Since Outer space is such a hot topic here. (1 Viewer)

[Yee-Ming]

Whilst I agree with the mathematical probability of life on other planets is high, the difficulty IMHO is that this is "life on another planet, somewhere in the universe, anytime during the lifetime of the universe so far".

Given the sheer size of the universe, chances are life (in some form) exists today several billion light years away in some galaxy on the far side of the universe. So without some sort of super faster-than-light drive, contact is impossible. Or at least "sub-space transmission" a la Star Trek, if we just talk.

Alternatively, if life existed in this galaxy, within, say, a modest 1,000 light years of Earth, given the immense timespan that the universe has existed, it probably rose a good billion years ago or more, and is long extinct. Remember mankind, as we sort-of know it, has only been around a mere 2 million years or less. And "civilisation" for maybe 5-6,000, depending on how you classify what was going on in the Stone Age.

Hence, who says Star Wars is science-fiction? It really happened, "A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away..."

 

[Julie K]

One might well imagine people 15,000 years ago looking across the Bering Straits and deciding it wasn't worth exploring until all the problems were solved in their villages.

If space exploration is delayed until all our problems are solved then space will never be explored.

As fascinating as life on the bottom of the ocean (which is being explored, BTW), it is still Earth life. Discovery of life on another planet is something completely different and would be the most significant discovery ever made.

But space exploration is more than taking pictures or even finding other life. It is exploration and discovery in the purest form. If we continue, we will someday live there. If we don't continue, we never will and that could severely limit the lifespan of our species.

 

[Zen Butler]

*cough* excuse my thread-fart ....

Oh my!, hello Julie.

 

[DanielKellmii]

Blame that on NASTRAN

 

[Andrew Testa]

*rimshot* ba-DUM-bum!

Goodnight everybody! Don't forget to tip your waitresses!

 

[Jack Briggs]

Julie, welcome back! You need to take a breather from your little Martian dune buggies and check in with us whenever you can.

Andrew: My goodness, man, that is a scary-sounding maneuver. Really. And I am not reading anything about that sort of thing at Keith Cowing's site. I bet you're putting in some long hours over at JSC.

 

[Julie K]

Speaking of the dune buggies:

http://www.dietpepsi.com/tvads.htm

Check out the one called "Night Watch"

 

[Ashley Seymour]

Good, let's fund more Bio-Spheres, and more options like the 750,000 city/building in Japan. We need to learn how to live on less land/space on earth than to live in space.

 

[Julie K]

If humanity as a whole ever turns away from exploration and takes that kind of attitude then it deserves to be made extinct by the next giant asteroid.

 

[Rex Bachmann]

Ashley Seymour wrote (post #28):



And what does this mean? It's a little hard to parse, but I take the original post to say that we as human beings will have to make a wiser use of our resources. And, yes, as much as some in the good ol' USA don't like to hear it, that will mean higher population densities in the future. Even if humans go into space in numbers, people won't be able to live in spacious apartments they way do on ST:TNG and elsewhere in Hollywood's warped imagination. Large spaces mean more resources (oxygen, heating, etc.) are needed to maintain them; too precious in dangerous space environments (or even somewhere like Mars).

And going into space won't solve all our earthly problems, anyway, so we'll still have to make better use of the resources we have. Ergo, back to the original poster's statement.

 

[RobertR]

If it makes a significant difference in solving some of them, it's worth it. Otherwise, you're claiming it's worth it only if the result is Utopia ("solving all our problems"). Why does it have to be couched in "either/or" terms? Exploring space does nothing to preclude "solving all our problems" on Earth.

 

[Jack Briggs]

And it may well go a long way toward helping solve such problems. At any rate, if the human race finds the avoidance of extinction desirable then there's no choice. Even though the Sun has about another billion years left on the Main Sequence, some interstellar options would be nice.

 

[Joe Tilley]

This is something else I just don't understand. Before anyone rips me a new one for saying this though just think about this.
I may be falling off subject here, but how is it that anyone can say that we have so many years left of anything such as the time our sun has left. I realize that most of the guesses about our solar system are based around other star's & planetary systems, but I just don't see how anyone can say that we have another billion years left before our sun collapses. I know I'm just talking out of my ass to most of you, but to me the sun is something ( IMO ) we really know nothing about. The only reason I say this is just for the fact that we never have & I would think never will be able to get anywhere near the sun to see what it's really made up of. For all we really know the sun may through a curve & wipe us out tommrow.
Again I'm not trying to piss in anyones cup here or say that anyone is wrong. I just don't understand how people can say that something is fact for something we really know little about. That is also another reason I was simply saying that we don't look at problems or the undiscovered things closer to home enough. And I didn't mean to get stuck on the topic of underwater exploration I was just using it for example.
I can see some of the benefits to it, but really do you think for one minute that if they discovered a huge asteroid coming straight for us that we could do anything about it at all. Or if the sun one day just shot a massive gas burst out that we could put on some extra sun block & be ok. Thats kinda what I'm getting at, it seams to me that people are rushing to try to find answers for something we will never be able to control.
I'm getting myself lost in what I'm trying to say though so I hope some of you can see what I'm getting at. And I hope no one is taking any offence to any of this ( it seams a couple may be ) I just cant type out what I'm think without bouncing around from one thing to another.
But anyway I myself am very fascinated by space exploration, but again I could see better things done with some of the money spent on it ( Again that just my opinion so please don't beat me down over it ).

 

[RobertR]

Why such a fatalistic attitude? Isn’t it better to use our ability to think so that we can deal with such a contingency, instead of adopting an “oh we can’t POSSIBLY deal with natural phenomena” attitude? Would you have responded to the onslaught of now-controlled diseases by saying “hey what are you doing looking at mold and things people can’t even see, don’t you know we can’t do anything about such things?”?

 

[BrianW]

Actually, we know a lot about the sun. In simplistic terms, we know how much it weighs, and we know how fast it's consuming fuel. We can then calculate how much longer it will last. Even if you don't disregard the nuclear physics, it's a lot like predicting how far you will be able to go on a quarter tank of gas.

As for finding an asteroid that's coming right at us, don't let yesterday's close(st) encounter convince you that there's no way to detect and prevent an impending asteroid impact. It could be the case that we would find one that's coming right at us, but won't hit us for another ten or twenty years. (I know you'll think that spotting an asteroid so far away is probably impossible, but you'll have to trust me when I say that such asteroids are our close neighbors in the solar system and the larger ones could be spotted decades before impact.) If this is the case, then we'll have that much time to figure out something to deflect the asteroid. With enough time, something as simple as an ion rocket engine strapped to the asteroid could be enough to sufficiently deflect it.

After yesterday's near miss, I'm even more compelled to try to do something about the next one rather than pre-emptively surrender in defeat.

 

[Ricardo C]

That's all??? If NASA doesn't at least come up with a Death Star-like megalaser, I'm not interested

 

[Casey Trowbridg]

That's right, I want to explore space so we can start blowing up stuff, cause isn't that really what its all about?

Seriously though, its fine to discover and learn about things here on earth such as what is going on in the depths of the ocean and so on and so forth, but as many others have said, space is the future.

Really, there is never going to be the perfect time to go in to space, because there are always going to be issues on earth that demand attention, which is why you don't sit and wait for the perfect time, you go for it anyway. As many have said, it is worth it if space exploration even helps solve just a few of the problems that we have had/will have on Earth.

 

[Ashley Seymour]

INCOMING!

Whoh, that was close. That 100ft asteroid just missed us by 26,000 miles.

 

[Julie K]

The reflectivity of an asteroid is important to the evolution of its orbit. It is possible that we could change that reflectivity - making a dark asteroid bright, for instance, and thus change, very slowly, its orbit. Such a change wouldn't have to be huge, just a small amount so it would miss the Earth.

 

[CharlesD]

Welcome back JulieK! Glad you were able to hit your target!