25th June 2010, 9:01 PM
I'm not saying we shouldn't do it. We just don't have a pressing need to do it RIGHT NOW. Especially considering anything beyond a jaunt to the moon is still a decade-long journey only going one way.
Once science progresses to the point of faster, more efficient, and most importantly stable engine technology (which, who knows, may be in a folder on the desk of the NASA president as we speak) that could be implemented in the next generation of shuttles, as if memory serves, our current fleet is due for retirement soon.
Have you seen the national debt, Darunia? Perhaps the disaster currently still unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico. The millions of children who will die of starvation and diseases that we have cures for. We have pressing, very real, and very important issues that need to be settled here, they are as pressing to our future as well. As much as your starry-eyed dreams might have you believe otherwise, money makes the world go round, and there simply isn't enough of it to invest in such an enterprise. If Obama came on television today, in the midst of the economy as it is now, and said he was going to put a few hundred billion dollars into space exploration, he'd be tarred and feathered on the White House lawn.
As for risks, well, yes, everything you do in your life involves a certain level of risk. For most, including most of your examples, the risk is so minuscule as to be insignificant. Space flight involves very real risks. I'm sure every astronaut who has died would also be proud to have given his life for such a noble cause, but that doesn't make it right.
Once science progresses to the point of faster, more efficient, and most importantly stable engine technology (which, who knows, may be in a folder on the desk of the NASA president as we speak) that could be implemented in the next generation of shuttles, as if memory serves, our current fleet is due for retirement soon.
Have you seen the national debt, Darunia? Perhaps the disaster currently still unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico. The millions of children who will die of starvation and diseases that we have cures for. We have pressing, very real, and very important issues that need to be settled here, they are as pressing to our future as well. As much as your starry-eyed dreams might have you believe otherwise, money makes the world go round, and there simply isn't enough of it to invest in such an enterprise. If Obama came on television today, in the midst of the economy as it is now, and said he was going to put a few hundred billion dollars into space exploration, he'd be tarred and feathered on the White House lawn.
As for risks, well, yes, everything you do in your life involves a certain level of risk. For most, including most of your examples, the risk is so minuscule as to be insignificant. Space flight involves very real risks. I'm sure every astronaut who has died would also be proud to have given his life for such a noble cause, but that doesn't make it right.
The Earthworker Race has ended. Everybody wins.