Chinese Astronauts Board Space Station Implementing Humanity's Best Shot To Become Interstellar

[Heathen Hammer]

Maybe there's a cultural difference between Chinese and Anglos; see, when Anglo americans talk about space plans, there's a less than 5% chance that it's going to happen because the funding won't be there. Remember all those plans to "colonise Mars" throughout the 90s-2000s? Whatever happened to that old chestnut?

Well, neoliberalism happened.
You see, space exploration, at least in the stage in which we are now, isn't bound to yield any significant profits or returns, at least not within lifetimes of people investing into it today.
Its literally something, the fruits of which will only be seen by our grandchildren, if that.
And that's why post-cold war Western space program became a faint shadow of itself - West is ruled by cosmopolitan oligarchs, greedy and ignorant types that don't care about what happens in the future after they are dead.
In comparison, Romans would plant trees that they would know would only grow many years into the future, way after they are gone. It took multiple generations of people to build those legendary medieval cathedrals, people that begun construction new full well that the building won't be finished until after they are long gone.
Unfortunately the inferior (to their predecessors from middle ages and antiquity) elites we currently have don't have such mindset, which is why the elite-approved take is how space exploration is "stupid and expensive". And to a materialist person without some kind of higher ideal it is.

[Coughdrop addict]

Well, neoliberalism happened.
You see, space exploration, at least in the stage in which we are now, isn't bound to yield any significant profits or returns, at least not within lifetimes of people investing into it today.

So when you say neoliberalism, you're really complaining about Capitalism.

In comparison, Romans would plant trees that they would know would only grow many years into the future, way after they are gone. It took multiple generations of people to build those legendary medieval cathedrals, people that begun construction new full well that the building won't be finished until after they are long gone.

They planted trees and build cathedrals because they were paid to do so. Or they were enslaved. And caring about what will happen to other people, let alone future generations, sounds an awful lot like Liberalism.

[antaeus]

I don't get it.

There are plantation forests all over the world that take 20 or 30 or 50 years to return on the trees planted.

Is this supposed to be some sort of noble savage logic?