Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to Past Explorers Risked More & It Was Routine

Cultural change and risk
Nick Hoffman — (archived)

You make quite a lot about how explorers and colonisers of the past endured great hardships, and suggest by analogy that we can and should do the same today.

One problem with this point of view is that those epic expansions of the human race took place at a time when life for many was "nasty, brutish and short" (Hobbes). The rigours of a frontier lifestyle weren't much worse than those back home, and the chances of getting rich in resources, space, or opportunity were quite high.

Today, most Westerners live a life of ease and luxury unknown since the excesses of the Roman Empire. Kids today would far rather squat in front of a video game and get their kicks that way than ship out to Antarctica.

The people who will take the risks to explore and colonise space are either the rich misfits for whom bungy jumping is too tame, or those still living in desperately poor circumstances, like the third world.

The trick is to bring the expensive technology within reach of those with the desperation to ship-out on a one-way trip to Mars that might make their kids lives better.

In Kim Stanley Robinson's "Mars" trilogy he makes a point of many of the migrants to Mars being effectively refugees from Arab, Palestininian, and other third world countries who also bring their ideologies and problems with them, as well as their desperation to succeed.

Remember that it was religious extremists who sailed on the "Mayflower"...

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