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'Even if we don’t find signs of life on Venus, that’s interesting too: it will mean Venus and Earth were two planets that started out very similarly and ended u

'Even if we don’t find signs of life on Venus, that’s interesting too: it will mean Venus and Earth were two planets that started out very similarly and ended up with radically different fates. “That still raises profound questions that need answering,” says Byrne. “But to answer them, we need a program for studying the planet.”' I love this copout at the end, combined with a call for funding even if we don't end up finding anything on Venus - just to answer these questions that this one guy, a space reporter came up with. Uh, how about instead of putting hundreds of millions or billions of dollars into that, we put that money into actually fixing shit on the planet we have right now?

cookiengineer 6y ago
...to quote Michio Kaku: "I don't know whether or not we should go to outer space to colonize the planets. But one thing is sure: The universe is full of graveyards of species that decided not to." The whole thing of space travel is to have a backup colony. Extinction-level events are very likely scenarios, and we should aim for the survival of the species; and not for survival of the rich.
- salamimonger 6y ago
  You think it's not the rich who would be the first ones to get to go to Venus if it were possible in the case of some extinction-level catastrophe on Earth? It's all going to repeat, the same story, just on another planet, with the rich and powerful who got us into this mess calling the shots again. The poor people will get to go after, only to serve as labor or sacrificial test subjects for future space experiments. The poor just want to have a decent life here on Earth, and we can't even provide that. Yet some people believe that we'll actually innovate and bring about an age of space travel, for their benefit?!
  - rowanG077 6y ago
    If you go to another planet when an extintion level even happens you are already way too late. It's not like this is a trivial matter to do. Any reasonable effort would require support from earth for decades.

cookiengineer 6y ago

...to quote Michio Kaku: "I don't know whether or not we should go to outer space to colonize the planets. But one thing is sure: The universe is full of graveyards of species that decided not to." The whole thing of space travel is to have a backup colony. Extinction-level events are very likely scenarios, and we should aim for the survival of the species; and not for survival of the rich.

salamimonger 6y ago
You think it's not the rich who would be the first ones to get to go to Venus if it were possible in the case of some extinction-level catastrophe on Earth? It's all going to repeat, the same story, just on another planet, with the rich and powerful who got us into this mess calling the shots again. The poor people will get to go after, only to serve as labor or sacrificial test subjects for future space experiments. The poor just want to have a decent life here on Earth, and we can't even provide that. Yet some people believe that we'll actually innovate and bring about an age of space travel, for their benefit?!
- rowanG077 6y ago
  If you go to another planet when an extintion level even happens you are already way too late. It's not like this is a trivial matter to do. Any reasonable effort would require support from earth for decades.