No, because humans are dumb and we have no idea what we’re doing most of the time, and certainly have no idea how our actions now will actually translate to the future. Making laws now to address hypothetical situations in the future guarantees that the laws will be completely misguided, making good situations worse and failing to address the bad ones.
Our first instinct in novel situations is usually to reason by analogy. But translating the current set of laws to the moon would be nonsense, since they’re designed around conditions on Earth. For example, the entire set of environmental laws would be totally useless on the moon, since it has no ecosystem, no running water, no atmosphere, is bathed in radiation already, etc. We don’t actually know what lunar environmental regulations would or should look like, and won’t until we get there. There will probably be some around water use, perhaps some involving use of the lava tubes… but it’s all completely speculative.
Ok. So what’s your solution, given the information they had at the time? It can’t be “ban all the bad stuff”, since as you acknowledge, they didn’t know it was bad. Is it “ban everything in case it might be bad”? If it’s not that, how do you select which things to ban and which not to?
Of course, it all worked out anyway. Low-background steel is only needed in very particular situations, and those old wrecks supplied all that was needed. And if they didn’t, there were more expensive options, like using non-atmospheric oxygen or different materials completely. And today it’s basically not an issue at all.
We can’t predict the future but we can learn to respond faster to things as we learn about them. Making more laws to protect against hypothetical situations works against that. Virtually all of the large-scale problems humanity has faced would not be a problem if we were able to just respond to them more quickly. And that’s helped by speeding up the learning process, not slowing it down.
I suppose having your remains tumble endlessly into the void until they disintegrate or collide with the Earth or Moon millions of years from now still feels romantic and poetic.
There’s nothing any more “real” about believing that corpse remains are spiritually significant objects, whose disposal is supposed to represent something emotionally profound, than about believing that the moon is a sacred object that shouldn’t be desecrated by corpse remains.
It’s simply that some degree of ritual corpse veneration (spending lots of money on funerary arrangements, etc.) is so normalized in modern mainstream society that people don’t really notice how nonsensically wasteful and pointless it is to undertake an extremely expensive and environmentally destructive moon mission just to deliver dead body parts.
Considered dispassionately, it’s at least as silly and superstitious to believe that putting corpse remains on the moon is a rationally justifiable and worthwhile endeavor as it is to believe that the sacredness of the moon makes it inappropriate to put corpse remains there.
Nah, the Celestis response just seems superficially commonsensical because it flatters the widely normalized irrationalities of the majority rather than the less familiar and “weird” irrationalities of a small minority.
“We do not and never have let religious beliefs dictate humanity’s space efforts” is just corporate-speak bullshit for “We are eager to pander to the types of religious beliefs that will motivate wealthy consumers to pour lots of money into our for-profit space business, while pretending to be too loftily science-minded to pay any attention to other types of religious beliefs that might be less profitable for us.”
I don’t really get the impression from Dr. Strangelove’s posts that he thinks launching cremains to the moon is particularly rational.
You seem to have this idea that being buried on the moon is a widespread practice among mainstream Americans? Pretty sure the group of people who can afford to have their cremains blasted into space is significantly smaller than the number of people who observe traditional Navajo beliefs. But if someone derives some spiritual benefit from having their ashes and bits of bone stored on the moon, well, good for them. It’s dumb, but people have the right to be dumb. Likewise, if someone derives spiritual benefit from whatever role the moon fills in Navajo religious ceremonies, well, that’s also dumb, but so what? The problem I have is when one group demands that their dumb spiritual beliefs be given more weight than someone else’s dumb spiritual belief, which is exactly the position I read from the Celestis press release - they’re willing to take whatever cargo they’re paid to take, but they’re not going to refuse a cargo just because it offends some third party’s religious sensibilities, which is absolutely the correct moral and ethical position for them to take. There’s certainly no reason to assume - as you seem to imply - that they’d refuse to launch a bunch of religiously significant objects for a Navajo client, just because they follow a minority religious belief.
Yes, obviously. That does not remotely address the fundamental asymmetry between being free to do something vs. being restricted from something. People should be free to practice whatever things they want unless that practice can be shown to harm others. No harm is present here; thus, people should be free to put their remains on the moon.
The burden of proof should always be on the party claiming harm. Of course, the Navajo have an impossible task in this sense, since said remains are completely undetectable and can’t possibly influence them.
Uh, no, not sure how you managed to get that out of my post. What I’m saying is that thinking that corpse remains are somehow appropriate objects for elaborate funerary practices symbolizing some kind of spiritual/emotional significance is widespread among mainstream Americans.
More misunderstanding: I must have expressed myself really poorly, sorry about that. What I meant, and thought I had clearly conveyed, is that Celestis’s response looks superficially sensible and ethical to mainstream readers simply because it’s in line with the irrationalities of the majority (“it’s meaningful to go to a lot of trouble and expense for symbolic rituals about corpse remains disposal”, “being able to pay for something in the current commercial market system is the ultimate arbiter of its intrinsic validity”, etc.), and is dismissive towards the irrationalities of a minority.
Of course, the actual criterion that Celestis uses to determine their course of action is simply whatever will make them money, as you note.
Exactly. That said, I did in fact launch my grandfather into space (well, a pinch of cremains). It’s not rational, but nor do I place any spiritual significance onto it. It was a gesture for his friends and family on Earth. Regardless of my motivations, though, I should have the freedom to do it since it harmed no one. This is not a case where we balance one party’s irrational beliefs against another’s. It’s a case where people should be allowed to do things for any reason as long as they don’t cause harm.
Heh, at least for some definitions of “free” and “harm” that conveniently ignore a whole society’s worth of structural restrictions involving financial barriers, systemic disadvantage, etc.
I don’t think that sweeping generalizations about “whatever things people want” based on such naively superficial ideas are very persuasive, but YMMV.
Yeah, that’s what I got from your first post, and I don’t think it’s remotely fair or accurate reading of Celestis’ statement. They’re happy to launch cremains into space, so long as they get paid. I expect they would be equally happy to launch whatever religious payload the Navajo Nation wants boosted into orbit, should the Navajo Nation decide that’s something they want - again, so long as they’re willing to pay. “We’re not going to refuse one customer, because their religious beliefs offend some third party’s religious beliefs,” is not remotely in the same statement as, “We agree with this customer’s religious beliefs.”
There’s a plaque on the moon stating Here Men From The Planet Earth First Set Foot Upon The Moon, July 1969, A.D.We Came In Peace For All Mankind.
IIRC William Safire bragged that he along with his good buddy Pat Buchanan convinced Nixon to specify the date with A.D. as way of including a reference to God on the plaque.
Personally, I’ve tend to find arguments predicated on the idea that one person’s actions should not be limited simply because they offend some other person’s religious beliefs to be extremely persuasive.
Good heavens, we’re really having a miscommunication here. No, I’m not making any claims whatever about what Celestis would or wouldn’t refuse to launch into orbit, or what religious beliefs they happen to personally agree with. As I have clearly stated more than once, obviously they are in business to launch whatever they’re paid to launch by whomever, and nobody need look any further than the profit motive to explain their actions.
I’m just opining why I think that the Celestis statement’s lofty air of disdaining religious objections in favor of the nobler aims of “space efforts” strikes many self-proclaimed rationalist readers as admirable and ethical. It’s because we’re acculturated to the mainstream ideas that elaborate and effortful symbolic practices in disposal of corpse remains are reasonable, and that being able to afford a particular act of consumption in a capitalist system intrinsically validates the performance of that act.
If Celestis had more honestly responded with “Our business model is persuading gullible dumbasses to concur with arbitrary irrational cultural biases that there’s something significant and meaningful about wasting money and environmental resources to put corpse remains in stupid places, and we will strongly resist and disparage any competing cultural biases that might negatively affect our profits”, I doubt that anybody would still be smugly patting them on the back for their principled ethical stand in defense of “freedom”.
Well, I straight-up called launching cremains to the moon “dumb,” so you can maybe take my own word on my motivations for agreeing with Celestis’ statement? Because I assure you, it has nothing to do with any particular importance or validation I put on elaborate funeral displays.
I certainly agree that if Celestis had said something entirely different from what they actually said, they’d have received an entirely different reaction. Pretty hard to argue against that particular proposition.
But I do disagree entirely that your rewriting of their statement is in anyway “more honest.”
There’s another angle to this, and I really don’t think that the Navajo Nation has thought through all of the implications of their statement.
For decades, there’s been an effort by various native groups to get exhumed human remains returned from museums, universities, and collectors to the tribes, so they can be properly and respectfully re-buried (or whatever each tribe traditionally does with human remains). And it’s been slow going: Legislation was passed in 1990 that was supposed to do it as quickly as possible, a timeframe that was anticipated to be months, and it’s still not even close to done, because the museums and universities and collectors keep throwing up roadblocks.
Well, what if all of those anthropologists just said that, according to their beliefs, those sites where they found the remains weren’t appropriate places for human remains? By the claims that the Navajo Nation are making now, this would be a reasonable thing for them to claim.
Heh, it may be that I’m just too cynical. But the contrast between their pompous yay-for-religious-neutrality rhetoric of “No individual religion can or should dictate whether a space mission should be approved” in this statement, and the corn-tastic pieties on their website about “connection to the infinite” and “forg[ing] a symbolic bond between their memory and the boundless universe” and “their spirit lives on, forever entwined with the cosmic tapestry” just reeks of corporate-bullshit hypocrisy to me.
I mean, duh, of course they are all in favor of the influence of religious beliefs supporting approval of their “space missions” to get paid for launching corpse parts. Religious and similarly irrational cultural beliefs in the symbolic significance of disposal of corpse parts and all the mystic woohaha of the “cosmos” are what keeps them in business, after all.
What they’re opposed to is the possibility of any influence by religious/spiritual beliefs opposing approval of their “space missions”. That’s what triggered their ringing proclamations about how religion shouldn’t be determining “humanity’s space efforts”. IMHO, of course.
…as someone who has been quite tangentially involved in the repatriation of kōiwi and kōimi tangata, if any anthropologist tried to argue that our ancestors shouldn’t be returned home because they “weren’t appropriate places for human remains”, we would simply tell them, in the politest of terms, to go f$ck themselves.
There are no implications in the Navajo Nation statement that would even remotely open themselves up to this.
Not sure that would pass muster as a sincere expression of religious/cultural tradition, though. The Navajo are already very familiar with what they consider the indiscriminate willingness of white culture to put dead body parts anywhere and everywhere, right?
IIRC, haven’t there been several controversies about tourists scattering relatives’ cremains on notable monuments on tribal lands in the Southwest, oblivious to tribal distaste for the practice? I mean, in terms of realistic biological impact, that kind of terrestrial cremains scattering isn’t physically “harming” anyone any more than scattering cremains on the moon would.
But it would probably contribute to the general implausibility of non-Navajo anthropologists suddenly starting to pretend that their “beliefs” were opposed to Navajo reclamation and traditional disposal of Navajo remains acquired by collectors.
I don’t really see a contrast there. Believing that nobody should be allowed to forbid space travel because “God says no,” isn’t in tension with also believing, “God says yes” to space travel.
I share your eye roll at the “connection to the cosmic infinite” gibberish, but I don’t see why it should be prized any less than, “The moon is sacred” gibberish. It’s all nonsense, but only one side is demanding the government step in and enforce their specific brand of nonsense.
Only because the government has already “stepped in” on behalf of the other side, right? AIUI, all space launches are licensed by some government entity?
It’s hardly fair to complain that “only one side” is trying to enlist the strong arm of government authority when the other side is already benefiting from the strong arm of government authority.