
00:56:25,880 --> 00:56:30,200
Speaker 1: medical research. He also argued that the space program at

999
00:56:30,200 --> 00:56:32,480
Speaker 1: the time function as something of a brain range. He

1000
00:56:32,600 --> 00:56:35,120
Speaker 1: had the best in the brightest and where they drawn,

1001
00:56:35,120 --> 00:56:37,000
Speaker 1: they're drawn where the energy is, they're drawn where the

1002
00:56:37,040 --> 00:56:43,840
Speaker 1: money is. And that was the exactly Yeah and um.

1003
00:56:43,880 --> 00:56:46,200
Speaker 1: And it's also argued that while one of the Space

1004
00:56:46,200 --> 00:56:49,080
Speaker 1: program did create jobs, it did stimulate the economy, it

1005
00:56:49,160 --> 00:56:52,640
Speaker 1: mainly did so with a focus on highly skilled positions.

1006
00:56:52,719 --> 00:56:55,680
Speaker 1: Yeah sure, right, Yeah, they're not. There's not that many

1007
00:56:55,760 --> 00:56:59,920
Speaker 1: jobs for janitors at NASA necessarily as there are for

1008
00:57:00,120 --> 00:57:04,400
Speaker 1: engineers with PhDs. So how are we going to abolish

1009
00:57:04,400 --> 00:57:08,600
Speaker 1: outer Space. Okay, So Sam Chris, I was unfamiliar with him,

1010
00:57:08,640 --> 00:57:11,279
Speaker 1: I learned. Actually, it turned out I was familiar with him.

1011
00:57:11,280 --> 00:57:13,200
Speaker 1: I had read articles by him before, but I didn't

1012
00:57:13,239 --> 00:57:16,520
Speaker 1: realize who he was. Uh. He just in February of

1013
00:57:16,600 --> 00:57:19,360
Speaker 1: this year wrote a piece at the New Inquiry that

1014
00:57:19,560 --> 00:57:21,920
Speaker 1: I've already said as the manifesto of the Committee to

1015
00:57:21,960 --> 00:57:26,440
Speaker 1: Abolish outer Space. I learned about it from uh my

1016
00:57:26,560 --> 00:57:29,960
Speaker 1: patron saint for Stuff to Blow your Mind, warren Ellis's newsletter.

1017
00:57:30,000 --> 00:57:33,640
Speaker 1: He included it in his newsletter, um Warren Ellis being

1018
00:57:33,680 --> 00:57:39,120
Speaker 1: a political science fiction writer, mainly of comics but also

1019
00:57:39,120 --> 00:57:42,680
Speaker 1: of pros. Uh. So, Chris, from what I can gather,

1020
00:57:42,920 --> 00:57:46,520
Speaker 1: seems to be a writer who alternates between I guess

1021
00:57:46,560 --> 00:57:51,040
Speaker 1: what I would call florid prose satire and nonfiction essays.

1022
00:57:51,360 --> 00:57:54,000
Speaker 1: And his big thing seems to be challenging what we

1023
00:57:54,080 --> 00:57:57,520
Speaker 1: assumed to be authority figures in modern thought, like Neil

1024
00:57:57,560 --> 00:58:02,160
Speaker 1: de Grass, Tyson Slaboy, Jack, Richard Dawkins, Nate Silver, people

1025
00:58:02,200 --> 00:58:05,720
Speaker 1: like that. Uh He's written for Wired, Slate, invice. This

1026
00:58:05,760 --> 00:58:08,600
Speaker 1: isn't just some like crazy guy off on his own blog,

1027
00:58:08,640 --> 00:58:11,120
Speaker 1: although he does have his own blog and trying to read,

1028
00:58:11,160 --> 00:58:15,800
Speaker 1: it is fairly impenetrable. Um. And I also recommend take

1029
00:58:15,800 --> 00:58:17,800
Speaker 1: a look at this guy's Twitter feed two because it's

1030
00:58:17,800 --> 00:58:21,360
Speaker 1: it's also like pretty out there. Um. But this piece,

1031
00:58:21,400 --> 00:58:25,280
Speaker 1: in particular, he argues that the promise of the beautiful

1032
00:58:25,360 --> 00:58:28,600
Speaker 1: journey to space is actually a political lie. It's an

1033
00:58:28,640 --> 00:58:32,720
Speaker 1: ant and so he's making an anti capitalist argument. Uh.

1034
00:58:32,720 --> 00:58:36,080
Speaker 1: And he says that this political lie is perpetuated by

1035
00:58:36,120 --> 00:58:40,440
Speaker 1: science communicators who pretend to love science. And what I

1036
00:58:40,480 --> 00:58:43,360
Speaker 1: wonder is if we would be included in there now

1037
00:58:43,400 --> 00:58:46,520
Speaker 1: he does include some of our peers in there. Uh.

1038
00:58:46,560 --> 00:58:49,600
Speaker 1: In a separate piece, he expands on it in a

1039
00:58:49,640 --> 00:58:53,600
Speaker 1: Wired article against Neil de grass Tyson and I f

1040
00:58:53,720 --> 00:58:58,080
Speaker 1: L Science. He accuses them of quote making the universe boring,

1041
00:58:58,280 --> 00:59:02,160
Speaker 1: telling people things that they already know, and dispelling misconceptions

1042
00:59:02,200 --> 00:59:05,880
Speaker 1: that nobody actually holds. So I'd like to think that

1043
00:59:05,960 --> 00:59:09,280
Speaker 1: we were not guilty of those things. But hey, listeners,

1044
00:59:09,360 --> 00:59:12,640
Speaker 1: let us know. Yeah, I feel like this is an

1045
00:59:12,640 --> 00:59:16,320
Speaker 1: area we could we could really discuss at length another time.

1046
00:59:16,440 --> 00:59:20,840
Speaker 1: But there is this whole push and pull between science

1047
00:59:21,000 --> 00:59:23,800
Speaker 1: and public science science and you could I guess I've

1048
00:59:23,800 --> 00:59:26,680
Speaker 1: heard it called vulgar science. Uh, and we've talked. We

1049
00:59:26,760 --> 00:59:29,200
Speaker 1: talked about it in the Cargo Cults episode and sort

1050
00:59:29,240 --> 00:59:32,120
Speaker 1: of in the Wicked Problems episode two, that there is

1051
00:59:32,160 --> 00:59:36,640
Speaker 1: a somewhat like deification of quote unquote science in today's

1052
00:59:36,720 --> 00:59:40,360
Speaker 1: pop culture news cycle, and space is kind of a

1053
00:59:40,360 --> 00:59:44,840
Speaker 1: shining gym. It is, you don't quite, It's like, it's

1054
00:59:44,880 --> 00:59:52,160
Speaker 1: essentially haven't it's essentially the afterlife for the vulgar science y. Yeah.

1055
00:59:52,840 --> 00:59:55,840
Speaker 1: Another quote he has here is he says science here

1056
00:59:56,400 --> 01:00:00,400
Speaker 1: meaning in these situations of writing, has very little to

1057
01:00:00,440 --> 01:00:05,440
Speaker 1: do with the scientific method itself. It means ontological physicalism,

1058
01:00:05,480 --> 01:00:09,400
Speaker 1: not believing in quote our Lord Jesus Christ, hating the

1059
01:00:09,520 --> 01:00:13,280
Speaker 1: spectral lee, stupid and more than anything, pretty pictures of

1060
01:00:13,320 --> 01:00:17,800
Speaker 1: nebula and tree frogs. So, okay, I sort of get

1061
01:00:17,800 --> 01:00:20,320
Speaker 1: where he's coming from here. But you know, I'm often

1062
01:00:20,360 --> 01:00:22,680
Speaker 1: accused of being a curmudge, and this guy really seems

1063
01:00:22,720 --> 01:00:26,040
Speaker 1: to be planting a flag there. He's been a bit

1064
01:00:26,040 --> 01:00:29,120
Speaker 1: of a hardcore. Yeah, But his manifesto, he says, look,

1065
01:00:29,440 --> 01:00:34,120
Speaker 1: space itself in the existence of life is actually vanishingly short,

1066
01:00:34,600 --> 01:00:37,640
Speaker 1: and we are all headed toward death because the universe

1067
01:00:37,760 --> 01:00:41,040
Speaker 1: is already unmaking itself. But in the meantime, here we

1068
01:00:41,080 --> 01:00:44,000
Speaker 1: are polluting space with all of our electronic debris and

1069
01:00:44,120 --> 01:00:48,320
Speaker 1: probes and what we refer to as space junk, right uh.

1070
01:00:48,360 --> 01:00:52,000
Speaker 1: And he says, if our exploration of space goes like

1071
01:00:52,080 --> 01:00:56,400
Speaker 1: our exploration of Earth has, then Mars will end up

1072
01:00:56,480 --> 01:01:00,920
Speaker 1: exploiting We'll just end up exploiting Mars for resources, right uh.

1073
01:01:00,920 --> 01:01:04,040
Speaker 1: And there's a there's an infamous book by Robert Zubrin,

1074
01:01:04,240 --> 01:01:07,400
Speaker 1: the Case for Mars, that is often cited as being like, yeah,

1075
01:01:07,440 --> 01:01:09,440
Speaker 1: this is this is the go to book of like

1076
01:01:09,760 --> 01:01:11,840
Speaker 1: why we should, why we should get up there? Why

1077
01:01:12,160 --> 01:01:15,840
Speaker 1: zuber is a great advocate four Mars. Yeah, I interviewed

1078
01:01:15,920 --> 01:01:19,280
Speaker 1: him several years back. Yeah, and it's he is. Yeah,

1079
01:01:19,280 --> 01:01:21,000
Speaker 1: he's gung ho. He's like, he's very much of the

1080
01:01:21,040 --> 01:01:23,360
Speaker 1: mindset not only should we go to Mars, we should

1081
01:01:23,400 --> 01:01:27,160
Speaker 1: be there today. He makes an impassioned argument, Well, Sam,

1082
01:01:27,280 --> 01:01:32,520
Speaker 1: Chris hates that guy. Uh. He says that this brings

1083
01:01:32,560 --> 01:01:34,880
Speaker 1: us back to what we mentioned earlier. He says that

1084
01:01:35,000 --> 01:01:38,880
Speaker 1: Zubrin's case for Mars is basically an analog for Columbus

1085
01:01:39,200 --> 01:01:42,880
Speaker 1: pillaging the America's uh, and that you know, going to

1086
01:01:42,920 --> 01:01:45,600
Speaker 1: Mars will lead to quote the spread of a rationalism,

1087
01:01:45,920 --> 01:01:49,920
Speaker 1: the banalization of popular culture, the loss of willingness by

1088
01:01:49,920 --> 01:01:53,160
Speaker 1: individuals to take risks, to fend for themselves and to

1089
01:01:53,280 --> 01:01:57,520
Speaker 1: think for themselves. So, okay, I don't know if I

1090
01:01:57,560 --> 01:01:59,840
Speaker 1: agree with it. Yeah, I don't know if I do either.

1091
01:02:00,040 --> 01:02:04,320
Speaker 1: I also think, like um, like many kind of quasi

1092
01:02:04,480 --> 01:02:08,439
Speaker 1: Marxist critics, this argument ends up getting lost a lot,

1093
01:02:08,480 --> 01:02:11,760
Speaker 1: and it's sort of flowery poetic prose and trying to

1094
01:02:11,800 --> 01:02:14,080
Speaker 1: show how great of a writer this guy actually is,

1095
01:02:14,280 --> 01:02:19,000
Speaker 1: rather than focusing on his argumentation. Uh, like this segment

1096
01:02:19,080 --> 01:02:21,440
Speaker 1: here where I'm telling you about what is in this

1097
01:02:21,520 --> 01:02:23,240
Speaker 1: It took me, like I would say, a good hour

1098
01:02:23,640 --> 01:02:27,560
Speaker 1: to pull this out of the morass of his language.

1099
01:02:27,560 --> 01:02:29,600
Speaker 1: But also I would imagine he would say, well, this's

1100
01:02:29,880 --> 01:02:33,360
Speaker 1: this is postmodern argumentation, man like, it's a manifest doing

1101
01:02:33,360 --> 01:02:36,560
Speaker 1: the same way to the cyborg manifest. Totally. Donna Harroway

1102
01:02:36,680 --> 01:02:40,200
Speaker 1: is exactly in the same camp. Yeah yeah, so uh

1103
01:02:40,400 --> 01:02:42,960
Speaker 1: he says the journey to any frontier is going to

1104
01:02:43,560 --> 01:02:47,680
Speaker 1: result in the depths of millions. But we convince ourselves

1105
01:02:47,720 --> 01:02:51,280
Speaker 1: that Mars is okay, right, because Mars is lifeless. Nobody

1106
01:02:51,280 --> 01:02:56,280
Speaker 1: can die on Mars. Right. Uh, And he brings us

1107
01:02:56,320 --> 01:02:59,120
Speaker 1: back around again to the Columbus thing, and he says, well,

1108
01:02:59,200 --> 01:03:03,080
Speaker 1: feudalism is dying in Europe. The conquering of the America's

1109
01:03:03,160 --> 01:03:07,160
Speaker 1: kept the ruling class in power by shipping vast quantities

1110
01:03:07,200 --> 01:03:11,240
Speaker 1: of precious metals back to them. So this is basically

1111
01:03:11,240 --> 01:03:14,840
Speaker 1: an anti capitalist argument against going into space because Earth

1112
01:03:14,880 --> 01:03:18,120
Speaker 1: is running out of both physical space for human beings

1113
01:03:18,400 --> 01:03:21,400
Speaker 1: and the minerals of value for us to exploit. He

1114
01:03:21,480 --> 01:03:23,200
Speaker 1: even goes so far as to say that if we

1115
01:03:23,320 --> 01:03:27,960
Speaker 1: end up going to Mars, it could lead to slavery again. Yeah,

1116
01:03:28,080 --> 01:03:33,640
Speaker 1: so he comes down hard on this. Now there's a

1117
01:03:34,680 --> 01:03:40,120
Speaker 1: similar argument, but I would say less strident argument made

1118
01:03:40,160 --> 01:03:44,280
Speaker 1: by Paul Dickens in a article that he wrote for

1119
01:03:44,760 --> 01:03:48,920
Speaker 1: Monthly Review, which is an independent socialist magazine. And Dickens

1120
01:03:48,960 --> 01:03:53,440
Speaker 1: basically says, look, the humanization of the cosmos is primarily

1121
01:03:53,520 --> 01:03:59,600
Speaker 1: about benefiting the powerful, namely economic and military institutions, and

1122
01:03:59,640 --> 01:04:03,160
Speaker 1: it will keep happening as we continue to colonize the cosmos.

1123
01:04:03,160 --> 01:04:04,880
Speaker 1: So he says, we need to come up with some

1124
01:04:04,920 --> 01:04:06,920
Speaker 1: kind of alternative forms of this. So he's not like

1125
01:04:06,960 --> 01:04:10,560
Speaker 1: necessarily against going into space. What he's against is doing

1126
01:04:10,600 --> 01:04:15,120
Speaker 1: it for the gain of the upper class essentially. Uh,

1127
01:04:15,160 --> 01:04:18,600
Speaker 1: And he says, yeah, we look at going into outer

1128
01:04:18,640 --> 01:04:22,120
Speaker 1: space as being a symbol of modernization. It's progress. It

1129
01:04:22,200 --> 01:04:25,120
Speaker 1: brings social unity, right. Like he actually points out he

1130
01:04:25,160 --> 01:04:28,800
Speaker 1: says one of the most lauded benefits of space exploration

1131
01:04:29,040 --> 01:04:33,680
Speaker 1: is teleworking. That we wouldn't have teleworking technology. Uh. If

1132
01:04:33,720 --> 01:04:36,600
Speaker 1: it wasn't for the space race, well then I guess

1133
01:04:36,640 --> 01:04:38,600
Speaker 1: it was all worth it. But I don't know, man,

1134
01:04:38,680 --> 01:04:42,520
Speaker 1: tell we both telework, but man alive is it seems

1135
01:04:42,560 --> 01:04:48,919
Speaker 1: like we haven't gotten that technology nailed down yet. The technology. Um, yeah,

1136
01:04:48,960 --> 01:04:51,560
Speaker 1: and to say nothing of the weirdness of trying to

1137
01:04:51,600 --> 01:04:54,440
Speaker 1: work from home around at all the rights. So then

1138
01:04:54,440 --> 01:04:57,520
Speaker 1: he also mentions, hey, look at this big boom in

1139
01:04:57,600 --> 01:05:00,240
Speaker 1: space tourism. Now keep in mind this is in two thousand, hen,

1140
01:05:00,320 --> 01:05:02,560
Speaker 1: this is six years ago. So he's already talking about

1141
01:05:02,640 --> 01:05:06,120
Speaker 1: Richard Branson getting a you know, trying to create like

1142
01:05:06,200 --> 01:05:09,800
Speaker 1: the space tourism industry, charging people exorbitant prices so that

1143
01:05:09,840 --> 01:05:13,800
Speaker 1: can fly lower, be at lower orbit. Uh. He also

1144
01:05:13,840 --> 01:05:15,880
Speaker 1: mentioned something that I had never heard of before, called

1145
01:05:15,920 --> 01:05:19,600
Speaker 1: the Space Renaissance Initiative, which is apparently an international group

1146
01:05:19,640 --> 01:05:24,280
Speaker 1: of over seventy private organizations that promote space exploration, and

1147
01:05:24,320 --> 01:05:27,040
Speaker 1: they have their own manifesto, and this manifesto is to

1148
01:05:27,120 --> 01:05:29,959
Speaker 1: help the economy because there's too many people on Earth

1149
01:05:30,000 --> 01:05:33,120
Speaker 1: that are making too many demands on Earth's resources. So

1150
01:05:33,160 --> 01:05:35,240
Speaker 1: they sort of see themselves the same way as like

1151
01:05:35,280 --> 01:05:38,840
Speaker 1: the wealthy philanthropists who funded exploration to the New World, right,

1152
01:05:38,840 --> 01:05:42,240
Speaker 1: the people who helped Columbus out. Okay, they're not saying

1153
01:05:42,360 --> 01:05:45,320
Speaker 1: there are too many people, let's throw some people into

1154
01:05:45,320 --> 01:05:49,160
Speaker 1: outer space. Yeah yeah, not not that far, not yet.

1155
01:05:49,160 --> 01:05:52,000
Speaker 1: We're not gonna put him out the airlock. Uh. But

1156
01:05:52,040 --> 01:05:55,280
Speaker 1: he says, look, that's a weird argument, right, because instead

1157
01:05:55,280 --> 01:05:57,960
Speaker 1: of finding a solution to our problems, you're just basically

1158
01:05:58,080 --> 01:06:01,439
Speaker 1: jettising them away, right, We'll just push push them off.

1159
01:06:01,640 --> 01:06:04,440
Speaker 1: So another argument by philanthropists like this is something like

1160
01:06:05,200 --> 01:06:09,320
Speaker 1: will find cheap supplies for labor or raw materials up there, right,

1161
01:06:09,360 --> 01:06:12,920
Speaker 1: So that's going to benefit the economy as well. His

1162
01:06:13,000 --> 01:06:17,240
Speaker 1: evidence that he showed in for the quote global space

1163
01:06:17,280 --> 01:06:21,560
Speaker 1: economy was that it had increased between two thousand four

1164
01:06:21,600 --> 01:06:24,560
Speaker 1: and two thousand nine. Uh. Now you hear people often

1165
01:06:24,600 --> 01:06:27,160
Speaker 1: to crying like that. NASA is not getting enough funding.

1166
01:06:27,200 --> 01:06:32,120
Speaker 1: But he's talking about everything from commercial satellites to military hardware,

1167
01:06:32,280 --> 01:06:36,640
Speaker 1: space tourism, and launch services, and that government budgets actually

1168
01:06:36,800 --> 01:06:39,400
Speaker 1: rose in two thousand nine up to two hundred and

1169
01:06:39,440 --> 01:06:44,400
Speaker 1: sixty one billion dollars to promote space exploration. And at

1170
01:06:44,440 --> 01:06:48,760
Speaker 1: the end he mentions the growth of SpaceX under Elon Musk,

1171
01:06:48,800 --> 01:06:50,480
Speaker 1: which we kind of talked about at the beginning, right

1172
01:06:50,480 --> 01:06:53,720
Speaker 1: as that's that's currently are are kind of like quote

1173
01:06:53,800 --> 01:06:57,560
Speaker 1: perfect plan for going to space, as we're enamored with

1174
01:06:58,880 --> 01:07:01,760
Speaker 1: launching and landing these rockets that SpaceX is working on.

1175
01:07:02,240 --> 01:07:04,640
Speaker 1: So all of this raises a question that I would

1176
01:07:04,680 --> 01:07:08,040
Speaker 1: I would pitch to you the audience, who owns outer space?

1177
01:07:09,240 --> 01:07:13,280
Speaker 1: And what about the collisions between all that stuff that

1178
01:07:13,320 --> 01:07:16,040
Speaker 1: we have an outer space? Who's responsible for that? With

1179
01:07:16,080 --> 01:07:18,200
Speaker 1: all the space junk that's floating around up there, Like

1180
01:07:18,200 --> 01:07:20,960
Speaker 1: there's a lot of like who who takes responsibility when

1181
01:07:21,000 --> 01:07:24,400
Speaker 1: those crash into each other? He even argues, you know,

1182
01:07:25,200 --> 01:07:28,600
Speaker 1: what could we do with the money there that we're

1183
01:07:28,640 --> 01:07:32,320
Speaker 1: spending up in space here on Earth? Could we end

1184
01:07:32,440 --> 01:07:35,400
Speaker 1: poverty with all of those billions of dollars that we're

1185
01:07:35,400 --> 01:07:41,040
Speaker 1: spending on going to space, I might got answers No, Yeah,

1186
01:07:41,080 --> 01:07:43,240
Speaker 1: I I would say no as well. I imagine that

1187
01:07:43,280 --> 01:07:47,920
Speaker 1: it's a much more pervasive, wicked problem than Yeah. There

1188
01:07:47,960 --> 01:07:49,600
Speaker 1: is a tendency to sort of, when you're talking about

1189
01:07:49,640 --> 01:07:51,960
Speaker 1: these vast sums of money, to sort of throw them

1190
01:07:51,960 --> 01:07:54,640
Speaker 1: down hallways and say, how throw this money down the

1191
01:07:54,680 --> 01:07:57,480
Speaker 1: hallway of poverty. You got it, you got it. That's alve,

1192
01:07:57,600 --> 01:08:01,560
Speaker 1: throw this money down the hallway of of overpopulation. You've

1193
01:08:01,600 --> 01:08:03,800
Speaker 1: got it solved. And it just it never works out

1194
01:08:03,840 --> 01:08:08,160
Speaker 1: that way, alright. So there you have it. A lot

1195
01:08:08,240 --> 01:08:11,720
Speaker 1: of the anti space arguments, some arguments for that we've

1196
01:08:11,760 --> 01:08:13,960
Speaker 1: mentioned in place, everything in balance, but for the most part,

1197
01:08:13,960 --> 01:08:18,200
Speaker 1: focusing on uh, on the voices that are saying this

1198
01:08:18,280 --> 01:08:21,679
Speaker 1: is maybe not worth the amount of money we're spending.

1199
01:08:21,920 --> 01:08:25,320
Speaker 1: Maybe the benefits here aren't really worth chasing after, certainly

1200
01:08:25,360 --> 01:08:29,080
Speaker 1: with not not with this level of money. Um, but

1201
01:08:29,200 --> 01:08:34,160
Speaker 1: you know, economic arguments, religious arguments, political arguments. So there's

1202
01:08:34,200 --> 01:08:36,920
Speaker 1: something to it there. I just don't know where I

1203
01:08:37,000 --> 01:08:39,799
Speaker 1: fall anymore, Robert, I don't know. I mean, I want

1204
01:08:39,920 --> 01:08:42,320
Speaker 1: us to go to space. I love I love those

1205
01:08:42,360 --> 01:08:45,400
Speaker 1: ideas as like as as everybody does, right, Like like

1206
01:08:45,439 --> 01:08:47,200
Speaker 1: I said, like I was a little kid sitting there

1207
01:08:47,200 --> 01:08:49,400
Speaker 1: watching Krista mcculliff go up, and I was supposed to

1208
01:08:49,439 --> 01:08:53,000
Speaker 1: be proud of one of my uh uh local New

1209
01:08:53,000 --> 01:08:57,599
Speaker 1: Hampshire right's flying into space uh and have this tragic ending.

1210
01:08:58,200 --> 01:09:01,759
Speaker 1: But um, I don't know. I mean, when you present

1211
01:09:01,800 --> 01:09:03,599
Speaker 1: all these other arguments of what we could do with

1212
01:09:03,640 --> 01:09:07,880
Speaker 1: that money, who it's benefiting, I don't know where I

1213
01:09:07,920 --> 01:09:11,519
Speaker 1: fall anymore. Yeah, I find the arguments, the arguments about

1214
01:09:11,640 --> 01:09:15,840
Speaker 1: ways we could use the money to better benefit people

1215
01:09:15,880 --> 01:09:19,120
Speaker 1: here on Earth and better address sustainability problems here. I

1216
01:09:19,160 --> 01:09:21,960
Speaker 1: find those to be pretty compelling at the same time.

1217
01:09:22,479 --> 01:09:25,080
Speaker 1: And this may this may actually spill more into almost

1218
01:09:25,080 --> 01:09:28,679
Speaker 1: a kind of religious or you know, just just fear

1219
01:09:28,720 --> 01:09:32,320
Speaker 1: based decision making process. But there are plenty of times

1220
01:09:32,320 --> 01:09:35,639
Speaker 1: where I'll be I'll be outside, like playing with my son,

1221
01:09:36,160 --> 01:09:38,880
Speaker 1: and I'll this happens way too often. I'll look up

1222
01:09:38,880 --> 01:09:42,760
Speaker 1: in the sky and I'll imagine, uh, something burning through

1223
01:09:42,800 --> 01:09:46,280
Speaker 1: it coming down, And it's kind of like a scenario

1224
01:09:46,400 --> 01:09:50,040
Speaker 1: where a family waits to the last minute to pack

1225
01:09:50,080 --> 01:09:52,200
Speaker 1: and move out of the apartment that they're having to

1226
01:09:52,280 --> 01:09:55,280
Speaker 1: make kate and it's like, why didn't you pack up

1227
01:09:55,280 --> 01:09:57,320
Speaker 1: ahead of time. Why didn't you prepare? You knew this

1228
01:09:57,439 --> 01:10:01,400
Speaker 1: was coming, and you didn't prepare, And now it's coming down.

1229
01:10:01,680 --> 01:10:06,519
Speaker 1: So I keep coming back to our planet's ability to

1230
01:10:06,520 --> 01:10:11,080
Speaker 1: to shield itself from near Earth objects, to shield our

1231
01:10:11,520 --> 01:10:14,840
Speaker 1: culture and our people in our species from a mass extinction,

1232
01:10:15,320 --> 01:10:17,040
Speaker 1: And I just I always come back to that and

1233
01:10:17,080 --> 01:10:19,920
Speaker 1: think that that is worth the effort, Like that should

1234
01:10:19,960 --> 01:10:23,600
Speaker 1: be a major line item on on every UH, on

1235
01:10:23,680 --> 01:10:29,360
Speaker 1: every politician's desk. But so so maybe maybe here's the compromise.

1236
01:10:29,479 --> 01:10:32,760
Speaker 1: We we put all that money rather into space exploration.

1237
01:10:32,760 --> 01:10:35,920
Speaker 1: We're gonna build uh like a giant force field that

1238
01:10:36,040 --> 01:10:39,000
Speaker 1: envelops the entire planet Earth. Sure, if we can figure

1239
01:10:39,000 --> 01:10:42,840
Speaker 1: out of plant. Um, but that's the thing. How are

1240
01:10:42,880 --> 01:10:46,600
Speaker 1: you gonna you're gonna? I mean, I'm being phasical, no, no no,

1241
01:10:46,720 --> 01:10:48,880
Speaker 1: But but I like the play does come back to

1242
01:10:48,920 --> 01:10:52,840
Speaker 1: the idea that even even my view here, my sort

1243
01:10:52,840 --> 01:10:55,920
Speaker 1: of go to argument for space exploration is still more

1244
01:10:55,960 --> 01:10:58,640
Speaker 1: about Earth. It's still more about safeguarding what we have

1245
01:10:58,840 --> 01:11:01,720
Speaker 1: here rather than and exploring all of these you know,

1246
01:11:01,760 --> 01:11:06,880
Speaker 1: fascinating things about say the Jovian moons, right, yeah, yeah, absolutely, Yeah.

1247
01:11:06,960 --> 01:11:09,519
Speaker 1: There's a lot of good arguments on both sides. And

1248
01:11:09,720 --> 01:11:12,400
Speaker 1: you know what, listeners, we would love to hear from you.

1249
01:11:12,479 --> 01:11:14,840
Speaker 1: I imagine at this point there's a lot of you

1250
01:11:14,920 --> 01:11:17,599
Speaker 1: out there that are probably already halfway through writing as

1251
01:11:17,600 --> 01:11:20,240
Speaker 1: a message, whether it's on Facebook or Twitter or Tumbler

1252
01:11:20,880 --> 01:11:23,640
Speaker 1: or through email. Uh. You can find us on all

1253
01:11:23,680 --> 01:11:27,920
Speaker 1: of our social platforms, including Instagram now at blow the Mind.

1254
01:11:28,600 --> 01:11:31,720
Speaker 1: That's our handle there, and don't forget, hey, we're on

1255
01:11:31,920 --> 01:11:34,000
Speaker 1: stuff to Blow your Mind dot com too. That's where

1256
01:11:34,040 --> 01:11:36,960
Speaker 1: we've got everything from podcasts to videos to articles, all

1257
01:11:37,000 --> 01:11:39,840
Speaker 1: the stuff that Robert, Joe and I are generating every week.

1258
01:11:39,960 --> 01:11:41,439
Speaker 1: And if you want to send us an email, we

1259
01:11:41,520 --> 01:11:44,280
Speaker 1: address as always is blow the Mind at how stuff

1260
01:11:44,360 --> 01:11:57,639
Speaker 1: Works well more on most compassasive other topics. How stuff

1261
01:11:57,680 --> 01:12:14,720
Speaker 1: Works dot Com the biggest part