Reality Roundtable 24
The Fantasy of Space Colonization: The Spaceship We’re Already On
Description
On the heels of Artemis II, our cultural obsession with space colonization continues, even as we face increasing global resource constraints and planetary health declines. Techno-optimists, including some of the wealthiest among us, dream of a future where we mine, travel to, and colonize other planets – all in the hopes of bypassing the problems we now face on Earth. But from the perspective of physics and ecology, how feasible is space colonization – and are these interplanetary ambitions blinding us to the miracle of the planetary spaceship we already inhabit?
In this episode, Nate welcomes back astrophysicist Tom Murphy and eco-interventionist DJ White, two longtime friends with deep roots in both space science and ecological reality, to examine the surging cultural fascination with space mining and off-world colonization. Drawing on decades of experience with NASA missions, lunar laser ranging, and biophysical research, Tom and DJ outline the economic impossibility of asteroid mining, the physiological brutality of long-duration spaceflight, and the absurdity underlying dreams of Mars colonization. Both guests also argue that space colonization has, at its core, become a convenient story that lets humanity off the hook for the damage being done here at home.
What if the real tragedy isn’t that we can’t reach the stars – it’s that we’ve stopped paying attention to the planetary home we’re already on? If the most brilliant minds drawn to space exploration redirected that energy toward the living systems collapsing around us right now, what might become possible? And what if we could recognize that the complexity, beauty, and intelligence we hope to discover elsewhere in the cosmos is, improbably and urgently, still here?
About Tom Murphy
Tom Murphy is a Professor Emeritus of the Department of Physics and the Department Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of California San Diego. He retired in 2023 and moved to Washington State to focus more on the predicament of modernity and its ecological incompatibilities. He is the author of Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet, creator of the Metastatic Modernity video series, and continues to explore long-term human success through his Do the Math blog.
About DJ White
DJ White is a co-founder of Greenpeace International and founder of EarthTrust. He has played a leading role in protecting dolphins, whales, sea turtles, and countless other marine animals, including successfully stopping a national dolphin drive kill and breaking the deadlock in capping the Kuwait oil fires. Additionally, he helped end the world’s largest and most destructive global fishery – pelagic driftnetting – and created the lab which first demonstrated self-awareness in the universe outside the great apes.
Show Notes & Links to Learn More
Download transcriptThe TGS team puts together these brief references and show notes for the learning and convenience of our listeners. However, most of the points made in episodes hold more nuance than one link can address, and we encourage you to dig deeper into any of these topics and come to your own informed conclusions.
00:00 –
- Tom Murphy:
- Blog: Do the Math
- Book: Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet
- Video series: Metastatic Modernity
- Selected publications
- DJ White:
- EarthTrust: Impossible Missions, Dolphin Lab (Project Delphis), The Bottleneck Foundation
- Books with Nate Hagens: Reality Blind vol. 1 & The Bottlenecks of the 21st Century
- Contact DJ here: dj@effectivist.org
- Previous TGS episodes:
- DJ: Ocean Effectivism
- Tom: The Simple Story of Civilization, Physics and Planetary Ambitions
- Both together: Tales from the Carbon Pulse
03:20 – More-than-human predicament
03:48 – Techno-optimism
04:25 – APOLLO (the Apache Point Observatory Lunar Laser-ranging Operation)
05:37 – Mars Laser Ranging mission concept study
04:41- General relativity
06:30 – U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL
08:10 – Past moon missions
08:30 – Saturn V
09:37 – John C. Lilly
11:40 – Sir Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Fountains of Paradise
13:05 – Human capacity for abstract, fantastical, and wrong thinking
13:50 – Space resource extraction
14:05 – Jeff Bezos presentation on space colonization
15:05 – How much is an asteroid really worth?
15:32 – Gold in the ocean
15:48 – Energy returned on energy invested (EROI)
16:30 – M-type asteroid
16:43 – Don’t Look Up
17:08 – Ideal rocket equation, 90% of the weight of a rocket going to orbit is propellant weight
17:52 – Corn ethanol EROI
18:00 – The environmental and moral implications of human space travel
18:58 – Asteroid return mission – OSIRIS-REx
21:10 – The Role of the Media in the Construction of Public Belief and Social Change
21:42 – Fossil fuel boom: The Carbon Pulse, The Many Shapes of the Carbon Pulse
22:20 – Religious people have been found to be happier and healthier
23:00 – Technological singularity
23:15 – Dyson sphere
23:30 – Energetic remoteness – (Join our Hylo channel to discuss “fwuh” with DJ), Through an alien Lens (TaaL), Receding horizons
23:40 – Entropy
24:17 – Titan (Saturn’s largest moon) has seas of liquid methane
26:15 – Blind faith in human ingenuity, Concept of religion
27:50 – Growing into more mature beliefs: Stages of faith (Moving up the stages), Ego development and growing through it
28:39 – Moon and Mars colonization
29:00 – Moon landing
29:40 – Cost of Apollo program
30:00 – Cost per year of International Space Station
31:00 – Mars atmosphere and radiation exposure
31:10 – Effect of spaceflight on the human body
31:20 – Recovery after time on the International Space Station
32:50 – Mars’ soil is toxic, Potatoes in The Martian
35:00 – Tom’s analogy – “The Cost of Ignorance”
36:20 – Becoming ecoliterate,
36:35 – Effective altruism movement and its views on space
37:25 – Neoclassical economics and its myths
38:20 – 500 billion* human equivalents’ worth of fossil fuels annually added to the economy
38:50 – The Great Simplification
39:25 – Bread and circuses
40:25 – EcoSpheres don’t work (More info)
41:35 – Spaceship Earth
41:50 – Recent* moon mission: Artemis II
42:05 – Pale Blue Dot
43:40 – Earth’s atmosphere protects us from radiation
44:15 – Radiation sources and doses on Earth,
44:40 – Radiation exposure on the ISS, Moon and Mars surface, Space travel
47:05 – Sievert unit
48:00 – Psychological effects of isolation
50:10 – Fanciful technologies: Interstellar travel, Generation ship, Warp drive, Nuclear propulsion, Dilithium crystals
54:30 – Star Trek
55:40 – Antimatter and medical imaging
55:55 – Tom Murphy survey: Futuristic Physicists?
58:15 – Terraforming
58:55 – Solar system probes
1:00:25 – Sixth mass extinction (More info)
1:01:30 – James Webb Space Telescope: Jupiter cloud band picture
1:01:50 – Space Race
1:02:45 – O’Neill cylinder
1:05:05 – Dolphins learning to use computers
1:05:55 – Baiji dolphin functionally extinct
1:07:03 – Cetaceans Have Complex Brains for Complex Cognition, Culture and Communication among Cetaceans
1:09:15 – Social comparison
1:11:20 – Animistic belief systems were the primary human “religions” for most of human history
1:12:20 – Abrahamic Religions and the Environment
1:13:25 – Drake equation
1:13:35 – The evolution of general intelligence
1:14:15 – Naia: trillionth human child
1:14:55 – Holocene
1:16:40 – Supersonic commercial flight failure
1:19:35 – Technofeudalism
1:19:50 – Why are billionaires obsessed with going to space?
1:22:00 – Joseph Smith’s “spectacles”
1:23:25 – Tom Murphy’s Aircraft Avoidance Systems
1:24:11 – Endocrine-disrupting chemicals, ⅔ of countries are below replacement rate, Tom Murphy: Peak Population Projections
- TGS Episodes on endocrine disrupters: RR#23, #104, #99, #37, #2
- TGS Episodes on human population: #136, #9
1:32:10 – Cetacean hunting
