Why Go To Space - An Editorial | Random Thursday

this video is supported by brilliant so i really don't share my opinion on this channel very often um some of you may disagree with that statement i know sometimes i say things that people don't like i used to be a lot more opinionated on the channel than i used to be but i also uh you know used to have a whole lot less gray hair so things change generally i use this channel to share things that i think are interesting and what i think are interesting are topics that have multiple valid points of view you know where maybe you think you got it figured out and then curveball there's a whole other side to it that you hadn't considered before you know i like to i like to present the conversation around these topics i just generally find that more interesting than me just sharing my opinion on something and often my opinion varies you know i have multiple i call them multiple gnomes in my head that are always like competing for for attention but i've had some thoughts rolling around in my head lately something's kind of been bothering me and i wanted to kind of talk about it share my opinion on this opinionate a little bit which i know is a little bit different for this channel hopefully you like it and if you don't you know just just feel free to say yeah well you know that's just like uh your opinion man which would be true because this is just my opinion [Music] last week we saw the inspiration for a mission go up which is being called the first all-civilian trip to space ever though i'm not sure there seems to be some debate around it because one of them used to be air force or something and they all did the astronaut training and everything so uh there's some debate around it but anyway that was that was kind of the point of the whole mission that it was an all-civilian crew and there were some really interesting facts around this trip um as scott manley pointed out this was the most number of people that have ever been in space at the same time i think 16 while they were up there and on three different uh vehicles on the iss the chinese space station and the crew dragon but they also and i i went on a rabbit hole on this on twitter but this is one of the highest altitude flights that have been taken ever like there's only a handful of flights that have gone higher than what these guys have done it's higher than iss it's higher than hubble there was some debate around the specifics and everything obviously i'm not counting the lunar missions but yeah these guys are flying higher than most astronauts that have ever been into space inspiration four of course was funded by jared isaacson the billionaire entrepreneur behind shift 4 payments he likes the number four apparently but anyway he funded the flight and he invited on a crew of inspirational civilians to join him and he used it as an opportunity to raise some money for st jude children's hospital obviously a worthy cause and one of the people on there was previously a patient at saint jude's children's hospital haley arsenau and i think she's also a nurse's assistant that works there and volunteers her time there she was also the first person to go to space with a prosthesis which is interesting and if i'm not mistaken she's now officially the youngest american to ever go to space so yeah a lot of cool stuff around that flight and i'll be honest a lot of stuff about this trip snuck up on me um i mean i knew it was coming obviously i knew that it was happening but all that sort of interesting information was was new to me but i was keeping an eye on it for one specific reason and that's because something happened a couple months before that that kind of surprised me or the reaction to it really surprised me yeah as many of you remember i'm sure in the span of 10 days virgin galactic and blue origin both did their first crewed missions into space carrying with them their ceos richard branson and jeff bezos respectively and yes i'm putting space in quotes because there's a lot of debate around whether or not they were actually in space and one of them went higher than the other do i feel like getting into that no i do not but yeah the the public's reaction to this really took me by surprise and honestly i feel i feel a little naive that i was so surprised by this that it took me by surprise so much because i mean maybe i'm just in a little bit of a bubble as a science communicator because i've been following these companies for a really long time i've been seeing them testing all this time and i knew that this was coming and to me it was just a natural progression of what they've been doing for years now in fact if anything i don't know why it took them so long to do it i mean blue origin did like 14 tests before they finally put some people on it and and me and i know a lot of other people were like are you guys going to actually do something or not so i knew their first human flight was coming up and you know i was i was happy for it i was ready for it and then they announced that jeff bezos was gonna actually be on the flight and i remember i actually texted my buddy tim dodd and and said like that's very richard branson of him and then richard branson swooped in and did it first because nobody out branson's the branson and yeah i know i tweeted that out at the time it's it's it's a decent enough line i'll repeat it i don't care i'll steal for myself and because of that timing the two of them going up at about the same time the media was just flooded with a deluge of op-eds and hot takes and articles and millions of people who had never heard of these companies before in their lives were hearing about how these these billionaires were going up into space and flaunting their wealth while you know billions of people on earth are suffering and some of these people were other creators that i respect a great deal and you know agree with on most things it was it was weird it was like there was this divide that i didn't know was there again i don't know maybe i'm naive maybe maybe i'm in a bubble and i mean i get it we're all going through a rough time right now unprecedented times and all that and wealth inequality has become just absolutely absurd the world is definitely in a eat the rich phase so yeah you know not exactly reading the room fellas do you want guillotines because that's how you get guillotines but at the risk of sounding like i'm defending billionaires which is not my job um i don't think that characterization is fair actually who cares about fair it's inaccurate because first of all this wasn't just like trips these guys took on a whim these were projects that these companies have been working on for a very long time in fact it's kind of funny that these guys had their milestones so close to each other because like virgin galactic got started in 2004 when they bought the design from scale composites blue origin got started in the year 2000. so these launches were 17 years and 21 years in the making respectively and um you know they've been testing with uncrewed vehicles for a long time now again nobody cared about that nobody paid any attention to it and all of us space nerds knew that they were going to be launching with their first crude mission soon and uh if they had just done that let's just be honest nobody would have cared about that either so yeah putting themselves on the ship was a publicity stunt let's just let's just call it what it is or if you want to give them the benefit of the doubt you could say that they were proving the safety of it by putting themselves on it but either way it was a stunt and guess what it worked because now there are millions of people out there that know that this thing exists that they didn't know it existed before even if they're furious about it now if you want to criticize the way they did it the bombast on the celebrations i i get it yeah it was it was all a bit much i know although i got to be fair if i'd been working on something for 20 years and it finally happened i would probably celebrate a little bit too and i also feel like bezos did everything he could to soften the event um for lack of a better word i mean he gave a seat to wally funk now you might not know who that is i didn't really know who who that was at first but she's actually kind of a legend in the aviation and aerospace industry um she would have been one of the first astronauts if it weren't for nasa's no vagina policy so for the record there was a group of women called the mercury 13 who kind of trained right alongside the mercury 7 but they never got to actually go into space the russians put their first woman into space in 1963 the americans wouldn't do it until 1983. so yeah none of those original 13 female astronauts ever got to go into space until jeff bezos put wally funk on that rocket i mean look i hate jeff bezos all you want but that's cool he also gave away 200 million dollars to charity after that flight now uh i mean yeah granted that's like you or i spending half a penny but still i think it's his face that super villain face he needs a new face and by the way i i just i got to get this on my chest real quick all of you people out there making your silly little jokes about how new shepard looks like a penis look dude welcome we space nerd's been doing that for years now it's a lot of fun hope you enjoy it johnson yes sir so it's not just a billionaire launching himself into space that's not all this was about in fact blue origin has already launched another uncrewed new shepard mission with nasa science experiments on board so are we going to have a problem with that the nasa science stuff okay so before people accuse me of stroking blue origin too hard i do have a little bit of tough love for those guys you know what in general i have always defended blue origin a little bit you know they seem to be working on some really big stuff behind the scenes i keep saying they're going to just surprise us someday with maybe the the new glint is going to be like the most amazing rocket ever um but since i'm sharing my opinion right now um my opinion is changing on that a little bit so yeah hey blue origin guys how you doing so um i'm not trying to take away from your big milestone launch which was awesome and i'm really happy for you guys but um you've been doing this for 21 years now and you have not put a single thing into orbit yet now you talk about wanting to move heavy industry into space you talk about project kuiper which is going to be a competitor to spacex starlink and everything but i mean you still haven't even been to orbit yet like it's kind of been interesting to actually watch this over the last few years because blue origin and spacex they have just completely different business philosophies you know spacex is very transparent and open um they they move fast they break things fail often iterate and improve like that whereas blue origin their motto is gratitum ferocitor which means step by step ferociously so it's you know take it piece by piece one step at a time get it right be tenacious and yeah i've been saying this whole time that maybe blue origin has a shot here they've got vast sums of money supporting them they've got a great pool of talent the pieces are good the be3 and be4 engines and all that like i said maybe the new glenn will come out and it'll be just like the most amazing rocket ever in the meantime you take those pieces that you're working on that are that are really good you get government contracts you get ingrained in the system get a foothold there you know so you get on board with the national team to pitch your concept for the lunar lander design and then nasa goes with spacex maybe because they now have a track record of putting people safely into space and building space habitats and came in way under your budget maybe and then you sue nasa because you don't like their decision because that'll make them want to work with you more and now some other companies are hot on your heels i mean virgin has gotten to orbit with virgin orbit rocket lab is launching regularly and they're working on a bigger rocket astra and firefly are getting really close to getting up there relativity is probably going to be in space in another six months or so and yeah none of those are anywhere near the size of new glenn but starship is and we're all seeing how fast that's coming along and look i'm not cheering for blue origin to fail i want them to succeed and maybe they still will they have like the most vast financial runway any company's ever had they have this massive complex right next to kennedy space center they may still surprise us and i've actually had some blue origin employees reach out to me and like email me and just talk about how excited they are about what's going on at blue origin like they may have some really cool stuff going on behind the scenes i don't know but if you want to be a space company you have to eventually put something into space and a lot of other companies are getting there and blue origin is falling behind right now my two cents and so another argument that i keep hearing a lot is that you know yeah they're now launching people into space but it's only rich people because only rich people can afford it and i'm over here like well yeah at first yeah i mean that's true of everything at first cars were originally just toys for rich people plane tickets were prohibitively expensive in the early days and i mean i'm old enough to remember a time when having a cell phone meant that you're a rich douche bag all three of these things started out as toys for rich people and all three of these things have completely changed the world and that's why these flights are important it's not because of the billionaires that are on there it's because these are the tiny baby steps to making space travel a regular thing you know first we dip our toes above the carmen line into space then we have civilians on orbital flights which we just saw next thing you know there's space hotels space factories who knows where things go from there but yeah at first it's probably just going to be rich people and hopefully they'll follow jared isaacson's example and use it as a way to raise money for worthy causes but even if they don't it's it's still money going towards space exploration which is a good thing as far as i'm concerned by the way another little pet peeve of mine and i've talked about this before is that whenever people talk about the cost of space travel they they say it as if they're just shoving a big pile of money into a rocket fairing and launching it into space but that's that's not what's going on here that's being spent into the economy that's going to people each of these companies employ hundreds of people everything from engineers to accountants maintenance people janitors construction workers you name it and each of those companies are supporting dozens of vendor companies and all of their employees as well now i suppose there's a debate over whether or not that money would be better spent by going to a charity or something like that but it's just the the framing that this is just money being thrown up into space is false this is actually going to support thousands of families now another argument that i've heard is that it's crazy for these billionaires to spend money on space when there's so many problems down here on the ground like climate change some are even making the argument that these billionaires are now trying to leave earth now that they've ruined it and let's just let's just get something straight here they are not leaving earth branson and bezos basically made out with the karman line it's arguable that they even went into space do you really think these guys are going to give up their private islands and super yachts so that they can go live in a four meter wide pressurized tin can for the rest of their lives it's going to be a very long time before living off of earth is going to be preferable to living on it but i guess the argument is that they should be spending their wealth on doing things like fighting climate change like supporting sustainable energy and that kind of thing which i 100 agree with but here's the deal um elon musk has done a ton in that department and he gets hated on more than anybody actually my favorite thing with elon is that um you know he talks about wanting to set up colonies on mars and stuff like that and so people are like yeah but the only people that can afford to go would be rich people so somewhere in an interview somewhere along the line he said something like well maybe we could make it so that they could work for spacex so then you know the more average person could go up there as well and then everybody's like that's indentured servitude he wants to create slaves on mars i'm just in here like dude what do you want but you know like i said before i might be in a bubble here like my buddy tim dodd i am team space i think space exploration is an inherently good thing and i just can't imagine why somebody would be against it i mean the world we live in right now and the technologies that we take for granted would simply not exist had we never gone into space i mean when was the last time you got lost we all now have navigation systems in our cars and in our cell phones that we couldn't have ever even imagined before today we just take it for granted so much of our communication and internet infrastructure is possible because of satellites up in space and i see people complaining about space travel on their phones i actually did a video about the bermuda triangle a while back and i found it interesting that there really hasn't been any lost planes or ships in the bermuda triangle since around the 1990s because of gps gps killed the bermuda triangle and that doesn't even touch on the dozens upon dozens of spin-off technologies that have come from space travel it's not just velcro it's water reclamation it's wireless power tools not to mention countless improvements in computers navigation communication technologies materials manufacturing the list goes on as we've seen over the pandemic necessity is the mother of invention right new ideas new technologies innovations they all come in the cauldron of difficult situations and there are few situations more difficult than space travel like okay there have been people over the years who have talked about how um war is actually necessary for the advancement of the human species that the reason that we have advanced as far as we have is because of the technological innovations that came along with war the idea being that war is hell it's a desperate fight for survival and that breeds ideas and innovation and that over the long span of time war has been somewhat of an incubator of technological advancement and maybe even the reason that our species won out over other hominid species earlier in the day was because we are the violent ones you know we like to think of of neanderthals and cruel magnets as like savage cavemen but but maybe we were the ones that were violent and savage and the reason we were able to innovate beyond them was because of that violent nature that we have i'm not saying that's a settled theory or anything it's just sort of an interesting point of debate the point is though like it's assuming something like that might be true i see space travel as sort of a proxy for war it's a place that wants to kill you in a million different ways it's the most inhospitable environment possible for our furry little meat bags and just like war that breeds innovation it's a way to push our species forward without having to you know murder millions of people and i like that i mean thank god that during the cold war when the us and the soviet union had this whole mutually assured destruction thing that they chose to instead going to a pissing contest over the moon and yet today the new space race is being called a pissing contest between billionaires and i'm kind of fine with that because you know what pissing contests work when one group or agency runs everything innovation stalls that's that's the cornerstone of capitalism i mean capitalism has its problems but it does have that going for it and now we have multiple private companies getting involved it's not just nasa anymore and we're starting to see things like landing the first stages bringing the cost of rockets down that kind of thing and yeah you know starting any company takes a lot of money but starting a space company is insanely expensive and it turns out the only people with that kind of money are billionaires so here we are and look like like i said i'm not here to defend billionaires there's a million problems with the kind of wealth inequality that we're seeing now in the wealth hoarding that the billionaire class is doing outside of these space industries they are totally up for criticisms in the way that they do things i'm just saying that if they're going to be spending their money on something space exploration isn't the worst way to spend it and one last thought when i do ask people that have a problem with billionaires going to space and i say like what would you prefer they do with their money um it's usually some version of donate it to charity or give it back to the world in some way or another um some version of and look i don't disagree with that statement and i don't necessarily challenge the sincerity of people who say that but the problem that i have is that none of those people are talking about chuck beanie so chuck feeney founded duty duty-free shoppers in 1960 and became incredibly wealthy at his peak i think he had like nine billion dollars in net wealth and then in 1982 he founded the atlantic philanthropies with the with the idea being the goal being that he's going to give away his entire fortune before he dies his his entire goal was to die broke and yeah almost exactly one year ago in september of 2020 he shut down the atlantic philanthropies because he had succeeded out of his nine billion dollar fortune he gave away all of it except for like two million dollars for he and his wife to retire off of but yeah this is the guy who did the thing he gave away all of it and you've heard so little about him that you don't even know that this isn't chuck feeney this is chuck feeney not only did he support big causes like health care and education he he donated to help in some different conflicts around the world and he inspired other billionaires to create the giving pledge which is the idea that they would give away at least half of their fortunes before they die some of the signatories of the giving pledge are people like bill gates warren buffett ray dalio mark zuckerberg i think there's 222 signatories at the time of this recording and while jeff bezos has not signed on his ex-wife mackenzie scott did and she is pledging to give away most of the 57 billion dollars that she got in the divorce so there's that now it needs to be said that the giving pledge is not without its criticisms for one thing there's no real mechanism to enforce it um it is considered a tax dodge by most people and um it some people claim that it's sort of a smoke screen to distract from the fact that we have a an economic system set up that funnels money to the top to create these rich people in the first place in other words we shouldn't be relying on billionaires to save us we do need some regulation to fundamentally reform our system which goes way beyond the scope of this video but my point is if we're going to criticize billionaires for hoarding wealth i think we should also celebrate those who give that wealth back and chuck feeney is a guy who did that so to chuck feeney good show el chap but to get back to the central question of this video why go to space why is it important and why do i think that even if it's only billionaires that can go right now that it's still a good thing well first of all it's a growth industry a lot of new jobs are being created around the space industry and that's only going to get bigger over time it drives innovation and better technologies that help us all out one thing i didn't even really talk about was the certain things you can't make down here on earth you can make in the microgravity of space things like 3d printing human organs so maybe someday you could have a human organ printed of your own tissue in space i'll actually be covering that in my next video you know like all new technologies it's going to get cheaper over time we're only seeing the very beginning of where this can go we have no idea how much this could change the world but maybe the biggest reason is the most intangible one and that kind of brings us back to last week's mission inspiration so look i know that the pr around these flights can be really over the top and look i roll my eyes around it too when people go on about how like we're changing the world and all this kind of stuff yeah yeah i get it but listen i have had so many people reach out over the years that i've been doing this here on youtube that have said that because of rocket lab because of spacex because of the coverage that they get and that kind of thing that it's inspired them to change careers or go back to school and learn about aerospace and that kind of thing or just that it's giving them hope and a time when it feels like there's just no hope out there and honestly i don't think that you can put a price tag on that and if you could i'm sure only billionaires could pay it but anyway that's my rant that's my opinion i'm sure you guys have opinions of your own feel free to share it down in the opinion section like i could stop you but if you've been inspired to learn more about space well today's your lucky day because today's sponsor is brilliant you know like i said the aerospace industry is very multifaceted and there's a lot of different ways to get in if you're interested say you want to learn about launches and orbital mechanics the gravitational physics course might be a good place to start or maybe you're into materials manufacturing for spacecraft elements the chemical reaction course can give you a better understanding of how material chemistries work these systems rely heavily on computers so maybe the computer science fundamentals course can get you started on that and with all of these you can level up to more advanced concepts after you've mastered the basics and by the way if you haven't checked on brilliant lately it's gotten a lot more interactive so if you're one of those people like me that needs to visualize and play with something to understand it brilliant's got you covered this just makes it easier to understand the core concepts and the fundamental courses which sets you up for success in the more advanced courses later on next thing you know you've got super villain knowledge and that's when the real fun begins plus they make it easy to make learning a habit so you can do it on your mobile device and even offline so whenever you're waiting for food or something you can bang out a problem or two but if you do sign up for the premium subscription that gives you access to all their courses and you're one of the first 200 people to do so you can go to brilliant.org answers with joe and get 20 off your subscription it's just a great way to learn things and like i said they've been adding a lot of cool new stuff so if you haven't checked it out in a while i think you should probably go check it out anyway again it's brilliant.org slice answers with joe link's downstairs big thanks to brilliant for supporting this video and a huge shout out to the answer files on patreon and the members in the youtube member community who are being just super awesome and supportive i can't thank you guys enough there are some new people that i want to shout out real quick we got daniel o'brien gregory bell mr misfit j.w hibner bernice steve sorensen kyra s t f parnum uh luis uh advencula african american travelers sin val fieras bobby l nelson and lilith esme thank you guys so much if you would like to join them get early access to videos get access to exclusive live streams and other cool stuff also just get a little badge by your name to stand out in the comments uh just click the little join button down below this video please do like and share this video if you liked it and if this is your first time here not all my videos are like this i'm not usually so opinionated but you might want to check this one out to get a better feel for what i do you might check out any of these others down here that have my little face on the thumbnails and and if you enjoy them i do invite you to subscribe come back videos every monday all right that's it for now you guys go out there have an eye opening rest of the week stay safe i'll see you next monday finger pointings love you guys take care

Channel: Joe Scott

Views: 322,858

Keywords: answers with joe, joe scott

Id: nBfplce_hnE

Length: 24min 50sec (1490 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 23 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/insufficientmind]

I can't really imagine anything more important for our species than space exploration when it comes to our long term survival. Sooner or later, being stuck on earth will eventually kill us, that is almost guaranteed.

Also, lots of other very good arguments for space exploration, some of them are in this video. Anyone claiming space exploration is bad or a waste of resources is just plain ignorant.

[u/lemonjuice1988]

I don't think people on this sub have doubts about space exploration. But nevertheless it's a good video. It has some arguments, you can use in discussions with science ignorants.

[u/Corvette_Otoko]

Remind anyone against space exploration that it is life insurance for mankind. Sure, everyone hates the insurers and paying for insurance... right up until the moment you need it.