Should scientists be focused on colonizing other planets?

Question

What true value are humans gaining by putting humans on Mars and the Moon, for example, when we don't seem focused enough on Earth itself?

I would like to see efforts towards recycling and patching up the ozone layer in our own eco-system. Moving forward to areas of the solar system which do not CURRENTLY maintain life as we know it is just a waste.
Yes, it's amazing to see rovers on Mars but exploration and colonizing is for what real purpose other than eventually making another mess on another planet. Don't we have enough eco-problems in our own backyard?

Answer 1

Seems like most of the money used on space exploration is a waste of time and money.

It's like. "Mars may have had water 1 Billion years ago". And i'm thinking "and?".

See, when an anthropologist goes to the amazon and tells me something like "The early peoples of this region have survived without modern technology for thousands of years" I probably dont care, but the anthropologist's trip costs no more than $100,000. Astronauts and space exploration gets up to the hundreds of millions.

That money can go to something else...

Answer 2

>Should scientists be focused on colonizing other planets?

Space scientists and others involved in space exploration should be primarily concerned with three things: Methane rockets, a base on the Moon, and a space elevator. All this stuff about sending people to Mars, there's really not much point until we have a powerful space infrastructure within the Earth's planetary system.

>What true value are humans gaining by putting humans on Mars and the Moon, for example, when we don't seem focused enough on Earth itself?

The point is, it's not that we need way more money put towards solving problems here on Earth- for the matter of that, we don't need way more money put towards space exploration either. What we have to do is use the money more intelligently. The space shuttle is not effective enough for its cost, and throwing money at poor countries is also not effective enough for its cost. We need to take a closer look at where the money is being spent, rather than just trying to get more and more and more money which in the end is really harder and less effective.

Answer 3

I completely agree with you.

It seems that we cannot live peacefully and productively together on the Earth, and people are not concerned "Enough" about that to do much of anything
about it. Yet they will plan and carry out expeditions to
places millions of miles away costing zillions of dollars.
Someone has their values all messed up. That is for certain.

Possibly the "cop out" is that solving the issues here on Earth is not the function of that agency. If so, that is also a very
weak excuse and should be the subject of national debate.

At this point there will be many alarmists who take offense to my statements. Let me be clear. I am for all missions and costs to repair and maintain the Space Telescope and the Space Station. I am against any missions to the Moon or Mars for colony building purposes.

Answer 4

Scientists are dreamers. A lot of scientists dream of walking among the stars, interacting with alien races, traveling in time, etc. It’s the fact that we are dreamers that attracts us to science. How many people do you know wanted to be an astronaut? And because they wanted be an astronaut they paid more attention in math and science. This opened their eyes to other fields like physics, chemistry, meteorology, etc. So that kid who originally wanted to be an astronaut discovered something he liked more and became a nuclear engineer, virologist, organic chemist, etc. However if you killed the dream and stopped sending people to space, he might have never been interested in science gone into something else. My point is that with out programs like NASA a lot of people who normally would go into science would be drawn elsewhere. And there would be less people trying to solve problems like global warming and holes in the ozone layer.

Also only a small fraction of the money spent on space exploration is actually spent on launching shuttles. A lot of it goes into programs for researching better materials, understanding the biological effects of being in low gravity environments, developing better faster computers, understanding the Martian weather, etc. These programs have direct benefits to other sciences and technologies. So by trying to send a man to mars we have helped solve other problems here on earth.

Now you can argue that if every scientist were to spend there time trying to solve global warming that the problem would be solve sooner. But perhaps not. With NASA how many scientists would you have? And how do you know that the solution won't come from trying to colonize mars? History has shown us many times that the solutions to our problems often come from where you least expect them.

Answer 5

We could colonize Mars now if we were to follow Robert Zubrin's suggestions.

We will have colonists on the moon in 20 years, rotating through much like the scientists do in Antarctica.

In the near future, we will colonize and terraform Mars first. It will be comparatively easy, there will be billions of colonists living there in 200 years. Then we will terraform Venus and Callisto next, and they will be difficult.

We either colonize other planets or go extinct.

And I think that for all we know, intelligence such as ours may be very rare and precious in our corner of the cosmos and it would be a shame to squander it.

Answer 6

I explained it elsewhere on this page.

We are running out of time.

Right now we produce enough food to feed EVERYONE 3 $1 banquet TV dinners (12 ounces per meal) each day.

OK, you READY to live on that, the alternative is to let Africans STARVE.

You ready for FOOD prices to go up. FARMERS are calling it quits because no one wants to pay $1 an orange or $2 a tomato -- and that's what these things cost in the stores.

When I was a kid a Cheese Burger and Milk Shake was $1.79 and today it's $5.89.

When I was a kid soda was 8 cents a can for Shasta, today it's 50 cents

Now, let's get to reality and break the Communist myth

BILL GATES is the Richest Man in the world with $40 billion dollars. Wouldn't we ALL love that.

If we divided him among ALL of us (6 billion) we'd each get $700

Wow. That won't even buy you a PS3

Now, it works the SAME WAY WITH FOOD

We COMMUNIZE it you won't get MEAT choices.

There will be MEAT TRIMS (who knows what's int it, pork, beef, chicken, turkey). Cut meat.

You get quarter pound a day. We don't care if your Jewish or Muslim, you eat the pork (that's why Communism is anti-religious).

If you don't like lamb, do without meat today, because that's all we have!

You get some rice. There's LOT of rice in the world.

So, as with China and Vietnam, MOST of your meal is WHITE RICE.

You get maybe 24 ounces of it a day. You have it with breakfast, lunch and dinner 8 ounces each.

You put a little of that meat in and maybe some other veggies.

Some cabbage maybe, Some carrots maybe.

Now you are FEEDING THE WORLD with the current resources.

I'll bet YOU ain't ready for that world!

No more PIZZA no more FAST FOOD joints, no more Applebees, no more Friendlies.

Sausage was a mainstain in the USSR durring their Commie period.

Who KNOWS what's in that sausage.

IT's meat. IT's protein.

Mexicans eat BLOOD sausage (CHorezio) -- you know like Klingons do. BLOOD PIE.

They eat COW belly (Menudo)

FOREIGN THirD WORLD PEOPLE don't make DOG FOOD out of what's on the floor, they make SAUSAGE for people.

They use 100% of that beast, including the brains, heart and lungs to feed people!

Tongue is a delacy to both JEwish and Mexicans

British eat Kidneys

Jewish love Chopped Liver

IT's silly AMERICANs that live on ANGUS BEEF

And we freak out when McDonals was serving KANGAGROO or BUFFALO

Hey, MEAT IS MEAT

You WANT TO FEED THE WORLD!

The CHINESE and VIETNAMESE eat DOGS AND CATS

In AMERICA that's ILLEGAL.

But thats how you feed the world.

NOW

What do we do in 2200-2300 when we run out of OIL and the POPULATION of the world grows from 6 billion to 50 billion.

How do we feed them and house them.

The HAVE NOTS out number the HAVES

Go watch the movie Soylent Green. THAT IS OUR FUTURE in the year 2300

Now, by colonizing the Moon and Mars we have space to grow, the ability to make biospheres that might generate fresh air, fresh water, food. We might be able to export this to Earth. We might develope alternative enegery

AND

Most important of all

The HAVES will now be 5 months away on Mars and the HAVE NOTS will have to use a rocket to come and get us.

You do realaize it won't be the Vietnameze rice patty guy on Mars it will be Bill Gates.

Answer 7

First contact would be of value, but since that isnt going to happen in our life time they should concentrate on getting um... "back" to the moon before someone else does and in looking around for a flag and some footprints finds.......nothing. Wouldnt that create quite a "buzz"?

Answer 8

They should be more concerned with more earthly problems.
There are a lot of serious concerns about the planet that need constant attention (i.e. Global Warming, fast oil consumption, pollution, plastic disposal)

Answer 9

The only colonies we'll have on other planets are limited scientific bases. I wouldn't count on moving to Mar.

Answer 10

man always wants more. humans are just not satisfied with what they have. gotta have more. i guess experimentation is the way we learn, but i agree that we need to focus on fixing some of what is screwed up right here on good old planet earth. aka home sweet home.