news.bbc.co.uk— US moonwalker Buzz Aldrin says that the right kind of global leadership could set mankind on a path to the colonisation of other planets.
Jul 3, 2009View in Crawl 4
20 years? I'll take it. Send robots to prepare things? fine. But don't be here in 20 years saying "NoooOOOoooo, we shouldn't go yet. It's tooOOoo sooOOoon"
There is very, very likely there is nothing on Mars that humans need to experience first-hand. Did anyone see -anything- from the Mars Rovers or countless other probes that said "man, we need to see this with our own eyes and hold it in our hands?"If we need to experience long-term space travel, get it building a permanent space station ala 2001. If we need to experience it directly, maybe we should focus on remote human sensing technologies to be deployed in future automation.Mars is not like Greenland. Picture trying to stay in a place that will kill you for any reason whatsoever, simply taking a breath, standing in the sun, or by freeing yourself from your suit or cave to stretch; a soundless, dark(er), redder place with no flora or fauna, a place with so little aesthetic value that your very humanity would wither. Why would you want to be there, at all?What is the value vs. building a spacebound "cruise ship"? Even then, I imagine it would get really ugly on a cruise after not seeing earth-like land for even a few months, maybe like Columbus' voyage? No, Earth is our home and until we can actually travel to another blue-green planet, we need to adjust and keep this one working very well.
This is not Star Trek and is not about incrementally building or serendipitously tripping over the next hot technology that will allow us to travel to other planets, not now or ever.To do any of this means -breaking or massively bending- the very laws of physics and relativity that hold our very reality together, ones whose laws have been shown to be virtually unbreakable and bulletproof so far. At the very least Relativity tells us it means harnessing the entire energy output of a small sun to get anywhere meaningful in a reasonable amount of time (and not using Sol as it keeps us warm). As I said elsewhere - how likely do you think this is, now or the future?I cannot understand some of the above responses; has anyone actually taken a physics course, studied relativity, or even thought this through with back-of-the-envelope calculation?
majormajor42Jul 4, 2009
If you are going to die anyway, why digg?
majormajor42Jul 4, 2009
20 years? I'll take it. Send robots to prepare things? fine. But don't be here in 20 years saying "NoooOOOoooo, we shouldn't go yet. It's tooOOoo sooOOoon"
p5ychoJul 4, 2009
Global leadership?We can't even lead a single country without resorting to war.
dulcettoneJul 4, 2009
This time, let's go for US, not for all mankind. No freebies. No shout-outs for Europe, etc
awflJul 5, 2009
There is very, very likely there is nothing on Mars that humans need to experience first-hand. Did anyone see -anything- from the Mars Rovers or countless other probes that said "man, we need to see this with our own eyes and hold it in our hands?"If we need to experience long-term space travel, get it building a permanent space station ala 2001. If we need to experience it directly, maybe we should focus on remote human sensing technologies to be deployed in future automation.Mars is not like Greenland. Picture trying to stay in a place that will kill you for any reason whatsoever, simply taking a breath, standing in the sun, or by freeing yourself from your suit or cave to stretch; a soundless, dark(er), redder place with no flora or fauna, a place with so little aesthetic value that your very humanity would wither. Why would you want to be there, at all?What is the value vs. building a spacebound "cruise ship"? Even then, I imagine it would get really ugly on a cruise after not seeing earth-like land for even a few months, maybe like Columbus' voyage? No, Earth is our home and until we can actually travel to another blue-green planet, we need to adjust and keep this one working very well.
awflJul 5, 2009
This is not Star Trek and is not about incrementally building or serendipitously tripping over the next hot technology that will allow us to travel to other planets, not now or ever.To do any of this means -breaking or massively bending- the very laws of physics and relativity that hold our very reality together, ones whose laws have been shown to be virtually unbreakable and bulletproof so far. At the very least Relativity tells us it means harnessing the entire energy output of a small sun to get anywhere meaningful in a reasonable amount of time (and not using Sol as it keeps us warm). As I said elsewhere - how likely do you think this is, now or the future?I cannot understand some of the above responses; has anyone actually taken a physics course, studied relativity, or even thought this through with back-of-the-envelope calculation?