# What are Your Views on Space Exploration?



## I_am_the_NiTe (Nov 29, 2013)

Borderline rant -but I do want your perspectives. 

In everyday conversation I want to bring this up. When it does get brought up,
*I am shocked / appalled* by how many people believe something I see as *blatantly required* for long-term survival and success is superfluous and unnecessary. Ideologically, technologically, scientifically, economically... This makes for an extremely obvious long term investment. 


Not only should it be tried later, but it should be worked on *now. * (And to a great extent, it is being worked on now; see Elon Musk, Richard Branson, others.) Some would argue it shouldn't be being worked on while we have other issues at hand. 

One of Branson's craft crashed a year or so ago. A headline read:
"What does this mean for the future of space exploration?" 
Like, what the ****, even if it's rough right now, it must be done, how is this even a reasonable assessment? Is this representative of actual public sentiment? Or something people would actually buy into?? Did everyone forget the 60's and 70's? How is it that there's such a dramatic generational forward-thinking gap? 

Now if you're a pessimist and think we won't get to space because things will turn south quick, before we have a chance to give it a more serious go, I can almost understand, but the people that think that even if we fix climate/food/socioeconomic/medical issues we should stay here forever and hope nothing goes wrong? 

Anyone care to elaborate?


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## Marvin the Dendroid (Sep 10, 2015)

Space should be explored to the greatest extent possible.

However it is rather obvious that there is nothing in our solar system, or in near vicinity, that is even remotely as hospitable as the Earth. It would take tremendous effort to establish a succesful colony on any of the planets or moons in our solar system; it would be easier to colonise the deep sea. It does, therefore, make sense to place *very* heavy focus on making the Earth as hospitable to us as possible _while_ developing new forms of propulsion capable of interstellar travel.

The two need not be mutually exclusive. Instead, resources can be freed up in other ways. For instance, in 1997, it was estimated that diabetes cost around $44 billion in the US alone. In 2015, the global cost of diabetes is likely to be in the hundreds of billions of US dollars. Type 2 diabetes is a perfectly preventable disease with a decent lifestyle, and type 1 can be managed at a reasonably low cost with a healthy lifestyle.

By way of comparison, NASA's entire budget is just under $18 billion. In other words, if sufficient lifestyle measures were observed in the prevention and treatment of diabetes in the US alone and the resources thus freed were handed over to NASA, their budget would likely more than quadruple.


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## MirTeiwazAt (Oct 1, 2015)

I think space exploration is something really interesting which helps us knowing more about our own planet however... With so many problems here, like people who don't have food or water, pollution and other serious issues we have in OUR planet, I think they are wasting millions of money for the wrong causes. Our planet needs help, living beings need help and instead of worrying about our home, what we have, they are wasting time and money with something that isn't that important compared to what we already have and should protect.
I am not saying I am against space exploration, I am against the way things are made and against the order of importance people created


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## starscream430 (Jan 14, 2014)

I believe that space exploration is important to both understanding ourselves and the technology it brings. From exploring space, we might have the chance to learn more about how to fix certain problems here on Earth. Furthermore, the drive towards space has yielded very profitable results in regards to technology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off_technologies


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## Primeval (Dec 4, 2011)

For reference, the current NASA budget is sixth tenths of one penny on your tax dollar. If you need that money to solve the planet's problems, you have bigger problems. 

To answer the OP: Space exploration is the single most important task humanity can engage in. The reasons are simple. The planet is of finite size. Barring the apocalypse, the species will eventually outgrow the current available space. We have but one place to go. The sooner to we go there, the easier the process will be.


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## Marvin the Dendroid (Sep 10, 2015)

Primeval said:


> For reference, the current NASA budget is sixth tenths of one penny on your tax dollar. If you need that money to solve the planet's problems, you have bigger problems.
> 
> To answer the OP: Space exploration is the single most important task humanity can engage in. The reasons are simple. The planet is of finite size. Barring the apocalypse, the species will eventually outgrow the current available space. We have but one place to go. The sooner to we go there, the easier the process will be.


Rats must infest what rats must infest.


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## Clyme (Jul 17, 2014)

I_am_the_NiTe said:


> Anyone care to elaborate?


I believe that space exploration and investing in that is really important as well. What's frustrating to me is that those sorts of fringe technologies only seem to be funded by war. Funding for such things increases drastically when there is competition between countries. The best example of this occurred during the Cold War, but the principle seems to relatively be the same. I actually believe this was the very sentiment that Neil DeGrasse Tyson expressed. I share this sentiment and find it to be frustrating.

That said, I'll go ahead with a rather unpopular position and state that I think we need to start caring about the world we're in right now and make some drastic changes to improve it. We need to invest in renewable energy and stop focusing so damn much on the exploitation of fossil fuels. We need to place environmentalism way up on our list of priorities. We need to (and this is where people get super uncomfortable) switch to veganism, not just for ethical reasons, but because factory farming is absolutely horrendous on the environment. So yeah, I'm with you in the sense that we need to invest more in space-travel, but I also think we need to invest more in creating a sustainable world too.

I know you have said that you feel that investing in space-travel is necessary for the survival of the human species, and perhaps that may be true, but I have to say that I do not share the sentiment that space-travel is a magic-bullet. If we cannot correct the sustainability problems we have going on right now, I do not share high hopes that we can correct it in the future. Space-travel would buy us some time, but sooner or later we need to realize that we can't get away with pillaging the planet forever. On this note, change starts at home, and this kind of change is something everyone can do. Companies stay in business by adhering to the demands, and if you stop giving your money to environmentally harmful companies, then you literally change the world that way. This is what I think is so powerful. People need to realize that they have the power to change and that their actions do make a significant difference. That's really where I stand on the matter.

There's a Native American proverb that I think is immensely relevant: "When the last tree is cut down, the last fish eaten, and the last stream poisoned, you will realize that you cannot eat money."


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## intjonn (Apr 20, 2013)

Hmmmmmm???
My view on Space Exploration has always been.........


*<<<<<--------------------take it frum a koon!*

..........I'm not a gynecologist but I'm still willing to take a look.


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## Another Lost Cause (Oct 6, 2015)

I highly support the robotic exploration of space. I'd love to see a robotic submarine swim the ocean underneath Europa's ice shell for instance, but I'm not as interested in manned exploration as I used to be. Manned missions just seems unduly expensive compared to robotic missions even though I'm not entirely against it. I like that 1960s Russian idea for a series of wheeled habitats on Mars that are hitched together like a train that travel from pole to pole doing research and collecting samples along the way.


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## HighSteaks (Oct 16, 2013)




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## kiwig0ld (Nov 7, 2010)

If you want to go to space cool with me. Ill gladly give my tax dollars to fund it. I don't wanna go but if you do, good shit. I dont mind. 

I hope I don't have to live there though.


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## Urban Erudite (Nov 6, 2012)

You know up until the point where Christopher Nolan's "Interstellar" started making annoying trifold cuts in plot and un-science, I liked the film's real visceral depiction of the time stretched void of space.

It really drives home the fact that space and time are so intimately linked that to traverse one, is to traverse the other, and once you set yourself to put real meat bodies into a space tin and launch it into the abyss, it's never coming back to the Kansas it once knew.

Space is huge, energy is expensive, put the two together and you have a lonely eternity at the edge of physics.


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## Fascist (Dec 22, 2014)

I think science can be better directed towards things on Earth. Like for one example, eugenics to create a better human species. Rather than trying to flee to another planet for survival, we need to work on our decaying society here. Otherwise if we don't remove the rot, it will just replicate to the new civilizations.


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## Solrac026 (Mar 6, 2012)

I_am_the_NiTe said:


> Borderline rant -but I do want your perspectives.
> 
> In everyday conversation I want to bring this up. When it does get brought up,
> *I am shocked / appalled* by how many people believe something I see as *blatantly required* for long-term survival and success is superfluous and unnecessary. Ideologically, technologically, scientifically, economically... This makes for an extremely obvious long term investment.
> ...


There's not enough dreamers today. Mostly everyone is too "pragmatic" to consider such possibilities. There are dreamers that can accomplish this, but only if they can drive such pursuit single handedly, ie Elon Musk, Richard Brandson, etc. The rest don't give a dam, or can't afford to pursue the stars. I do dream of an NT world. If we had one, I think space exploration would be taken more seriously.


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## Highway Nights (Nov 26, 2014)

Not an NT, but I think interest in space exploration has been growing lately due to the sheer amount of space themed movies in the last 5 years, very prominent science documentaries (ex. Cosmos), an increasingly globalized and technology valuing world, and absolutely relentless support for it by increasingly popular science figures like Neil deGrasse Tyson, Brian Cox, and Bill Nye on social media and on TV. Right now, science is pretty trendy and looks to stay that way for a while.

I'd rank it as pretty important. I don't think people who call it a waste of money realize just how little is actually spent on it at the moment. Regardless, with the joint European-Russian plans for a moon landing, and with India and China getting in on it, I think humanity is getting back on that track, even if The United States doesn't join the party this time around.


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## Grandalf (Jun 7, 2014)

How we may appeal to the masses:

NASA @ Home and City || Version 2.0


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## Desolan (Nov 14, 2011)

The problems with earth are societal and political issues, not technological ones, and barely economic ones. We have the technology to feed everyone on the planet, we have the technology to give everyone clean water and cheap power. Politics and greed however keeps this from happening and from implementing this technology, so until these social problems get worked out I say;

Continue the technological advancement, Expand, Explore, and Blast off. Scientists create and design the solutions, they are not adept at delving into all that social crap. The politicians and businessmen are the ones who need to implement the solutions, so let the scientists do their thing, and when the world finally feels like getting things fixed we'll congratulate them and offer some advice from a couple million miles away.


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## Banned Boy (Sep 14, 2015)

Space exploration can't become a cop-out for not bothering to learn to live sustainably here on Earth. I think it's generally just a bad idea to approach it with a "manifest destiny" mindset like some people seem to.


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## Epicness1000 (Nov 11, 2015)

I believe space is the next step for humanity


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## stiletto (Oct 26, 2013)

If the human race wasn't so inefficient being preoccupied by conflict and differing systems, I would think space exploration and deep sea exploration should be at the forefront of scientific progress. But here we are, meandering across the ages like biological children who can't focus enough to make any meaningful contributions to discovery and learning.


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## Alpha_Orionis (Jan 18, 2015)

I think that space should be explored as much as it can be. But, not before we explore Earth. There is so much we do not know about our planet, which is think need answers.


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## Luck (Nov 19, 2015)

It is so painfully obvious that we should be prioritizing space exploration and technology. That it isn't widely known that there are _multiple_ ways for us to get a hard slap from outer space, and by hard slap I mean an extinction event, is mind boggling to me. Oh yes we learned something about a big space rock and some now extinct dinosaurs once as children but, I mean it's not like that could happen to us, right? It's like we're in some mass denial comforted by the fact that the vast majority isn't worried. I wonder whether we don't do something in part bc we don't want to face how vulnerable we are. 

One way or another this party on Earth will come to an end. Hopefully it will be in a very long time due to our sun dying, but we can't know when. I say we get started now. And to those people who argue but our planet needs resources spent on a clean up instead of space exploration I ask what is wrong with you? It's a false dichotomy. On a personal level you buy food and clothing in the same year. So why can't we do both? It's disgraceful that space exploration diminished towards the end of the twentieth century and that it has taken a single individual (Elon Musk, go INTJs) to push this forward for us with a private company (SpaceX).


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