re: #88 Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus

Good points.

Dragon exists so the world doesn’t have to rely on Russia to get people to and fro LEO.

And the only reason people are in LEO is because of the old (yes, it’s getting rather old) ISS, itself constructed not because of Dragon but by the older launch systems.

I am one of those skeptical that we ought to continue human spaceflight.

It’s very low return for the cost.

It feeds a fantasy about the future, that somehow our species future is in space.

We are land animals. Hell, we even gave up trees a few million years back. We’ve never settled underwater.

Ok, call me a curmudgeon or worse.

But I want a better life for our future. Satellites and space exploration are wonderful. That’s why we build robots.

Robots are good.

Let them conquer planets.

We’re not land animals, we’re tree animals. We once hung out in the trees. Then, some of us climbed down from the trees and went exploring. Then, some of us got in a boat and went sailing. So, we’re explorers. So the next place for us to go is space.

“Space is too dangerous!” I freaking marvel at the fact that people made it to Hawaii from Asia without knowing the islands were there in advance and think we should continue that urge to explore.