I never had a satisfying answer for why we should spend money on space travel instead of other priorities, nor could I find a clear, coherent argument for that case. So I made this video.
Notes
Rebecca Lowe has written extensively about what a real space-based economy might look like. She also has an excellent Substack. You can read more about her here: https://rebeccalowe.org/
The aid section draws on work by William Easterly (https://www.amazon.com/s?k=William+Easterly) and on Why Nations Fail by Acemoglu and Robinson. Here’s the link to the New York Times write-up.
All the parts with my dad are real (phone call/email). He worked for JPL for much of my childhood. I didn’t get into this in the video, but it was an incredibly frustrating era for space exploration. NASA and JPL were stalled, very little of what my dad worked on ever reached fruition. If he were younger, he’d absolutely be at SpaceX now—which connects to another point in the video: I would do anything to be 18 years old today. There are so many exciting things happening (space, AI, the nuclear revival, gene editing to end disease, and more). When I was in school, the options were essentially finance or working for a defense contractor during an unpopular war (Iraq).
The Upwork life-coaches segment was fun, and I had to cut a lot. Edgardo spent a long time advising me on the optimal time of day to shower, which was hilarious but didn’t fit the edit. It was genuinely enjoyable to talk to people from all over the world and hear their perspectives on how to live a good life.
Links related to the “externalities of space travel” section: Climate deaths: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/natural-disaster-death-rates, science from NASA and Clean Water
