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Neilster -> RE: Neil Armstrong has died (8/30/2012 5:16:28 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: LitFuel
I haven't posted on here in a long time but this topic is one that eats at me almost every month at some point. Some say to send a man to Mars isn't worth the effort or the money...well I beleive it is if not for any other reason than to bring the world together on something...to make us all look at the screen in amazement as we did in 69. The fact we couldn't land a man on the moon and back now to save our lives over 40 years later is depressing. What have we done since...it's sad. We used to be explorers...seekers of the unknown, but now we just sit on our hands and bicker with each other on who's religion is right and who has the better economy...bah, if Aliens came down and offered a ride I would gladly take it to get off this tired old rock. If not to take chances and strive to seek the unknown why bother existing. Whatever power or country that takes the lead in space will own this planet in time...maybe not right away but down the line. That hot ball of rock we call the sun won't be stable forever and even more short term one of these days a meteor will hit and we will be cursing the sky wondering why we never developed anything to get off it.
Maybe I'm a dreamer but it would be nice for the world to come together on something to take our minds off the hatred we seem to have for each other.
I'm not too worried about the Sun because it's got 5 billion years of fuel left before it goes nova but I agree that space colonisation should be humanity's global project. It would have multiple benefits, as you have described above, and would give our civilisation a second chance if anything disastrous happened to the Earth.
Apart from the money, a manned Mars mission isn't possible in the foreseeable future because of the risk of bio-contamination. Robots can be made very clean (although not completely) but humans are full of bacteria and a crash on the surface would spill them all over the place. This isn't my opinion. It's current NASA policy.
I'm very interested in the Planetary Resources asteroid mining proposal. There are some very heavy hitters with serious money behind this and the asteroids offer all the stuff we need. Some are energetically even easier to get to than the Moon.
http://www.planetaryresources.com/
Cheers, Neilster
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