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Last Exit: Space is a new documentary on Discovery+ that explores the possibility of humans colonizing planets beyond Earth. Since it is produced and narrated by Werner Herzog (director of Grizzly Man, guest star on The Mandalorian) and written and directed by his son Rudolph, however, it goes in a different direction than your average space documentary. It's weird, beautiful, skeptical, and even a bit funny.
In light of the film's recent streaming launch, father and son Herzog spoke with Ars Technica from their respective homes about the film's otherworldly hopes, pessimistic conclusions, and that one part about space colonists having to drink their own urine.
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Why Werner Herzog Thinks Human Space Colonization “Will Inevitably Fail”
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Better hope the life-inspector doesn't come around while you have your
life in such a mess.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 15 2022, @09:36PM (9 children)
Joe Public: "Yeah, it's great landing on the moon and all, but we've got problems need solving down here on Earth first."
Ever since about 1970, NASA's funding has been radically reduced, unreliable, and management has periodically whipsawed priorities from one goal to another. Public opinion drives decisions like towing booster rockets back through the ocean to "frugally reuse them" as well as a year of navel introspection after each fatal event in space. Nevermind how many NASA employees and contractors died on the road getting to/from work in the meantime, rocket goes boom, public is simultaneously sad and outraged and "things are gonna change around here" again.
Joe Public does, indirectly, control NASA's funding and priorities - even more than they control the distribution of pork to the lobbyists. Joe Public has also been voraciously using and monetarily benefiting from GPS non-stop for 20+ years, and satellite communications far longer than that. Joe Public pays for NASA the same way they pay for the roads they drive on, but you don't hear anyone shouting to shut down the roads because they're too expensive to maintain.
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(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday March 15 2022, @10:11PM (3 children)
Right - Joe Public indirectly funds NASA. However, NASA is mostly irrelevant to commercial space development, other than as a springboard customer to get things started.
NASA has nothing to do with communication satellites, and precious little to with the new Axiom and Orbital Reef space stations under development. They're one of many partners for the Artemis boondoggle, but show no interest in actually doing any serious development of the moon - that's being embraced by private enterprise as well.
NASA is great for funding research and proof-of-concept technology, but private enterprise has long been the leading force in commercial space development. And I don't see any realistic non-commercial way that we'll ever colonize space. Just like on Earth - if you want to actually get something done in space you've got to figure out a way that rich people can make money from it. And fortunately many people are doing just that.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday March 16 2022, @01:22AM (2 children)
The conspiracy theorist in me vaguely remembers something about grooming the private sector to look like they are doing the development while NASA spoon feeds the private sector what they need to succeed. That same nagging feeling believes that all sorts of tax breaks, incentives, and outright subsidies are quietly flowing to "private space industry" from government tax dollars because that's what it takes to make it happen in today's political climate.
NASA is what it is - there was greatness there, and there's still quite a bit of competence and experience, and a whole boatload of pork - but no worse than any other major industry. What's worse is the public microscope that NASA operates under. I applaud the transparency, but it's an anathema to making actual progress with public money paying the bills.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 16 2022, @05:46PM (1 child)
Who really believes humans are smart enough to develop Velcro and Tang? It's the Roswell crash site spin-offs for sure.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday March 16 2022, @07:28PM
Velcro and Tang, sure. Some of this nanoscale semiconductor Voodoo.... if I hadn't watched the evolutionary development over the past 40 years I'd have a hard time believing it.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 16 2022, @04:03AM (4 children)
Why in the world would anyone expect that NASA would be paid 2% of US GDP forever for Apollo program level theater?
Joe Public gets roads which are vastly more valuable infrastructure than what NASA produces.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday March 16 2022, @12:53PM (3 children)
>Joe Public gets roads which are vastly more valuable infrastructure than what NASA produces.
Are they, though? Compared on dollar cost?
The NASA programs pushed digital computing forward at least a decade, possibly more. Materials science, etc. The arguments are old, well worn, and all too true. What is the modern cellular communication network worth compared with 1980s land-lines? It costs less to maintain, and presents orders of magnitude greater value. The only thing that comes close to NASA ROI is military research when it eventually trickles into the public sector, and it's a distant second - in no small part due to the lack of transparency of military R&D programs.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 16 2022, @03:13PM (2 children)
Of course they are. That's an absurd question to ask. And even if you consider space theater a near infinite value activity, those roads (and other transportation networks like railroads and air flight) are immensely valuable to generating space activity. Meanwhile NASA's space activity itself has remarkably low value to generating future space activity. SLS for a glaring example will actually defund a lot of future space activity.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday March 16 2022, @04:55PM (1 child)
Seems to me that SLS was largely based on a (cleverly moronic) executive order from a lame duck that the ethnic minority incoming executive didn't have the political clout to correct, in the reality of the more near term shit shows he was given to clean up.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 17 2022, @01:57AM
That's the space activity you're lauding. The highest goals are merely political theater.