Could someone help me understand the Atlantic Ocean thing? Specifically the phenomenon of rich royalty and businessmen like Columbus, Queen Isabella, etc spending huge amounts of money on ocean-travel-related projects.
I, like many nerds, grew up with a powerful fascination with oceans, foreign lands, and the myriad mythology stories based around the various problems and possibilities of ocean travel. I understand the allure. I am also a capitalist, and therefore don't begrudge these guys the opportunity to do with their money as they see fit.
What I don't get is why we never hear of wealthy royalty spending their money on technology projects that would have a much much larger benefit to humanity, and arguably cooler than ocean travel. Things like medicine, farming, and hell, even waterwheel-powered machinery come to mind.
I think you have the wrong picture of the scale of the investment required to fund Columbus. It was common for businessmen to fund voyages to known places. Columbus had a more difficult time because of the unknown. He actually had a pretty good idea of the distance involved (because his estimate of the radius of the earth was too low) and the Irish and Vikings had been getting almost there for centuries. He went to royalty because they could afford bigger risks. The reason that royalty werent involved much in scientific and commercial advancement was that their sport of choice was war.
Profit was the motive for funding Columbus to cross the Atlantic, by finding a faster or easier trading route to the Oriental sources of spices and silk. Profit was still the motive for later explorers of the Americas, in mining or stealing Aztec gold and silver, then tobacco and cotton and sugar plantations.
It's unclear yet where feasible profit opportunities exist for development in space. (Also, we can _see_ space with telescopes, there isn't a Pacific Ocean on the other side of space that we have to send someone to discover.) If you want to see some real space industry, hope that somebody discovers a gold asteroid.
Finally, remember that from Columbus to Jamestown elapsed over a hundred years. Less than half of that timespan has yet elapsed since Yuri Gagarin. These things take time.
>> If you want to see some real space industry, hope that somebody discovers a gold asteroid.
They already have [1]. And a platinum asteroid. And a palladium asteroid. And an Iron, Nickel, whatever-mineral-you-want asteroid.
"At 1997 prices, a relatively small metallic asteroid with a diameter of 1.6 km (0.99 mi) contains more than 20 trillion US dollars worth of industrial and precious metals."
"A comparatively small M-type asteroid with a mean diameter of 1 km could contain more than two billion metric tons of iron-nickel ore, or two to three times the annual production for 2004."
Supposedly the asteroid '433 Eros' contains more gold than has ever been mined from the Earth in the history of mankind (I can't find a source for this apart from an earlier HN comment though, the paper I found on it was behind a paywall).
I, like many nerds, grew up with a powerful fascination with oceans, foreign lands, and the myriad mythology stories based around the various problems and possibilities of ocean travel. I understand the allure. I am also a capitalist, and therefore don't begrudge these guys the opportunity to do with their money as they see fit.
What I don't get is why we never hear of wealthy royalty spending their money on technology projects that would have a much much larger benefit to humanity, and arguably cooler than ocean travel. Things like medicine, farming, and hell, even waterwheel-powered machinery come to mind.
Why cross the Atlantic?