Quote Originally Posted by LuckyG
Seriously, they should just give up on space exploration and get down under the ocean's surface. I cannot emphasize this point enough - there is absolutely no evidence of life or even somewhat profitable enterprises in space, while we know there is life underwater, and we've only explored something like 7% of the ocean bottom. Who knows what we could find down there?
You couldn't be more wrong about space. There is a good chance of current or past life on Mars, and evidence for oceans under the ice that possibly sustain life on all Jovian moons except Io, Enceladus, and even possibly Pluto and Charon. And if there why not on Eris or Sedna and elsewhere in the Kuiper belt? Titan has methane lakes and there is a slight chance extremophile life could develop in those conditions, and I think I even heard that there could be an ocean on Titan under the surface ice.
It is almost certain that life exists or existed in at least one of these places. Yes we should explore the ocean too, but the point of space having little to offer is way way off base. I think I heard that between helium-3 and other resources on the moon, and especially the asteroid belt have enough resources to build many orbital habitats or whatever they are called, and just the resources from the biggest asteroid could allow quadrillions of people to live in our solar system, all with the standard of living of the upper middle class. That's a lotta moola just waiting to be reaped if we ever get off our asses and make it happen! And if we don't make it happen and stay only on this planet, it is a certainty that we will all go extinct eventually from an asteroid or comet impact, gamma ray burst, or any number of events man-made or natural. We could all be knocked out of existence in one blow. If we settle our solar system and eventually send some of those orbiting habitats to other stars and sow our seeds there, we will not have "all our eggs in one basket" and will live on as a species, conceivably for millions or billions of years longer than if we just stay on Earth. We should be vigorously and actively funding and persuing every possible technology capable of enabling travel to other stars. Even warp drive or something similar is theoretically very possible. We should take half the money we waste on military spending (if we only sought to make friends instead of brutalizing everyone into submission, we would need a mere fraction of the military force we have now) and apply it to space funding. Colonies on the moon, Mars, floating cities in Venus's atmosphere, A Mercury base in the shaded polar craters, and so on, almost everything can be settled besides the gas giants themselves. Build the infastructure for a strong solar system-wide economy and the rest will follow. The need for new ways of doing things would spawn technologies we can't even dream of today. We must get serious about the Moon and Mars and do it sooner than they plan to. before it's too late.
space toker Reviewed by space toker on . New manned missions to Moon, Mars --- what do you think? Is anyone else excited about the new manned missions that NASA is planning to the Moon and Mars? Even though the missions are several years out, the systems are in development now. The shuttles will be retired in a few years and then NASA will shift to a new capsule-type vehicle called Orion to transport astronauts to space and back. The Orion capsule will be boosted into space using rocket systems derived from the shuttle boosters. For missions to the Moon, the capsule will dock with a Rating: 5