It’s a moot point if we don’t have the propulsive system to reach the terrestrial planets in a reasonable amount of time. At this point, we do not. We can scratch Venus and Mercury off the list of places where we’d like a second home. That leave Mars as the only terrestrial planet we can visit and live long enough to tell anyone about our new address. We can visit the gas giants, but we’re not going to be wandering around on them and staking claims. Some of their moons look promising, especially from a petrologic standpoint, but I don’t think any mega-corporation any time soon will be harvesting their resources. Some additional perspective. Thanks to Joe’s blog a while back. Voyager 1 passed through the termination shock and into the heliosheath in December 2004. It passed into the heliopause last June. It’s at a distance of about 11 billion miles from Sun. Its velocity is about 40,000 miles/hour. Voyager 1 was launched in 1977. Voyager 1 is not coming back. It doesn’t have the desire or resources to come back. Humans (politically correct for Patrick) will want to come back to Earth, at first, until we can establish a colony in whatever inhospitable environment we choose to subject ourselves to. That’s if we can get there. Right now, we’re not even close. Review Voyager data above for insight. In my opinion, saying we’re anywhere near being able to send people to another planet (or will be in the foreseeable future) is like saying, after you step on a stepladder, that you’re closer to Moon. Another thing. How are we going to pay for this? What vision? Human shortsightedness is the stuff of legend. Many people, especially those in congress, believe there is no climate change. However, it doesn’t matter what they believe. The scientific consensus is there informing us of a pretty dismal future. How are we going to spend resources on manned space exploration when we’re trying to keep all of Florida from being knee-deep in water one hundred years from now? Kiss the Kennedy Space Center goodbye. This is in the “short-term”. The long-term projection is much worse. I’m holding out for a large extinction-level impactor. Dave On Mar 2, 2012, at 5:24 PM, Chuck Hards wrote:
Neil DeGrasse Tyson was on NPR's Science Friday today, talking about the future of manned exploration of the solar system. He made some powerful arguements, in sociological terms. I recommend the podcast.
There are going to be a LOT of astronaut deaths during the next few generations of space exploration. It's part of the process and statistically, probably can't be helped. Remember that the men and women who volunteer for space exploration know all too well what the risks are. "You knew the job was dangerous when you took it", as the saying goes. They know. We owe them, they are made of better stuff than we. Just like our military who face mortal danger so the rest of us can live our lives in freedom. Of course we owe it to those brave pioneers to give them the best chance of survival that we can, but accidents happen, the unforseen always rears it's ugly head, and sh!t happens. We can't let fear and Ralph Nader rule our exploratory nature and need to expand and grow as a species.
Manned exploration of space is a huge task, not something that's going to happen quickly. It will span generations- in the SHORT term. We need to stop thinking about it in terms of the next ten or twenty years. It's something that is going to take millenia, and cost many, many human lives and untold treasure to accomplish. We are good at reproduction, face it. There will be no shortage of eager volunteers to take us bravely into the future.
It's going to take not just a national will, but the will of the entire species. Failure means that we become just another thin layer in the geological strata.
Science-fiction has ruined our thinking, in practical terms. Manned exploration and colonization of space is something that will take so long, that our descendents who live the future we dream of, may even be further along the biological evolutionary scale than we are.
I'm OK with that, and kind of proud of it. It doesn't all have to happen in the short time-span of a single human life. Or ten human lives. But it HAS to happen for our descendants to survive.
We need to change the way we think, as a species, and stop being so divisive and fearful. Otherwise Malthus is correct, and we are doomed to starve to death, largely by own own actions (or, more precisely, inactions.) _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy
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