Space vs Maritime Exploration

Europeans sailed "off over the horizon" because they could get spices, gold, silk, furs, and slaves. Meanwhile, tech bros want us to collectively invest trillions of dollars to satisfy their infantile power fantasies by bringing back some red rocks.

Ancient greeks had actually a very similar system of participation on maritime endeavors.They even supported poets in order to create fiction and propaganda about the amazing things and riches that were abroad. Making young people travel also relieved demographical pressure.If you lost a ship by shipwreck, you lost it all, but it was very profitable if the ship returned. Like anything in life, the were "naturals" that will return and succeed, people that were really good at it fo

There is a reason why naval routes became dominant.

This reminds me of privateering during the age of sail.

Yea, think about it. One of the ancient global trade drivers!

I thought the shipwreck full of Copper ingots heavily implied trade.

"Ancient explorers should never have ventured on ships to find new lands, for the cost of that could have been used in their countries to better serve the poor" /s

You're just talking about different time periods.But when talking about "ability" to influence distant nations, having a bigger and better ship than Columbus at the time kind of means they had the ability. [0]They just didn't care about finding another route to India for spices or mining some distant silver mountain. They already had those.[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org&#x

Yes and no.Customs duties were a bigger source of revenue. Ships didn't just travel freely.People were less of a problem, as most people didn't stray more than a few miles from where they were born.

That would have been incredibly handy in the age of sail.