Space, the final frontier

[sqbr]

So a while go it occurred to me (aka various POC/non-white poeple pointed it out) that while space exploration proponents use the metaphor of Frontier (and the US frontier specifically), the thing about the frontier was that it wasn't actually untouched land that had to be settled from scratch, it was cultivated farmland, complete with local crops, that was stolen from it's original inhabitants. Plus a lot of the really difficult work was done not by wide eyed settlers but by slaves and indentured workers etc.

And in space there are no original inhabitants to prepare the land, no indentured workers to die on the railroads, not unless we build way better robots or find aliens to exploit or something and neither of those look likely.

And it turns out, some of the people who see space as a Frontier we Must Explore have realised this! And have decided that the obvious solution is to send out some brown people to prepare the land and then die.

If science wishes to proceed, it's going to have to start killing some people, deliberately, instead of through malfunctions due to old equipment or overlooked things. As callous as it sounds, those places that are already rife with overcrowding are probably also rife with people who have the necessary brains and disciplines to be able to make a one-way mission successful and transmit their data back so we can build the better mousetrap and send again. If nothing else, we should have enough material sent in intermittent missions for later missions to be able to cannibalize and use to make their work that much better and easier.

(the mod of politics has apologised for letting this through and is going to try and fix things so it doesn't happen again, thankfully it's not representative of the usual type of post, but I guess given the nature of the comm you have to expect some fail from time to time)

Comments

[acari]

But but SCIENCE!

(I was totally prepared to bludgeon that person with wiki links some more. Ugh.)

[willow]

You linked some of the exact things I ended up talking about when I dashed off an outrage post on my own space. Cause WTF?! Seriously it was all so Patricia Wrede.

[sqbr]

As someone who has a Phd in science and worked as a science communicator or scientist of one sort or another for my whole working life the "But the POWER OF SCIENCE COMPELS YOU" argument really irritates me.

[trouble]

Oh gosh, I just skimmed the first para of that and then didn't bother to read the rest and thus missed the total fail in it. :(

[sqbr]

Yes, it starts out much more reasonable!

[lilacsigil]

Wait, what? I mean, if people want to volunteer for one way missions, that's one thing, but deciding who is both capable AND superfluous is just disgusting.

[sqbr]

Yes! I mean apparently they didn't mean it that way? But it's hard not to read that as a pretty blatant subtext.

[holyschist]

My jaw, it is dropped.

...how the hell does someone write that WITHOUT realizing the implications?

[sqbr]

I know!

[bunny_m]

And would, perchance, the quoted poster be volunteering for a spot on one of those early missions?

No? Didn't think so. Don't let the door hit your arse on the way out, Sparky.

*seethes*

[sqbr]

Yeah, I don't think so either.