A Reason to go

[theend3r]

It isn't money, paper or bits on bank accounts aren't stopping us from going into space, it's the curren level of technology. Currently resources are better spent on research, since research makes everything more effecient. We could either spend everything we have to travel to another star or spend 1/100 of that on researching a better way and then let's say 1/3 of the original resources to do the same (probably even arriving sooner). In other words, going further into space right now is just waste of resources.

Edited January 12, 2014 by theend3r

[Spartwo]

It's a tool to display the power and technological prowess of your nation.

I don't think is ever gonna be a place where we dump excess people from Earth. Let's say we colonize mars, and manage to terraform to allow for wide scale habitation. Most of those will be born Mars. The population on Earth would not be significantly affected by this, and even if it did, the population on earth would just grow again until the carrying capacity of the Earth is reached again.

If you were given the options of poverty or Mars which would you choose?

[Nibb31]

If you were given the options of poverty or Mars which would you choose?

The poor won't be able to afford a ticket to Mars.

It will take a lot of money to go to Mars, but once you're there, you're stuck inside your hab module, spending the rest of your life breathing recycled air, drinking recycled urine, and eating hydroponic tomatoes, and relying on very expensive supplies from Earth. The poor would have better options on Earth: living in the woods or finding a desert island somewhere sounds more attractive to me than being stuck in 10m² on Mars.

[G'th]

It isn't money, paper or bits on bank accounts aren't stopping us from going into space, it's the curren level of technology. Currently resources are better spent on research, since research makes everything more effecient. We could either spend everything we have to travel to another star or spend 1/100 of that on researching a better way and then let's say 1/3 of the original resources to do the same (probably even arriving sooner). In other words, going further into space right now is just waste of resources.

I don't think anyone thinking about serious expansion into space is even remotely thinking about interstellar endeavors. Most are more than likely looking towards returning to the Moon. The idea isn't to start exploring beyond our Solar System, so much as it is just exploring more of what we already know we can reach. The Moon, Mars, close-by asteroids, hell, even Venus or even Mercury are all destinations we should be looking at before we decide to send anything more than probes beyond Mars.

Going to other stars is something for the next century.

The poor won't be able to afford a ticket to Mars.

It will take a lot of money to go to Mars, but once you're there, you're stuck inside your hab module, spending the rest of your life breathing recycled air, drinking recycled urine, and eating hydroponic tomatoes, and relying on very expensive supplies from Earth. The poor would have better options on Earth: living in the woods or finding a desert island somewhere sounds more attractive to me than being stuck in 10m² on

I don't think that Mars would be a destination for anyone other than actual Astronauts before its either terraformed somehow or set up with extensive, self-sustaining (More or less) infrastructure. By then, travel into space would be more expensive than booking a round-trip flight to Europe (Because it'd have to be for large-scale Mars colonization to even be anything more than an idea, much less an actual possibility).

[Stargate525]

A few off the top of my head:

1. Because we can: Aeronautics is FILLED with examples of people who did amazing things just to prove it was possible. The price-point for space stuff is just a little higher here. In a couple decades, I can easily see someone (with corporate sponsorship) going and homesteading Mars just to prove it possible.

2. Televisions: Iridium, Osmium, Palladium... Look no further than the top ten or fifteen metals on the exchange markets. These things are used in superconductors, processors, machinery... everything that we use in modern society. Find a single asteroid that has an abundance of this stuff, get it to earth, and you're looking at a 25-50 billion dollar payout. Not even mentioning a near-complete monopoly on that commodity. That figure is for a 50m asteroid made significantly of platinum. Bring that home, and you're the DeBeers of platinum. Enjoy.

[ramses]

As far as cost is concerned, I just saw a guy on the morning news who has made a space suit for two thousand dollars. He is now designing space suits for sub orbital.

The cost will come down, just like every other technology we have.

As far as living in a hab for the rest of your life, you seem to have a pretty short view as far as the future is concerned and the technology advancements we will make. I'm not talking one hundred years from now, but hundreds if not thousands.

[KASASpace]

No one here is thinking of amortizing the costs, are they?

For example:

The first cars were extremely expensive, until good old Henry Ford began using the assembly line to make it cheaper.

Why not the same for space............

[Themohawkninja]

No one here is thinking of amortizing the costs, are they?

For example:

The first cars were extremely expensive, until good old Henry Ford began using the assembly line to make it cheaper.

Why not the same for space............

Umm... ramses just said that... right above you... lol...

[goldenpeach]

Ask the Dinosaurs how having all their eggs in one basket turned out for them.

Oh wait, that's right, you can't, because one single event wiped them out.

If we're going to survive as a species, we need to get off this planet and find multiple homes for ourselves.

I get your point but.... I feel the urge to say that birds are dinosaurs

Not sure if they will answer you anyway...

[Nibb31]

As far as living in a hab for the rest of your life, you seem to have a pretty short view as far as the future is concerned and the technology advancements we will make. I'm not talking one hundred years from now, but hundreds if not thousands.

The OP was asking about reasons to go to space now, not in thousands of years.

I don't find much point in discussing stuff that might or might not exist beyond 50 years from now. 50 years ago, they thought we would have flying cars, atomic rockets, robot maids, and we would be taking vacations on Neptune and eating protein pills. Yet nobody envisioned the Internet or climate change.

I usually try to limit my projections to the foreseeable future. Anything else is pure conjecture and fantasy because absolutely anything can happen by then. For all we know, telepresence and VR might advance to the point where any kind of travel, including space travel, is pointless...

Edited January 13, 2014 by Nibb31

[Klingon Admiral]

Yet nobody envisioned the Internet or climate change.

If I recall correctly, Nikola Tesla kind of predicted the internet in the early 20th century.

Edited January 13, 2014 by Klingon Admiral

[Nibb31]

The first cars were extremely expensive, until good old Henry Ford began using the assembly line to make it cheaper.

The difference with cars is that:

- There was massive demand for personal transportation to go from point A to B before cars existed. Mass production was an answer to that demand. There is no such demand for going to space.

- Accelerating a mass from 0 to 26000km/h is always going to cost a lot of energy. That sort of energy is not likely to ever be cheap in the foreseeable future.

Edited January 13, 2014 by Nibb31

[crazyewok]

It's cheaper to just kill off some people

Well I hope you volunteer first as I say to everyone in the Pro genoside club, lead by example

[crazyewok]

There are no other homes around us. There is nowhere for us to go that supports our particular form of life. Wherever we would go, we would be stuck into living on artificial life support inside tin cans. If you are going to spend the rest of your life in a hab module with closed-loop life support, then there are better places to do so than on other planets: under the oceans, deep under ground, in LEO...

And the great Nibb31 as spoken lets just not bother.

When you play KSP do you just look at a blankt screen and say what the point of launching anything lol

[peadar1987]

The poor won't be able to afford a ticket to Mars.

It will take a lot of money to go to Mars, but once you're there, you're stuck inside your hab module, spending the rest of your life breathing recycled air, drinking recycled urine, and eating hydroponic tomatoes, and relying on very expensive supplies from Earth. The poor would have better options on Earth: living in the woods or finding a desert island somewhere sounds more attractive to me than being stuck in 10m² on Mars.

I wouldn't, you probably wouldn't, but there are plenty who would.

[theend3r]

Well I hope you volunteer first as I say to everyone in the Pro genoside club, lead by example

When did I say I would like something like that to happen? I wouldn't, but that still doesn't change the fact that it'd be the best solution in case of overpopulation.

a) Leave miliards of people to starve and live in horrible conditions, encumbering the society and halting progress

Distribute resources so as to improve their lives => the situation will get even worse and we all eventually die out

c) In the best case a natural disaster or if one didn't come then biological weapons inducing infertility, hopefully no wars, they drain resouces fast (also help research but it's not worth it)

Just now Earth still has some reserves, e.g. agriculture in Africa could be improved to produce more food but it won't last forever. There are seven times more people than 200 years ago, I don't even want to think about how many people there'll be in another 200 years if something doesn't change.

Or technology will advance so much that those problems won't matter anymore which is what I hope for.

Back to the point, saying something is right or beneficial doesn't mean I want to do it so why should I volunteer anywhere? That's a stupid pseudohumanitarian comment.

[Nibb31]

When you play KSP do you just look at a blankt screen and say what the point of launching anything lol

No, I have fun playing KSP. I also enjoy science fiction movies. But there's a difference between fiction, games, or wishful thinking; and the hard cold facts of reality. Just because you can land a Kerbal on Duna doesn't mean you're an expert in space policy or engineering.

Personally, I'm pro-space exploration, but I would like to see NASA or other space agencies concentrate on achieving smaller goals in order to actually accomplish things for a change, rather than seeing them spend resources on shiny new rockets with nothing to put on top of them and yet more PowerPoint concepts for Mars bases that they can't afford.

I'm much more excited by this:

Than by this:

Edited January 13, 2014 by Nibb31

[Rondon]

theend3r the worlds population isn't going up exponentially like it was 200 years ago, the rates of children per mother have already been going down for a while now, most estimates put the peak population at between 10 -11 billion an increase from now, of 40-50% , if you want to decrease birth rates faster you really would invest money in improving living standards.

[crazyewok]

Personally, I'm pro-space exploration, but I would like to see NASA or other space agencies concentrate on achieving smaller goals in order to actually accomplish things for a change, rather than seeing them spend resources on shiny new rockets with nothing to put on top of them and yet more PowerPoint concepts for Mars bases that they can't afford.

I have to agree with that to a certain extent. Im fed up with seeing NASA get 90% of the way with a good projects just to see it canned (NERVA). Just waste.

Though Im also in the camp that would love to see there budget doubled or trippled.

Still I try to look positivly at new tecnology like SKYLON rather than just criticise it and throw scorn at it. Maye it will fail, bust least give it the chance.

[MaverickSawyer]

We explore. It's what humans do.

[Klingon Admiral]

We explore. It's what humans do.

Humans did never explore without a damn good reason.

And there are 3 reasons:

"I don't want to die."

"I want to die rich."

"My god(s) should like me after I die." (we have mostly gotten rid of that by now)

Yes, I lifted that from Mr. Tyson.

[Dominatus]

There are no other homes around us. There is nowhere for us to go that supports our particular form of life. Wherever we would go, we would be stuck into living on artificial life support inside tin cans. If you are going to spend the rest of your life in a hab module with closed-loop life support, then there are better places to do so than on other planets: under the oceans, deep under ground, in LEO...

I can't think of a single event that would totally wipe us out with no survivors. We have the technology for at least a small number of us to survive even an Chicxulub-class impact, and the odds of that happening in the next thousand years are infinitesimal.

How about a large impact, similar to the one that killed off the dinosaurs? I forget the time frame, but those events happen, on average, once every so many million years. And I believe we are approaching the scheduled time, if not already past it.

Massive impacts not your thing? How about Yellowstone national park? That's a massive supervolcano, and we can expect it to erupt rather soon on the geologic timescale, and it's eruption would usher in a new ice age. At least we wouldn't have to worry about global warming anymore...

Volcano's not your thing? What about the crapload of thermonuclear weapons we have laying about, ready to plunge the world into a thermonuclear war and eliminate humanity.

Plenty of other possible events could kill us all- these are but a few. And your right- a few people would survive. Spread out across the entire planet, there would be the unlucky few who survived. Some will be close enough to band together, but these groups are too small. Humanity dies out due to a significant lack if genetic variation within a few generations.

There's this one physicist, Stephen Hawking, maybe you've heard of him? Hawking says that Humanity is doomed to extinction unless we can get off this rock and into space, as an interstellar species. And he isn't alone- most scientists believe this. It doesn't take a genius to realize that even if we do the impossible and survive long enough, then the sun growing into a red giant will deep-fry us.

We have to start somewhere, and colonizing other planets is a brilliant first step. Next we need the Alcubierre drive, or something similar. Finally we give up terrestrial life and build a fleet of fancy ships to live in, gathering resources from asteroids and other sources. Very long term, obviously, but if we have the tech it's doable, and makes sense for the above reasons.

[Klingon Admiral]

How about a large impact, similar to the one that killed off the dinosaurs? I forget the time frame, but those events happen, on average, once every so many million years. And I believe we are approaching the scheduled time, if not already past it.

How big is the sample size of chixculub-sized impact events? 2, maybe even 3 or 4? This is by far not enough to give any sort of dependable forecast. And again, the DINOSAURS DID NOT GO EXTINCT! Birds are dinosaurs, and there are about twice the number of species belonging to that group of animals than there are mammals. Chixculub gave them maybe a blue eye, nothing more.

Massive impacts not your thing? How about Yellowstone national park? That's a massive supervolcano, and we can expect it to erupt rather soon on the geologic timescale, and it's eruption would usher in a new ice age. At least we wouldn't have to worry about global warming anymore...

Humanity probably already survived such an event. See Wikipedia.

Volcano's not your thing? What about the crapload of thermonuclear weapons we have laying about, ready to plunge the world into a thermonuclear war and eliminate humanity.

Human nations on other worlds would probably have diplomatic relations to the nations of Earth. And if Earth starts nuking itself, space colony will do so as well.

Plenty of other possible events could kill us all- these are but a few. And your right- a few people would survive. Spread out across the entire planet, there would be the unlucky few who survived. Some will be close enough to band together, but these groups are too small. Humanity dies out due to a significant lack if genetic variation within a few generations.

See above, already happened, we are still around. With as few as 5,000 individuals survival of a k-strategist species (like humanity) is pretty much guaranteed.

There's this one physicist, Stephen Hawking, maybe you've heard of him? Hawking says that Humanity is doomed to extinction unless we can get off this rock and into space, as an interstellar species. And he isn't alone- most scientists believe this. It doesn't take a genius to realize that even if we do the impossible and survive long enough, then the sun growing into a red giant will deep-fry us.

No matter what we do, we will sooner or later go extinct. All things have to wither for new existence to grow. Even if we become a multi-galactical species, birthing and killing stars as we desire, proton decay or the end of the universe will finally do us in. And even if not and the universe is indeed of an infinite lifetime, sooner or later a stronger empire will come and subjugate/eradicate us.

[mdatspace]

snip

Yellowstone will not erupt in at least 10,000 more years. It may not erupt again. Natural disasters do not have a schedule. They are erratic.

We do have to start somewhere in space. But we cannot take huge steps.

[pigletx2]

Humans did never explore without a damn good reason.

And there are 3 reasons:

"I don't want to die."

"I want to die rich."

"My god(s) should like me after I die." (we have mostly gotten rid of that by now)

Yes, I lifted that from Mr. Tyson.

And a 4th one: we are curious. We have always been so.