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Comment by AndrewKemendo | Hacker News Reader

I always feel like a curmudgeon when the topic of manned space travel comes up or really space exploration in general.

From my perspective I see literally thousands of ambitious projects yearly that go unfunded that would do mankind magnitudes more good than sending people into space or generally peering upward.

I have heard the arguments ad-nausea for why investment in space exploration has a positive ROI and find none of them compelling. No, the handful of "dreamers" that it produces is not worth the billions of dollars, No, the handful of technologies [1] that we can find terrestrial use for as a byproduct are not worth the billions of dollars spent.

If invisible braces were that big of a need we likely could have found the solution through much cheaper means.

We should be putting our money into Fusion, AGI and longevity research. Not walkabouts on the moon.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off_technologies

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My interest in longevity is closely tied to my interest in space. From my perspective, significant extension of lifespan (& healthspan) helps solve some inefficiencies we currently have in propagation and persistence of knowledge, which I think could help with solving other really hard problems because experts can keep being experts for longer, with less of their time spent on having to train new experts before they fade away. Lifespan extension also turns many "not my problem" situations into "we better figure out a way to deal with that". Once we're in that mindset, combined with possible gains in research efficiencies, I think we'll be able to address long distance space travel more effectively and efficiently. I'm all for both figuring out how to not trash Earth and figuring out how to colonize other planets at the same time. Certainly research in the sort of climate engineering needed to terraform another world could be applied to saving our current one.

I'm going to try to help open that longevity door first; I expect there to be quite a bit of exciting possibilities behind it (and probably a great deal of social chaos, but we can deal with that when we get there...).

Longevity will be

> Longevity will be

... I sure hope that wasn't an ironic interruption.

You say that as though we can't do both. Have you seen NASA's pathetic little budget? And who's to say it has to be a government that does this? Companies like SpaceX are stepping up and picking up NASA's slack at a rapid pace.

Is it actually meaningful to compare NASA with SpaceX? My understanding is that SpaceX's primary—if not only—client is NASA. If I've got this right, doesn't it mean that the money still comes from the Feds and SpaceX is not that different from Boeing/Douglas/North American in the Apollo era?

You're wrong. Most of their launches are not for Nasa.

The big difference between SpaceX and the others is SpaceX has to do it competitively. They can't just do whatever and send the gov a bill for it.

You say that as though we can't do both.

In theory we can, but in reality we can't. That is not how, historically we allocate resources.

And who's to say it has to be a government that does this?

Actually I don't say that at all and intend fully to be on the train for one of these breakthroughs in the private sector.

Companies like SpaceX are stepping up and picking up NASA's slack at a rapid pace.

NASA "invested" 500M into SpaceX long ago. The USG also picked up most of the bill for the Falcon 9 if I remember correctly. I think SpaceX is doing great stuff but lets not get too excited about market demand for space exploration. The bulk of these programs look at earth, which I think are valuable and useful. I think Musk is going to find that he has trouble finding a robust market for manned exploration - the ROI (in every way) just isn't there.

less than eight days of the US's current daily deficit spending covers NASA's budget for the year. Still I have to agree about going back to the moon, manufacturing wise wouldn't zero G be more important than being on the moon?

Longevity is a great way for billions of people to witness the impact of the next Dinosaur Killer. Not so much for making sure the species survives.

Not so much for making sure the species survives.

What do you see as the long term (100,000 year) future of the Human race?

The species you are describing (us) evolved to be successful in the specific environment of the earth.

We know enough about our solar system from terrestrial based observation to determine that there is no other habitable planet for humans within our solar system.

Moving us somewhere else without significantly changing our biology or having the unlimited resources to terraform and build synthetic atmospheres would be an exercise in futility given the insane costs.

On the other hand if we are able to live long enough to build Fusion ("free" energy), build superhuman AGI to help us optimize our decisions and activities, and become blended with technology such that our biological limitations are removed, space exploration is trivial.

That's valid, but why do individuals have to live long enough? Are our current lifetimes not enough to work on this? Is dying at 90 the thing that's holding us back from creating those things?

I want to live forever as much as anyone else who makes this claim, but if an asteroid hits in 20 years, the difference between humanity being completely wiped out and being able to eventually re-start is whether we've got canned apes somewhere off the vulnerable surface.

That's valid, but why do individuals have to live long enough?

So that we can build the technologies that will preserve their "information."

Think about it like this, all great breakthroughs were enabled because people were able to transform their thoughts to written or spoken word. Most people do not have this ability, yet the amount of insight worldwide is innumerable. For example first hand accounts of the 1920's are very quickly going away. If we can extract these insights and extend their metaphors longer, the pace of our breakthroughs will expand because we will have better data to compare to.

> significantly changing our biology or having the unlimited resources to terraform and build synthetic atmospheres

> build superhuman AGI to help us optimize our decisions and activities, and become blended with technology such that our biological limitations are removed

We are pretty far away from being able to do either of those, far enough away that there could be a major barrier stopping us from doing one or the other that we haven't really seen yet. If that is the case, maintaining both research tracks in parallel seems perfectly rational to me.

If that is the case, maintaining both research tracks in parallel seems perfectly rational to me.

Agree completely, which is part of the whole transhumanist thing. I was simply stating it as a condition for exploration - one that few explorers acknowledge.

Longevity increases the lifespan of the brilliant minds that can make much further progress with a few extra decades than we can in the meantime.

Knowing you'll be AROUND for the next Dino-killer is a great motivator to do something proactive about it.

I don't think there should be a "priority stack rank" look at this. The truth is, we live in the most opulent time in history; resources are plentiful; there's enough economic resources to travel space, examine alternative energy, and extend the human lifespan and healthcare.

I choose to believe we don't need to make a choice. We can do it all.

The reality is though that even if we lived in a market utopia that most efficiently allocated resources, resources are still limited. So in practical terms we do need to prioritize.

If you list the 10 best fields to put our resources in, we can invest so heavily there that we reach diminishing returns and still fund space exploration and many other wonderful things. Resources are still limited, but we don't need to worry if we spend some on good, but sub-optimal things.

Nobody knows how to do Fusion, AGI or figure out how to make people live longer. These are engineering ventures where step 1 isn't even vaguely understood. You make it sound as if throwing money at them will make them happen. No. We have already thrown money at these problems, and they haven't made appreciable progress at all.

The nice thing about space travel: we know what the intermediate steps are, and we also know it has a history of appreciable technological spinoffs. Like, say, microchips.

Blue sky goals are noble aspirations, but immediate (say in 10 years) achievable goals are vastly more productive.

Nobody knew how to land on the moon or control nuclear fission either...

We have already thrown money at these problems

Not even close. There is no "Manhattan Project" for any of those like there was for the space race/nuclear bomb.

If the same amount of resources were put toward AGI ($<100M* since 1956) or Fusion ($29B* since 1954) as was put toward just the apollo program alone ($~110B* from 1961-1972). We would likely have achieved the goals.

*All figures inflation adjusted

People knew how to land on the moon decades before it happened; people were writing engineering studies on it in the 1940s. The missing pieces were obvious "fill in the blanks" that required no great breakthroughs, though it certainly resulted in many breakthroughs.

No such thing as "fill in the blank" engineering to be done to make AGI, Fusion or extreme longevity happen. Nobody knows how to do these things even in principle. Nobody has the slightest clue how to do these things. While we should try; the idea that throwing large amounts of money at such things will do anything but employ large numbers of smart people on something that may be a futile exercise is preposterous.

As for $29 billion on Fusion research since 1954: complete and total bullshit. ITER has already cost $20 billion: and that's one project. NIF is pushing $6-7 billion by now; it's predecessor, NOVA was several billion: that's already more than your allegations of a $29billion total spent on fusion research. In reality, we've spent well over a hundred billion on this topic; and it's about as close to fruition now as it was in the 1950s, because our entrenched bureaucracies keep doing the same stupid things.

That is the problem with fanboys who want science fiction things that may never exist: you can't count. Counting is important.

Well this is far from clear. There are not that many people working on AGI, Fusion has always been vastly underfunded from what they estimated it would take (http://i.imgur.com/sjH5r.jpg), and life extension research is pathetically underfunded as well.

Spinoff technologies are great, but I bet that any scientific or engineering venture you throw money at will also produce spin off technologies. E.g. AI research makes it's way to hundreds of different industries.

Personally think it's more wise to spread money over many different fields and projects rather than giant mega projects.

Of those, only fusion might be worth funding--the other two are just singularity wankfests.

As a species, we don't need to create AI to make our magical programmable waifus, and we don't need to prolong the lives of those rich enough to afford it and to reinforce the order of things that got them to that point.

AGI is a crock, because we can't even treat the sentient beings we already have with respect. Longevity is a crock, because it doesn't help the next generation.

We don't need fusion because only rich people would be able to afford it, and we don't really need electricity anyway. We don't need space exploration because only rich people will be able to afford to go to space, and who really needs space exploration. We don't need computing technology because only rich people will be able to afford computers, and who really needs computers anyway...

You're being obtuse.

What is the benefit of billions of the starving and impoverished masses suddenly having longer life spans?

What is the benefit of having an enslaved sentient being to do your simulations and calculations?

Fusion is pretty obviously something that can help everyone.

The majority of deaths are from aging. Life extension benefits everyone and in a huge way.

I believe AI is very dangerous, but theoretically it could be used as a "meta-solution" to every problem we currently have. Want space exploration? Have a super-intelligent AI design spacecraft that make ours look like paper airplanes. Have it design nanotechnology that can cheaply produce everything. Have it invent cures for all diseases. Etc.

Precisely this. Fusion, AGI and Longevity almost account for the entire set of Very Hard Problems in science. Any progress made in these fronts will yield massive breakthroughs in our understanding and lead to immediately increased quality of life for billions of people.

Furthermore, these research areas are massive umbrellas with hundreds of competing hypotheses that require testing and vetting in order to find the few winners. There are no shortcuts in Science, and as such there is an immense need for resources to simultaneously explore these paths and determine which ones have potential.

The moon can wait.

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