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Originally posted by meades:
Of course we should! Why solve the problems of this world when we can just make a new one! Hell, we don't even have to worry about what to do with the old one! We can just let it sit there, and rot!

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Originally posted by CMOT Dibbler:
It might help us with our home overpopulation problems

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and advanced science provide jobs and advance science.

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I would like a few more arguments against colonization.

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[ 15 January 2004: Message edited by: nonesuch ]

Don't listen to the nitpicking of the nattering nabobs of negativity.

The argument that somehow going to space is going to prevent us from solving problems at home is flawed. $150 billion was spent on the friggin' Iraq war (boo). Bill Gates has $65 billion. The total annual budget at NASA is $15 billion and the recent missions to Mars cost just hundreds of millions. There is lots of room left to fund initiatives to combat poverty, malnutrition and environmental degradation. Sadly, the costs of doing so are not that high (we would likely actually profit from taking care of these issues though that should not be the motive), but the political will is lacking in the 'developed' world.

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For a few hundred million dollars (less than the annual profit of any of our banks), the whole world can be entertained by some of our planets best scientists, seeing pictures of a world our ancestors never dreamed anyone would be able to see. Space is sexy.

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Science as entertainment? Surely our great minds can be put to better use than coming up with a slicker circus for the vulgar mob.

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Originally posted by Mycroft:
The sooner George Bush goes to Mars the better.

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Then, there is the question of who goes. Excess or elite? I wasn't invited. Were you? I didn't think so. So, who is this 'we' that's going to Mars? Chances are, a whole lot of poor people would have to get even poorer and a whole lot more would have to starve to death, in order to send a handful of golden boys and girls - who were doing pretty well on this one - to a new world.

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The total annual budget at NASA is $15 billion and the recent missions to Mars cost just hundreds of millions.

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quite correct. you could have 600 unmanned missions to mars for the cost of one manned mission.

Despite the certainty that the funds for space exploration would not be channeled in a more charitable direction whether we "go to Mars" or not, it is a moral principle that sustains the negative side of the argument. Nothing specific is offered in defense of it, no channel has been opened that would guarantee the redirection of billions to worthwhile humanitarian/environmental programs, and the argument remains (pun intended), pie-in-the-sky. As long as there are people in need on this planet, the argument goes, we should not spend money looking elsewhere. Funding space exploration has become a metaphor for misplaced values, for waste, even for indifference to suffering. Common, but unexamined metaphors like that usually contain meanings that would fail to convince if they were plainly stated. So they hide in the metaphor’s emotional veil. The result, I think, is that space exploration has become a rallying point for the not necessarily opposing ideals of philanthropy and the urge to adventure. Pure science, too, but it's incidental as far as most people are concerned: Ubu is right, space is "sexy". George Bush wants to associate himself with this sexiness (this “potent” metaphor) in order to further his interest in space weapons of mass destruction (SWMD). He is not interested in Mars, but he can use its emotional appeal. And of course with him climbing aboard the metaphorical bandwagon, opponents of space exploration will be even more convinced of its essential evil. The scientists must be thinking, "With friends like George, who needs enemies!"

The further problem for space exploration advocates is that it isn't possible to know what the exact benefits will be. Space exploration isn't like Edison arguing for the evident value of an electric bulb over candles and gas light. The arguments for funding space exploration remind me of those offered for the funding of art: generally, we think it's a good idea to spend some public money funding artists and art works, without having expectation of specific practical benefits. But because we know it will not measureably improve the lives of most everyone, including the wretched of the Earth, we don’t want to spend very much. It would be unseemly. In fact, like space exploration, we know that art will mainly benefit the relatively wealthy. (Try asking to see what gallery owners have to offer in their back rooms--if you are not a "serious", i.e., a wealthy, collector, you will not be welcomed past the curtain. Just as you will not be invited past the shuttle bay door.) The arguments for funding art always invoke—lovely irony, this--"nebulous" benefits. The same as arguments for funding sports. Anything “extra-curricular”, really; the curriculum being practical humanitarian tasks, which may or may not have any hope of being accomplished, even if all the money from sports, art, and space exploration were re-directed to them.

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Witness the British Home children for one, and didn't they ship convicts off to penal colonies in Australia and New Zealand?

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ObThreadDrift: I don't know about New Zealand, but certainly to Australia.

Van Diemen's Land, later called Tasmania, was in effect the concentration camp for the British Empire (without of course the mechanized slaughter the Nazis later associated with that term).

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Originally posted by Zoot Capri:

I dunno about that. They could use the Canada/Australia models... Ship off the undesirable poor crowding up our cities so you don't have to worry about them, "for their own good". Witness the British Home children for one, and didn't they ship convicts off to penal colonies in Australia and New Zealand? And then there were "charitable" immigration programs starting from the late 18th/early 19th centuries...

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Funny you should mention that. I just read an interesting novel, Farewell, Earth's Bliss by D. G. Compton. It's about a penal colony on Mars. Of course, the novel predates the Viking missions, and hence it portrays a Mars with a couple of edible lifeforms, which looks relatively unlikely today. Worth a read though.

In any case, though, I don't think it would be practical to ship a large surplus population there. The question remains, is the exploration of Mars worthwhile? I would say yes, but that sending humans there should not be a priority now. Keep up the robot missions by all means- for one thing, we should make darn sure that there's no life on Mars before we even consider permanently establishing a large number of people there, since it would no doubt eventually involve terraforming the planet, and to do so would be hard to justify if it involved wiping out lifeforms, even if the only ones there are microbes.

If there is indeed no sign of life after an intensive search, then maybe we can think about it. Unless and until this is determined, there's not much point in sending very many people into space until we can do a much better job of setting up an artificial, closed ecosystem than the Biosphere 2 people did.

In the meantime, space work should be directed at two things- scientific study, and keeping a close eye out for hazardous asteroids and comets. We should also be preparing to act on warnings of such events, but the main focus should be on tracking as many Earth-crossing objects as possible, so as to be able to predict their paths well in advance so that we have time to respond if a serious threat is detected. Neither of these objectives require us to send very many people into space right now. The work we do with robotic probes will tell a great deal about where it would be most worthwhile to send people when we are ready, however.

[ 15 January 2004: Message edited by: Mike Keenan ]

[ 15 January 2004: Message edited by: Mike Keenan ]

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Originally posted by bittersweet:
The only people who should live on the red planet are neo-conservatives. Then we could be content to look out into the night sky from our temperate little blue planet, far from the madding Martian crowds, and know the God of War had finally been properly appeased.

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Our Moon, and near earth asteroids are more attractive for that.

What Mars and space really represents for humanity is the chance for people to escape the current political and social domains to invent new ones.

Sort of like the Pilgrims leaving Europe so they could be left alone in North America.

Only I think space offers the potential for more fun loving people's to be left alone to do their thing.

While it disturbs me to see Dick Gephart use the false dichotmy argument, if I was American I'd vote for him over Bush any day of the week, and twice on sundays--assuming I was in Florida.

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Originally posted by 'lance:
Halliburton wants to drill on the Moon and Mars for ... something or other.

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I wrote my little two cents about how I think it is worth it to go to space and then noticed sarcastic comments about how it's part of a devious plan by George Bush. I'm sure this is true. I am rabidly anti-Bush, anti-war, anti-missile 'defense', anti-privatization, support progressive taxation and am considered a radical lefty by my friends and colleagues. Yes, I happen to love space and science. So now I am in the same category as George Bush. Yikes !

To be frank, I think the best reason to go to Mars is because it would be hard to do. Why not test our limits ? Call me crazy, but this stuff really excites me. Not to mention the possibility of determining whether life is a local phenomenon in this solar system (likely, yes) or the possibility of making discoveries that will help us here on Earth.

At the risk of making you think I'm a conservative again (AGH!), I think money is a virtual non-issue. We can spend lots and lots on social programs and international aid without affecting our ability to go to space. We spend less on space than we do on plasma tv's. The Skydome cost as much in the end as the Spirit probe for crying out loud. I don't see how the relatively piddly amounts of money spent on one of the most exciting areas of science are going to hurt the world's social problems.

Yes, bittersweet, I agree with most of your post and I would settle for lots of unmanned missions, but trying to control things from Earth is woefully inefficient. There is a several minute delay between commands from Earth and the probe and then a several minute delay as we wait for the data to be sent back at the speed of light. This is less of a problem than usual at the moment, but just wait until we end up in opposite orbital positions. Also, if a problem occurs there's often no way to really fix it and then it's all just a waste. So, come on, let's go start our galaxian empire (joke).

[ 16 January 2004: Message edited by: Ubu ]

[ 16 January 2004: Message edited by: Ubu ]

Thinking about and reading about and looking at space is one of the very few things that brings me comfort, and, like you, I think it would do humanity a world of good to learn as much as we can about OTHER planets in order to appreciate just how precious and fragile ours is. And to discover evidence of past or present life forms? It would hit the reset button for a lot of folks and put "us" into perpective.

I totally agree with you.

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Originally posted by Ubu:
From some of the comments above, it seems that the idea of space initiatives are being looked at from a 'left vs. right' perspective. I don't think it has to be this way. After all, the most dynamic space programs were once led by the Soviets and the Americans, and right now, we have everyone from the Americans to Europeans and Chinese heading into space.

I wrote my little two cents about how I think it is worth it to go to space and then noticed sarcastic comments about how it's part of a devious plan by George Bush. I'm sure this is true. I am rabidly anti-Bush, anti-war, anti-missile 'defense', anti-privatization, support progressive taxation and am considered a radical lefty by my friends and colleagues. Yes, I happen to love space and science. So now I am in the same category as George Bush. Yikes !

To be frank, I think the best reason to go to Mars is because it would be hard to do. Why not test our limits ? Call me crazy, but this stuff really excites me. Not to mention the possibility of determining whether life is a local phenomenon in this solar system (likely, yes) or the possibility of making discoveries that will help us here on Earth.

At the risk of making you think I'm a conservative again (AGH!), I think money is a virtual non-issue. We can spend lots and lots on social programs and international aid without affecting our ability to go to space. We spend less on space than we do on plasma tv's. The Skydome cost as much in the end as the Spirit probe for crying out loud. I don't see how the relatively piddly amounts of money spent on one of the most exciting areas of science are going to hurt the world's social problems.

Yes, bittersweet, I agree with most of your post and I would settle for lots of unmanned missions, but trying to control things from Earth is woefully inefficient. There is a several minute delay between commands from Earth and the probe and then a several minute delay as we wait for the data to be sent back at the speed of light. This is less of a problem than usual at the moment, but just wait until we end up in opposite orbital positions. Also, if a problem occurs there's often no way to really fix it and then it's all just a waste. So, come on, let's go start our galaxian empire (joke).

[ 16 January 2004: Message edited by: Ubu ]

[ 16 January 2004: Message edited by: Ubu ]

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I do like the idea of colonizing Mars. I also like the idea of exploring the final frontier. The problem is that Bush has only given $1 billion to the space program over the next five years. That is a miniscule amount of cash. Another question we have to ask ourselves is how will this benefit the human race in general? Why can't we just wait? See what spirit gives us and then decide whether we can actually live on the red planet. To rush into this project would be foolhardy. How many people would die at taxpayers expense before we succeeded at building a colony?

[ 16 January 2004: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

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Originally posted by Tommy_Paine:
The only reason to go to Mars would in fact be to live there. Assuming we don't find some astonishing knew way to circumvent gravity, there's just too much of it on Mars to render it a source for raw materials for Earth, or for that matter, space.

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(nigletization: ON)

Mars is about 3/5 the size of Earth, so its escape velocity should be about 3/5 of 11 kilometers per second, which would be about 6 and a half kilometers per second.

(nigletization: OFF)

Turns out the real number's pretty darn close to an order of magnitude estimate.

The upshot is it looks to me like it'd only take about half the energy to get stuff off Mars as it would to get stuff off Earth.

Big savings, people.

Addendum for more general comments on space exploration and false dichotomies.

In case anyone hasn't noticed, the USA spends a whackload of money on fundamentally counterproductive military spending. The immense benefits realized from redirecting even half of this into all kinds of space exploration programs would undoubtedly benefit humanity in myriad ways.

First, we would not have the "arms race" we do now; Russia is in no condition to try and compete with the US, and China, while it has a nuclear program, would probably rather redirect that money into relieving some pressing domestic problems.

India and Pakistan - well, we'll need to keep an eye out. But saner behavior on the part of the world's hegemonic power would probably keep them in line.

In addition to this, while I agree that seeing outer space as a solution to population growth is the wrong way to look at it, I submit that the people who do go out into space will be those that have the most to gain from new perspectives and new experiences, and will use their knowledge to incomparably improve human society, culture and technology.

... and in the end, we will have to move, one way or another. In another few billion years, the sun's hydrogen consuming cycle will come to an end, and it will begin to expand, wiping out the inner planets.

If humanity has not, by then, expanded into outer space (corollary: also avoiding committing collective suicide), then that will be all she wrote for humanity, and our race will be no more.

Now, I grant that 5 billion years is well close enough to infinity for all of us, but I should note that it took 4.5 billion years for organic life to get to where it did today, and I would rather not see all that diversity and beauty get wasted by not having been expanded beyond the home solar system.

[ 16 January 2004: Message edited by: DrConway ]

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... and in the end, we will have to move, one way or another. In another few billion years, the sun's hydrogen consuming cycle will come to an end, and it will begin to expand, wiping out the inner planets.

If humanity has not, by then, expanded into outer space (corollary: also avoiding committing collective suicide), then that will be all she wrote for humanity, and our race will be no more.

Now, I grant that 5 billion years is well close enough to infinity for all of us, but I should note that it took 4.5 billion years for organic life to get to where it did today, and I would rather not see all that diversity and beauty get wasted by not having been expanded beyond the home solar system.

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Originally posted by black_dog:
A less positive person (like, say, me) would submit that mankind will have done themselves in long before it becomes necessary to vacate the neighbourhood.

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A less positive person (like, say, me) would submit that mankind will have done themselves in long before it becomes necessary to vacate the neighbourhood.

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Originally posted by 'lance:

Perhaps -- but even absent human self-destruction, there's virtually zero chance that humans will still be around in a billion years, let alone four or five, even in a form none of us could now recognize. In the history of organic life, no species more complext than, say, flatworms has ever lasted more than a tiny fraction of that time. All things must pass, human beings not excepted.

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No doubt this is true as regards Homo sapiens. However, we might evolve into other organisms, and the idea of some sort of cultural continuity is appealing to me.

A quibble- we may actually have only about half a billion years before too much carbon dioxide has been removed from the atmosphere and converted to carbonate rocks, with the result that all- or almost all- life dies out.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/specials/washington_2000/649913.stm

In any case, if we disperse ourselves through the galaxy over the course of hundreds of thousands of years, the likelyhood is that at least some of our ancestors- and hence culture of some sort- would survive for a long time- at least until the last stars die out around 10^14 years from now.

[ 16 January 2004: Message edited by: Mike Keenan ]

[ 16 January 2004: Message edited by: Mike Keenan ]

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... and in the end, we will have to move, one way or another. In another few billion years, the sun's hydrogen consuming cycle will come to an end, and it will begin to expand, wiping out the inner planets.

If humanity has not, by then, expanded into outer space (corollary: also avoiding committing collective suicide), then that will be all she wrote for humanity, and our race will be no more.

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1. Just realized where your name comes from CMOT.

2. I would love to go to Mars. It won't happen in a way we currently expect, much like my great grandfather never would have expected me to fly back to Hungary in a 'flying machine', in under 16 hours, to visit his hometown. It took him 2 years or so to get to Calgary.

I suspect someone will fall bass ackwards (in time honoured scientific tradition) over some sort of discovery that makes space travel cheap and fast. I Don't think that will happen at NASA, though they may help lay the groundwork or something.

What'll be the equivalent of those swinging saloon doors in Western movies, that's what I'd like to know.

And could I get a decent cream ale at a place like the Star Wars cantina?

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Just realized where your name comes from CMOT.

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Originally posted by Jacob Two-Two:
I'm a procrastinator by nature. I'd rather goof around for the first couple of billion years and then do a rush job on solving that problem in the last 500,000,000 years or so.

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You know, I think the world record for procrastination just got proposed here.

Sure beats me leaving my homework for two weeks and then doing it at the last minute.

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Originally posted by CMOT Dibbler:
I really wish Bush didn't have any sneaky and underhanded reasons for restarting the space race. I wish there didn't have two Be a space race and this could be an international effort.
Unfortunately, wishing for something does not make it so.

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A rat done bit my sister Nell with Whitey on the moon.

Her face and arms began to swell and Whitey's on the moon.

I can't pay no doctor bills but Whitey's on the moon.

Ten years from now I'll be payin' still while Whitey's on the moon.

The man just upped my rent last night cuz Whitey's on the moon.

No hot water, no toilets, no lights but Whitey's on the moon.

I wonder why he's uppin me. Cuz Whitey's on the moon?

I was already givin' him fifty a week but now Whitey's on the moon.

Taxes takin' my whole damn check,

The junkies makin' me a nervous wreck,

The price of food is goin' up,

And as if all that shit wasn't enough:

A rat done bit my sister Nell with Whitey on the moon.

Her face and arms began to swell but Whitey's on the moon.

Was all that money I made last year for Whitey on the moon?

How come there ain't no money here? Hmm! Whitey's on the moon.

Ya know, I just about had my fill of Whitey on the moon.

I think I'll send these doctor bills

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