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Agreed. It really is a matter of prioritizing. With the way things are going on this planet one would think this would be a higher priority. Increasing our ch
by fjabre 17y ago
Agreed. It really is a matter of prioritizing.
With the way things are going on this planet one would think this would be a higher priority.
Increasing our chances of survival as a species should be a high priority but it seems we can't see the forest through the trees.
We have developed the means to destroy the planet, yet we have no way of escaping should that ever actually happen. It's not the kind of situation you'd like to find yourself in considering all the political and religious strife prevalent across the globe.
- shrughes 17y ago> Increasing our chances of survival as a species should be a high priority but it seems we can't see the forest through the trees. Why should this be a priority? There are better things for NASA to do than satiate some folks' religious beliefs.
- fjabre 17y agoI would hardly call increasing our chances of survival a 'religious belief' but if it is than sign me up. NASA should focus on buying rockets from Elon Musk.
- GHFigs 17y agoIncreasing our chances of survival as a species should be a high priority Why?
- mechanical_fish 17y agoWe have developed the means to destroy the planet, yet we have no way of escaping should that ever actually happen. I'm not at all sure that we have the means to make the Earth less habitable than the Moon or Mars. The Moon is pretty darned uninhabitable. Mars likewise. Assuming the absolute worst of the nuclear winter hypotheses to be true, we could perhaps destroy most of the higher life on Earth. But even after a nuclear winter the Earth would still have substantial amounts of water and oxygen, and almost certainly a functioning biosphere of some sort. [1] Which is more than can be said for the Moon or even Mars. Meanwhile, we most certainly don't have the technology to reach an extrasolar Earth-like planet, and spending tens of billions of dollars to have humans dork around in near-solar orbit won't change that fact one bit. If you really do dream of settling other planets, you need to spend far fewer dollars on far more radical experiments. Or you need to read Charles Stross: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the_high_frontier_redux.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the_high... Possibly both. -- [1] Bacteria are hard to kill. Many of them thrive on the lightless ocean floor at extremely high temperatures. And unicellular creatures built our oxygen atmosphere, so the loss of it probably won't bother them too much.
- fjabre 17y agoExcellent. Wish I had more time to respond to this but point well made. With enough supplies I believe Mars is habitable. There just wouldnt be a return mission. I agree with you about the money. We cant afford it right now. Too bad... I'd much rather be tooling around in space than fighting a war in Iraq...
- DanielBMarkham 17y agoStross' blog entry is interesting. It's good to have somebody like him lay out the math in regards to space exploration and colonization. I agree -- the only smart thing to do is to advance research into things that lower the cost. If you asked somebody from 1850 what it would take to visit the moon, you'd get a response much like Stross': it's simply a matter of technology. I believe that field propulsion will eventually be invented and will save the day for a lot of these issues, but I base that completely on faith in technological progress.