this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2025
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You're one of the people I hate when it comes to this. You see insane engineering challenges as just easy because thousands of very clever engineers have already spent billions and their lifetimes working it out for you, but you're so far from actually understanding the science and challenges in their full depth. Nobody has lived in space for 25 years. No human has been raised in space. These challenges are not just from 0g and your theoretical radiation shielding has not been proven nor is it just as easy as "surround yourself with your water supply". None. Of. Space. Is. Easy. Living on this planet is as easy as being born. If it wasn't for millions of people constantly working to feed the societial machine that let's us even have a few people in orbit at a time, with constant launches to resupply, as well as other considerations, it would be impossible. Even the iss you mention is being deorbited in 2027 because it's not long-term sustainable and has developed untraceable leaks. I cannot believe how easy you think it is. You're hopelessly lost in the sauce there buddy.
Close, I see engineering challenges as possible and potentially already solved exactly because thousands of very clever engineers have already spent billions and their lifetimes working it out for us. It looks to me like the issue is that you refuse to differentiate between "hard" and "impossible". Obviously space is hard, but there's a lot we have the ability to do right now. All we need is the will to fund it, we already have the experts ready to do it.
You act like this is my theory, this is generally considered the plan for interplanetary missions and long term space stations going forward. It's an old idea, I couldn't even tell you when it was first proposed. And as for "unproven", water is the primary material used to shield nuclear reactors, the methodology could not be more proven.
The ISS is only the second space station NASA has built, space station version 2.0, still sort of a prototype. We built it in the 90s and we've learned an incredible amount in the process, but of course it wasn't going to last forever. But with proper funding it stands to reason that we could build something better today using everything we've learned so far. To say we shouldn't because it's hard... well that's just not how progress is made.
You're strawman arguing with yourself. Nowhere, not once, have I stated we shouldn't. I've only stated the true, which is space is not habitable for humans. Perhaps your uninformed as to what habitable means. Perhaps your deranged. I've no clue. But if you continue, I just want you to know, you're arguing with yourself.
I mean, there's the post I initially responded to:
You're not saying we shouldn't explore space, just that we should wait until we can genetically engineer ourselves to live in that environment. But is that not the same as saying "we should stop for now"? My entire response to that post was simply to say that it wasn't too early to start, and you seem to have taken offense to the sentiment.
So that makes this, what, an attempt at gaslighting? But perhaps I'm deranged, surely that would explain your faulty logic.
If you equated stop destroying the planet with stopping space development, that's on you. I clarified my stance in a comment below it minutes later.
I take offense to you and people like you thinking space is habitable or easy instead of insanely environmentally challenging, unknown, and complex. Seeing it as an escape instead of the immense and violent challenge it is. It's disrespectful to both life and the accomplishments of those before you.
So yes, you are deranged. I've not attempted any gaslighting. You continue to argue with yourself, ignore nuances, and call my logic faulty when it's not. You hand wave immense complexities of shit you **do not understand ** just because you've seemingly read the wiki on it. It's astounding. You even think space is habitable, which it is undebatbly at this time, not, and that's before comparing it to our immeasurably more habitable planet. The frustration I experience reading the shit you post is from this inherent fallacy you've attached yourself to. I even agreed with the immense increase in space funding you asked for, explicitly, and yet you seemingly doubt my alignment to continued scientific development.