Space and the relative privation problem
Just recently the private company of Elon Musk, SpaceX, made a big splash on the media by making the first private space rocket, the Heavy Falcon, that can get almost as much tons of of material to orbit as huge Saturn V rocket form the Apollo era missions and the retired space shuttle. Also It has done all this using rockets that can be reusable and land by themselves, instead of smashing back into earth like the previous NASA rockets.
Being Elon Musk is also appealing to the masses as he is a great show business that interacts a lot on social media, gets a lot of attention from followers and media alike. So Musk made the difficult task of getting people looking at the stars again in way that is cool, by sending his old Tesla roadster in Mars direction playing David Bowie’s Space Oddity.
But as in all things it also made the social media headline of getting some haters for the big accomplishment. There was a good amount of: This is not such a great thing as there are a lot of problems on earth to solve, like world hunger.
The argument seems good and world hunger is really a big issue that unfortunately still plagues the world (no question about that), but it is really just a way of people that don’t want to agree that this was a big accomplishment to look smart in saying it was bad by giving a completely unrelated big scenario that should be handled too. This is a known as philosophical fallacy called the relative privation fallacy. You can also check it on the rational wiki.
I actually decided to write this story after seeing this story by
In his story the fallacy is presented time after time in multiple examples of world issues that a rocket to space does not solve. The way that he puts it we could simply say that no other issue should be solved in the world unless we prioritize by the worst. So if world decides that world hunger is the biggest problem, no other problem could be handled until world hunger is solved. I would say that that would be a waste of resources at the very least.
This kind of fallacy is done in a variety of contexts. For example when the refugee issue was a big topic last year there were people that said we could not show pity and accommodate this people from war torn countries because we still didn’t solve the problem of homeless people on our own country.
Of course all of this does not make sense. The world has billions of people and I think we can tackle many issues at the same time. Besides some of this issues, like
describes, are not for a lack of resources, but organization and will to do it. Also in some cases things are left as they are for political and personal power reasons.One might still say that actually spending millions/billions of dollars in space rockets and science does not solve any issue at all. That getting to space and back is all we get for bragging rights.
Not quite so…Let’s take a step back and look at what space exploration gave us so far. Better understanding of earth, solar system, the Universe and science in general. Also we got satellites and with that we got GPS, communication around the world, better weather prevision (which is very important for agriculture not only for you to know of sad rainy days), etc. We also got the ISS that brought together enemy countries around common goals and is not only a symbol of humanity tenacity and intelligence but also of hope.
There are too many things to talk about here, that technology from space exploration as given us, made life better and the world a better place. For example, we might not have sufficient data about climate change being affected by our own wrongdoings if it were not for data collected by ISS and satellites. At least now we have a better understanding and a fighting chance to stop our wrongdoing to the environment. It would not be possible without space exploration.
Though the doings of the past are still valid and necessary to evolve, let’s focus on the future of what it can give. Musk wants to set a colony on Mars for the following reason. We either transform into a multi-planetary species or we stay on planet earth forever, until the day we are wiped out by a catastrophic event if we don’t wipe ourselves from the planet before that. Though a bit far fetched, as it can happen tomorrow or in a million year, this is still a valid point and by having colonized other planets we might still survive (at least a few).
There are also other reasons. Contrary to what
tries to say in his article above the planet does not have near unlimited resources, specially if population keeps rising like it is. So we need to get resources from other places and even resources that earth does not provide (or are not easy to get). We might be able to gather them from asteroids for example and easily available hydrogen from gas planets, etc.So as we can see space exploration was very important and still is very important for a numerous of reasons and maybe others we cannot see right now.
At the end I think that what SpaceX made was a milestone in space history. A privately funded company built the best rocket in decades at the same time cutting costs in both resources and financially, by making rockets that can be reusable for the first time in space history.
So space exploration is important and now is more sustainable. That has a big impact on planet earth, thanks to the mad business man from South Africa that wants to transform science fiction ideas of a better world into a reality.
