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Are you kidding me? You guys think the left is anti-exploration? The right is the side that hates science/NASA because they're afraid science/NASA might prove that god isn't real and trickle down economics is a scam.

This is the Greens on their reasons for opposing a pure science research telescope in Hawaii. An exploration program that takes place entirely in Earth and which involves not a dime of public money:
https://dgrnewsservice.org/civ...

"I can't figure out WTF you're talking about in AZ, in fact it looks like astronomers there are winning victories to fight light pollution. The thing in HI is not left vs. science. To the extent that any of the people involved are lefties (which sure, some of them are) they have been whipped into a froth by right-wing politicians. And the battle ties into a fight for the land which the Hawaiian natives, frankly, have not given up fighting. Remember, it's not like they simply chose to join an empire."

You may not have been in Arizona long enough to have known what I was talking about, but protesters working for an outfit called Deep Green Resistance spent years filing fatuous lawsuits against the building of several large telescopes on Mt. Graham in the southeastern part of the state. The first excuse they used was critical habitat for red squirrels living on the mountain. When that fell flat, red squirrels being both common and not endangered by this particular type of human activity, Deep Green switched its attack to a claim that the site was sacred to the San Carlos Apache, a tribe which lives nowhere near the mountain and never evinced particular interest in it. During Clinton's second term construction was finally accomplished, years late and far over budget. That's the Greens' whole strategy - keep throwing groundless legal objections at the wall until even if nothing sticks, the target project becomes too expensive to finish. One argument that the Greens actually used in Arizona was "Build in Hawaii instead, because it's an even better site for astronomy!"

Having been unsuccessful in Arizona, Deep Green moved its attack to Hawaii, where they have been delaying the Thirty Meter Telescope by whipping up a native rights controversy. That is what is wending its way through the court system now.

This is Deep Green's manifesto against astronomy: https://dgrnewsservice.org/civ...
The author of this piece, Will Falk, has been all over Mauna Kea, egging on the protesters.

By their very nature, stories which explore future scenarios are going to speculate about every imaginable type of social and political system, and the human cultures that might inhabit them. The one core value I do expect the genre as a whole to hold sacred is a deep-seated respect for science itself and the potential of mankind to use it for its own improvement.

Go ahead and make your spaceship captain a lesbian, if you think your take on such a character would interest the target audience. But make her a person who appreciates science to the extent that she would be far more interested in what new things could be seen through the Thirty Meter Telescope than any reasons the SJWs can come up with to prevent it from being built somewhere.

The opposing position to this basic appreciation for science, in case you think I'm speaking in vacuo, is here: http://dgrnewsservice.org/civi...
This is the kind of thinking I want to see the Rabid Puppies blow to hell.

I'm in Arizona, where the real organizers of this protest tried the same tactics during the Nineties, when the telescope construction was on our Mt. Graham, with somewhat less success. You might want to read their manifesto:
http://dgrnewsservice.org/2015...

"but this, do you seriously believe that there can be only one explanation for wanting to mitigate
environmental change? that some idiots just wanna live in caves? worse, they want everyone
else to live in caves."

I've already linked this manifesto in a different thread (context obvious at link) but I'm assuming you didn't see it:
http://dgrnewsservice.org/civi...

The real villains of this situation are not the Hawaiians, but a radical mainland organization called Deep Green Resistance. If you read Hawaiian news reports, you will see that a haole named Will Falk was all over the mountain, whipping up the protests. This is the organization's manifesto on the TMT, written by Falk himself:
http://dgrnewsservice.org/2015...
As you see, Deep Green has a much larger agenda than just chasing the TMT out of Hawaii.

During the Nineties, the Greens tried an identical campaign here in Arizona, in an attempt to bring down the astronomy 'industry' in the state. Because we consist mainly of Republicans with guns, they were unsuccessful. I can still remember that one of their arguments at the time was "Send the new telescopes to Hawaii! They love astronomy there."

The Hawaiian natives are being played. The real agenda has nothing to do with native objections to a project that has less impact on the mountain than many things that have already been built on it.

Read this and weep: http://dgrnewsservice.org/2015...

Socialism never stopped any country from exploring space. Remember the Cold War? The one thing that could stop it is religious craziness. Centuries ago the Arabs invented chemistry and mathematics, and named the stars - but look at them now. In western countries, radical Green religion have the potential to put an end to technological progress in the same way.

Read their manifesto, and weep:
http://dgrnewsservice.org/2015...

"Well, if you don't care about getting humans out then why even send robots? It's even more efficient to just build better telescopes on Earth."
Here's the bad news about building large telescopes on Earth:
http://dgrnewsservice.org/2015...

The good news is that there are no liberals in space.

"Pretty sure "the future" is available to everyone, so it's really not clear what you're trying to say."

Let me make it a little more clear:
http://maunaawakea.com/posts/l...
http://dgrnewsservice.org/2015...

"...many of them secretly (or not so secretly) think that the best thing for the environment is if we (the human race as a whole) weren't alive anymore?"

This agenda is no longer even particularly hidden:
http://dgrnewsservice.org/2015...

Science fiction authors always had political differences, which fans were in many cases aware of. In the days of the Big Three, we had, let's see...a New Deal Democrat, a military/libertarian Republican, a gay Eurosocialist. The worlds they built reflected their sociopolitical values, and guess what - nobody worried about it! It just caused them to offer different styles of future, which fans debated as alternative scenarios, which is the whole idea. The field as a whole had no net political coloration.

What Beale and his minions (there might be henchmen in next year's budget, but they'll never be able to afford cronies) are mainly concerned about seems to be identity politics, especially when combined with the current softening of the science being presented in an effort to broaden readership. I think they have a point on the retreat from science into what Beale calls "angsty fantasy," but do fans really care deeply about the gender ratios in their stories? Beale is attacking from a fundie Christian perspective that has zero following in the genre.

If SF needs a political mission, I would like to see it address a real present danger, which is the general culture's mounting disrespect for science itself. Tis showed up first as a generalized fear of every application of science, but it has mushroomed into deep-seated evil like this:
http://dgrnewsservice.org/2015...

If these people gain political traction, everything we value here is in deep trouble. If the genre wants to charge into a political battle, this is the one it needs to join.