237
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
237 points (98.0% liked)
Technology
59419 readers
3413 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Why? I would rather have preservation on earth, than on the moon.
You are kidding right? The moon is essential for life on Earth.
Yes, but mostly by it's mass, and maybe by it's albedo. Is there anything else about the moon of relevance for life on Earth?
It's mass of 7 * 10^22^ kg is so enormous, it wouldn't make a dent if we add or remove hundreds of gigatons, which is far beyond our lifting capabilities at least for the next decades.
It's surface is so huge, we cannot affect it's albedo significantly.
So even if we approached the moon as a mere profit to be exploited, maximizing output and disregarding any concerns, how could this be detrimental to life on Earth?
The moon will be fine and the earth will be fine.
But for me the idea of some private company extracting massive amounts of profit from something like the moon just sounds wrong.
We all know they’re not going up there for the good of humanity or whatever. They want to turn their billions into trillions.
Personally I think they need to give up their wealth on earth first, and then we can think about how best to extract resources from the moon so that it will be beneficial to humans rather than a few bank accounts. We couldn’t do it with oil, but maybe we can with rare moon material? One can only dream.
I know I know pie in the sky right?
Yes, and necessarily figure out and establish lunar industrialization in the process. Depending on viewpoint, this can be a big argument in favor of the good of humanity.
I agree we need to fix our economic incentives and inequalities.
Though I don't see how the Moon of all things should be spared from capitalist exploitation. It's probably the one place where they can't do much harm, no matter how hard they capitalist.
Theses worries are fully justified when it comes to rain forests, deep sea mining, child slavery, union busting and pretty much anything they touch on Earth. But on the Moon?
There is one interesting worst case scenario: A corporate monopoly exploits the Moon so ruthlessly, that it outcompetes terrestial production. Let's say certain building materials or other things of value are suddenly much cheaper to import from the Moon than they are to make on Earth. Wouldn't that end exploitation of people and animals in these industries on Earth, preserve ecosystems which would have been destroyed otherwise?
If we can replace the kind of mining that destroys the environment here on Earth with mining outside of Earth (not just the Moon, but maybe even more importantly asteroids on the Asteroid Belt) how is that a bad thing?
Even having Moon mining in addition to Earth-based mining will probably reduce the impact of the latter, if only by pushing down the prices of certain ores, making some Earth-based mining operations for those unprofitable and forcing them to close down (or never start in the first place) which will be good for people and good for Nature.
Or do you think the people doing the mining here on Earth (and more often than not leaving behind massive ecological damage) aren't "extracting massive amounts of profit" for doing it right here were they do a lot more damage?!
You really need to look at it in aggregate, not just consider only the first level effects and hence "more mining anywhere" = "bad" - "more mining way out there were it can't possibly harm people or Nature" is close to the best thing that could happen to our resource-intensive Economy (the best would be the end of Consumerism, but there are way more powerful moneyed interests align against it that against Moon mining).
That's how you know people crying for the environment aren't honest about it. Because when presented with a viable alternative, they flip out with TECHNOLOGY BAD
Maybe some, certainly not all. I'm deeply worried about the state of our environment. I'm even an activist, but welcome space industry, because it can reduce pressure down here. Also because TECHNOLOGY GOOD.
There's even a whole solar punk instance on lemmy. Not exactly my breed, just pointing out reality is and people are more diverse.