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"...back on the Moon within the decade."
Oh, yeah.
An international conference of scientists, engineers, and mission planners met in Hawaii last month.
Yesterday, they released their declaration calling for an international coordinated effort to set up permanent bases on the moon.
They listed many reasons, primarily commercial exploitation, which I don't think would really be cost-effective. Anything mined from the moon would cost currently a whole lot more to send back to earth than just mining the same things here. They did, however, also mention the slightly less material goals of "...to establish a second reservoir of human culture in the event of a terrestrial catastrophe, and to study and understand the universe."
The barely skirted my favorite reasons: in the long term, we have to go out to space if we're going to survive as a species. The Earth won't last forever, even barring any more giant comets slamming into us (one doesn't have to destroy the Earth to really suck for us. Another one that kills off 90% of species would make our future pretty bleak, and those have hit a few times before). There's a thousand other things that could happen, from out-of-control pollution, gaian collapse, the eventual death of the sun, etc. If we wait until catastrophe is upon us to start going out there, it'll be too late. And the gods only know how long it'll be before we destroy our civilization ourselves and what'll happen in the meantime before we rebuild to this point again.
In the shorter term, though, Dr. Robert Zubrin pointed out one of the best reasons a couple of months ago when he testified before the Senate: In the 60's the number of science and technology graduates more than doubled. In the 70's and 80's, they went back down to pre-Apollo levels. A real goal in space would be a huge visible event that would inspire countless people: encourage them to study science and technology, seeing something they could actually apply it to when they graduate, and showing a future that could be brighter than just endlessly repeating our cycle of which nation is the prominent empire this decade. Though I'd like to see a commitment to the slightly longer term goal of building Mars colonies, a base on the moon would be a good first step.
An international conference of scientists, engineers, and mission planners met in Hawaii last month.
Yesterday, they released their declaration calling for an international coordinated effort to set up permanent bases on the moon.
They listed many reasons, primarily commercial exploitation, which I don't think would really be cost-effective. Anything mined from the moon would cost currently a whole lot more to send back to earth than just mining the same things here. They did, however, also mention the slightly less material goals of "...to establish a second reservoir of human culture in the event of a terrestrial catastrophe, and to study and understand the universe."
The barely skirted my favorite reasons: in the long term, we have to go out to space if we're going to survive as a species. The Earth won't last forever, even barring any more giant comets slamming into us (one doesn't have to destroy the Earth to really suck for us. Another one that kills off 90% of species would make our future pretty bleak, and those have hit a few times before). There's a thousand other things that could happen, from out-of-control pollution, gaian collapse, the eventual death of the sun, etc. If we wait until catastrophe is upon us to start going out there, it'll be too late. And the gods only know how long it'll be before we destroy our civilization ourselves and what'll happen in the meantime before we rebuild to this point again.
In the shorter term, though, Dr. Robert Zubrin pointed out one of the best reasons a couple of months ago when he testified before the Senate: In the 60's the number of science and technology graduates more than doubled. In the 70's and 80's, they went back down to pre-Apollo levels. A real goal in space would be a huge visible event that would inspire countless people: encourage them to study science and technology, seeing something they could actually apply it to when they graduate, and showing a future that could be brighter than just endlessly repeating our cycle of which nation is the prominent empire this decade. Though I'd like to see a commitment to the slightly longer term goal of building Mars colonies, a base on the moon would be a good first step.
Vamonos!!
"History and Nature never take jumps forward, but history always takes jumps back"
You have to start any endeavor at some time, and as humans will probably remain borderline to full-blown retarded forever, we may as well start going into space now, and I wouldn't care if the reason given was that solar wind would cure millions from the tragedy that are hemerhoids; vamonos! We'll never be "good enough". There are far better reasons to do The Space Thing than there are arguments against it...well, ok: Creationists have some pretty compelling reasons for not going, but I sort of like the idea of a Saturn 5 up God's butt...
Short of sprouting a second set of arms from the forhead, humans have pretty much run the gammut on evolving physically, so we have to count on invention, innovation and exploration to take us further. And what about "airless planets and moons"? I think that science that could be tested on large scale without harming anything would benefit us in reverse. Go. Learn. Come back. Apply lessons learned. Rinse. Repeat.
"I think we have to learn a few internal lessons before humanity is ready to move on."
"No cookie for you because you've been bad"? Problem with this is that in the millenia of existance as homo sapiens sapiens, we STILL haven't learned our collective lesson; we keep hitting our human snooze button, and justifying it non stop; funny thing is no matter how clever our arguements, we're still always late for work.
"Couldn't that same technology be used to sustain life here? I mean, there are certain gases that could be released in the atmosphere to bind with the greenhouse gas, therby rendering it pretty much harmless. Couldn't we use the resources to fix the mess we have made here? What is to stop us from making a mess from whatever planet is unfortunate enough to have us?"
I always hear these things argued as a one or the other thing. Why is that? There is no reason both wouldn't/couldn't be done at the same time.
If we can lump people together as a large organism, we can say that leaving home (Earth) might give us the perspective we need to finally grow the fuck up and stop obsessing over the same ol' same ol's just because they're easier.
You can't "just change" how you think, but you CAN change what you do, which is similar and could eventually lead to a better way of thinking. And if what we're doing as a species isn't working (i.e. we're still slaughtering eachother over politics, race and religion) then we sure as hell better change what we do and try something else. Those things will probably stick around in some fashion, but we may increase our options to combat them.
And as far as not being able to vacation on Mars, I agree with Doug; I'd like to sue the 1950s. All those promises of a Buck Rogers future by 1999 in old Popular Mechanics have NOT happened to my expectations. Grrr. What a mean thing for a generation to do to another.
My question is this: are we moving forward or are we all just waiting for someone else to do it for us and fighting them when they try? Armchair revolutionaries: GET UP!