The Pinnacle of Human Achievement, as you call it, was pretty much the end result of a dick waving contest between the United States and the Soviet Union.
----Edenmaster
A manned mission to mars is pointless...
----Alien Space Marine
I also think that there are better things to do with our time and money than go to Mars.
----Weltall
I know that to all of you, I am little more than a pompous, comical, tyrannical cartoon mascot... but I implore you to take the following post seriously, objectively, and read it in its entirety.
I cannot comprehend such a blase position towards something so remarkable. Honestly, I cannot. We are clearly two very different people, on a fundamental level. You say to-may-toe, I say to-mah-toe... I see glorious human evolution, you see floppy penises.
The more I live, the more that I come to realize that my view on space exploration is out-dated... old-fashioned, campy and romantic. I view the universe as something to be explored and exploited.
Why explore Mars and the universe?
BECAUSE IT IS THERE.
Fittisize speaks of risks... yes, there are risks... Columbia was within living memory... Challenger before that... but I hardly even need to bring up that every day our lives are fraught with untold risks... being hit by a car, or cancer, or gang violence, or hurricanes, or earthquakes, or carbon monoxide... heart disease, aneurisms... driving to work we take a heightened, and arguably, unnecessary risk... going outside we run higher risks than living indoors... going swimming, we take comparatively high risks and introduce ourselves to many opportunities to die... auto racing, recreational shooting, mountain climbing... all things we do for fun that come with heightened risks... now, I ask you, do ANY of them even STACK UP next to EXPLORING THE COSMOS?
I spit at your risks.
If given the opportunity to go to Mars, even if it were a 1 in 10 chance of dying, I'd take it.
If you truly are against taking risk, then the best life for you is living in an air-conditioned and environmentally sterile padded cell, taking all your meals by a straw... place the cell deep underground so that nothing can harm you... if you live anyway other than this, you are arguably taking unnecessary risks to survival.
We all take risks because we must. There is no other way in life. Not doing something as grand and extravagant as reaching for the stars, for Europa and Titan and Mars, because of risk... is simply asinine.
Better not shower, either... there's always a chance you could slip and bash your head open.
The human population is expanding exponentially. Our resources are either dwindling, or bitterly contested. Why not expand off-planet?
Mars CAN be terraformed. Think of the obscene monetary opportunities. A whole new planet to divide and sell... stake claims... nobody can even rightly say what endless resources of untold value may lay hidden beneath its rusty sands.
And that's just Mars.
It's a mathematical certainty that there are hundreds of thousands--nay, millions--of unique planets in our galaxy alone... millions of galaxies... countless billions of planets... certainly, billions of them inhabited... of these, certainly many million spawning intelligence... out of these, a handful evolve to the point of being able to physically exploit their environments to evolve so far as to go out into space... of these, fewer are able to carry it out... of these, now relatively few, we are one... and we just DON'T FUCKING CARE ENOUGH TO DO IT?
I'm just throwing out numbers now... but say 1 in 500,000 worlds spawns intelligence... maybe 1 in 1,000,000 survives long enough to evolve to master the sciences and enter into an industrial revolution... 1 in 5,000,000 achieve the level and complexity necessary for space travel... maybe 1 in 6,500,000 avert self-destruction from nuclear holocaust long enough to unite and reach to the stars... of these, we could be one...
but nah... you're right...
that money is better spent on Welfare checks, Iraq, and Social Security. All things that won't matter worth A FUCK in a thousand years.... but touching Mars... reaching Alpha Centauri... in the grand scheme of things... that is of galactic importance. That is greatness... that legacy is as close to immortality as any of us may ever achieve.
On the other hand, who needs the entirety of the cosmos when we can bury our heads in the sand and overpopulate this one, vulnerable rock.
I wonder if the natives of Rigel have Welfare.
Furthermore, every day that goes by, and every waking hour, humanity is at risk of annihilation. Stephen Hawking and I agree on this much: don't place all your eggs in one basket. We may or may not be able to avert global catastrophe by something like an asteroid collision... but any asteroid that may destroy Earth, or at least sterilize it, would have no impact on Mars.
It could happen tomorrow: you turn on CNN, and there's a UN meeting... President Obama is urging calm in the face of global annihilation. Fanciful, yes--but certainly possible. Nobody can say it isn't. Quite contrarily, it's virtually a mathematical certainty that, one day, be it next Wednesday, or a Wednesday five millions years from now... Earth will get a wallop from deep space. These things ARE BOUND to happen.
A self-sustaining Mars virtually guarantees human survival, regardless of Earth.
Finally... and forgive me for being sappy... but don't you ever just look at the stars, and realize... that they are real-life places... they are extant locales, with extant planets... it is virtually conclusively certain, via mathematical certainy and probability, that there is, out there, another intelligent being, looking up at a different set of constellations. Maybe one of the white dots he sees is the star we call the Sun. There are now, after all, over 400 catalogued planets since the 1990's... the new Kepler mission may have just uncovered an additional 700! Not a month goes buy, in our age, that NEW PLANETS are not discovered... they're finding new worlds so fast, that they can barely keep up to date with all of them!
Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia
Just look at this graph posted below... go ahead, open it... it is increasing exponentially every year... imagine what it will look like in fifty years, if it increases at this rate---and there's no reason why it shouldn't! As of the time I am writing this, 12:54am June 26th, 2010, it lists 463 planets... but by the end of the year, I promise you, it will have increased substantially. Every planet in that catalogue may be just a name to you--an abstract idea---but to me each on represents a real, solid and tangible location to be explored. And this catalogue... a paltry 463 out of COUNTLESS BILLIONS... PERHAPS TRILLIONS...!
You may notice that they're referred to as 'candidates', but don't worry---nearly all of them are scientifically confirmed by empirical data.
Extrasolar Planets by Year
Weltall speaks of there being better things to do with money. He is thinking, and living in the here and now. By contrast, I am living in the then and there... the future, and off-planet. I think of humanity objectively, and I long to see it go further, press on ahead... expand and multiply... take those fanciful science fiction stories and actually make them happen... the only thing stopping us, not counting the pace of technological evolution, is people like you all who think that it's all a waste of time.
How the aspect... just the idea of exploring these planets cannot incapacitate someone with an awesome stupor... I cannot fathom... these are all real planets, as real as you and I and the chair you're sitting in... you can go to them and touch them... and while many of them are gas giants, that is only because our still developing technology is not yet so acute as to be able to easily pick out rockier worlds like out own---but that day is not far off...
If the Nixon, Reagan and Bush I presidencies had had their priorities straight, and I feel you'll all agree with me, we could absolutely have men on Mars right now... on Europa, Io, and Titan... all that lost time makes my heart sick. Lost time, lost potential... there is nothing more tragic in my mindset than all that time... gone for nothing...
Every year that we do not expand to the stars, we STILL come up with ways to spend our GDP... every year the federal government rakes in, and promptly wastes, SO many billions of dollars on ephemeral things... things that have no lasting impact on humanity... these things, like paving roads, and housing the elderly, are important and they SHOULD BE FUNDED... we DO need social services... but space exploration SHOULD NOT be such a low priority... it MUST be near the top, along with SS and defense expenditures.
What remains of Rome long after its people have died is not the expenditures spent on bread and circuses.. it is the colossal achievements that stand the test of time, that are remembered... the Colosseum and their roads... their amphitheaters and aqueducts... these are to them what Mars and Europa OUGHT to be to us.
At the rate of sending probes to Mars and Europa once a decade, we'll never achieve anything.
JUST IMAGINE FOR ONE MOMENT: Everything... all that you have EVER known and experience in your life... all that you have seen, smelt, heard and touched originated from this ONE planet... isn't it just mind-boggling that there are countless BILLIONS more planets with sights to see, scents to smell, things to touch, exploits to conquer? Can't you just imagine what wonders they contain? What exotic fauna and flora will have evolved on these strange, distant worlds? This is less science fiction and more science fact with every passing day.
Astrobiology
If you do not feel the same way as I do about these tantalizing and fantastic things, then I have even less in common with you all than I previously thought.
There is nothing I am more adamant about than space exploration.
----Edenmaster
A manned mission to mars is pointless...
----Alien Space Marine
I also think that there are better things to do with our time and money than go to Mars.
----Weltall
I know that to all of you, I am little more than a pompous, comical, tyrannical cartoon mascot... but I implore you to take the following post seriously, objectively, and read it in its entirety.
I cannot comprehend such a blase position towards something so remarkable. Honestly, I cannot. We are clearly two very different people, on a fundamental level. You say to-may-toe, I say to-mah-toe... I see glorious human evolution, you see floppy penises.
The more I live, the more that I come to realize that my view on space exploration is out-dated... old-fashioned, campy and romantic. I view the universe as something to be explored and exploited.
Why explore Mars and the universe?
BECAUSE IT IS THERE.
Fittisize speaks of risks... yes, there are risks... Columbia was within living memory... Challenger before that... but I hardly even need to bring up that every day our lives are fraught with untold risks... being hit by a car, or cancer, or gang violence, or hurricanes, or earthquakes, or carbon monoxide... heart disease, aneurisms... driving to work we take a heightened, and arguably, unnecessary risk... going outside we run higher risks than living indoors... going swimming, we take comparatively high risks and introduce ourselves to many opportunities to die... auto racing, recreational shooting, mountain climbing... all things we do for fun that come with heightened risks... now, I ask you, do ANY of them even STACK UP next to EXPLORING THE COSMOS?
I spit at your risks.
If given the opportunity to go to Mars, even if it were a 1 in 10 chance of dying, I'd take it.
If you truly are against taking risk, then the best life for you is living in an air-conditioned and environmentally sterile padded cell, taking all your meals by a straw... place the cell deep underground so that nothing can harm you... if you live anyway other than this, you are arguably taking unnecessary risks to survival.
We all take risks because we must. There is no other way in life. Not doing something as grand and extravagant as reaching for the stars, for Europa and Titan and Mars, because of risk... is simply asinine.
Better not shower, either... there's always a chance you could slip and bash your head open.
The human population is expanding exponentially. Our resources are either dwindling, or bitterly contested. Why not expand off-planet?
Mars CAN be terraformed. Think of the obscene monetary opportunities. A whole new planet to divide and sell... stake claims... nobody can even rightly say what endless resources of untold value may lay hidden beneath its rusty sands.
And that's just Mars.
It's a mathematical certainty that there are hundreds of thousands--nay, millions--of unique planets in our galaxy alone... millions of galaxies... countless billions of planets... certainly, billions of them inhabited... of these, certainly many million spawning intelligence... out of these, a handful evolve to the point of being able to physically exploit their environments to evolve so far as to go out into space... of these, fewer are able to carry it out... of these, now relatively few, we are one... and we just DON'T FUCKING CARE ENOUGH TO DO IT?
I'm just throwing out numbers now... but say 1 in 500,000 worlds spawns intelligence... maybe 1 in 1,000,000 survives long enough to evolve to master the sciences and enter into an industrial revolution... 1 in 5,000,000 achieve the level and complexity necessary for space travel... maybe 1 in 6,500,000 avert self-destruction from nuclear holocaust long enough to unite and reach to the stars... of these, we could be one...
but nah... you're right...
that money is better spent on Welfare checks, Iraq, and Social Security. All things that won't matter worth A FUCK in a thousand years.... but touching Mars... reaching Alpha Centauri... in the grand scheme of things... that is of galactic importance. That is greatness... that legacy is as close to immortality as any of us may ever achieve.
On the other hand, who needs the entirety of the cosmos when we can bury our heads in the sand and overpopulate this one, vulnerable rock.
I wonder if the natives of Rigel have Welfare.
Furthermore, every day that goes by, and every waking hour, humanity is at risk of annihilation. Stephen Hawking and I agree on this much: don't place all your eggs in one basket. We may or may not be able to avert global catastrophe by something like an asteroid collision... but any asteroid that may destroy Earth, or at least sterilize it, would have no impact on Mars.
It could happen tomorrow: you turn on CNN, and there's a UN meeting... President Obama is urging calm in the face of global annihilation. Fanciful, yes--but certainly possible. Nobody can say it isn't. Quite contrarily, it's virtually a mathematical certainty that, one day, be it next Wednesday, or a Wednesday five millions years from now... Earth will get a wallop from deep space. These things ARE BOUND to happen.
A self-sustaining Mars virtually guarantees human survival, regardless of Earth.
Finally... and forgive me for being sappy... but don't you ever just look at the stars, and realize... that they are real-life places... they are extant locales, with extant planets... it is virtually conclusively certain, via mathematical certainy and probability, that there is, out there, another intelligent being, looking up at a different set of constellations. Maybe one of the white dots he sees is the star we call the Sun. There are now, after all, over 400 catalogued planets since the 1990's... the new Kepler mission may have just uncovered an additional 700! Not a month goes buy, in our age, that NEW PLANETS are not discovered... they're finding new worlds so fast, that they can barely keep up to date with all of them!
Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia
Just look at this graph posted below... go ahead, open it... it is increasing exponentially every year... imagine what it will look like in fifty years, if it increases at this rate---and there's no reason why it shouldn't! As of the time I am writing this, 12:54am June 26th, 2010, it lists 463 planets... but by the end of the year, I promise you, it will have increased substantially. Every planet in that catalogue may be just a name to you--an abstract idea---but to me each on represents a real, solid and tangible location to be explored. And this catalogue... a paltry 463 out of COUNTLESS BILLIONS... PERHAPS TRILLIONS...!
You may notice that they're referred to as 'candidates', but don't worry---nearly all of them are scientifically confirmed by empirical data.
Extrasolar Planets by Year
Weltall speaks of there being better things to do with money. He is thinking, and living in the here and now. By contrast, I am living in the then and there... the future, and off-planet. I think of humanity objectively, and I long to see it go further, press on ahead... expand and multiply... take those fanciful science fiction stories and actually make them happen... the only thing stopping us, not counting the pace of technological evolution, is people like you all who think that it's all a waste of time.
How the aspect... just the idea of exploring these planets cannot incapacitate someone with an awesome stupor... I cannot fathom... these are all real planets, as real as you and I and the chair you're sitting in... you can go to them and touch them... and while many of them are gas giants, that is only because our still developing technology is not yet so acute as to be able to easily pick out rockier worlds like out own---but that day is not far off...
If the Nixon, Reagan and Bush I presidencies had had their priorities straight, and I feel you'll all agree with me, we could absolutely have men on Mars right now... on Europa, Io, and Titan... all that lost time makes my heart sick. Lost time, lost potential... there is nothing more tragic in my mindset than all that time... gone for nothing...
Every year that we do not expand to the stars, we STILL come up with ways to spend our GDP... every year the federal government rakes in, and promptly wastes, SO many billions of dollars on ephemeral things... things that have no lasting impact on humanity... these things, like paving roads, and housing the elderly, are important and they SHOULD BE FUNDED... we DO need social services... but space exploration SHOULD NOT be such a low priority... it MUST be near the top, along with SS and defense expenditures.
What remains of Rome long after its people have died is not the expenditures spent on bread and circuses.. it is the colossal achievements that stand the test of time, that are remembered... the Colosseum and their roads... their amphitheaters and aqueducts... these are to them what Mars and Europa OUGHT to be to us.
At the rate of sending probes to Mars and Europa once a decade, we'll never achieve anything.
JUST IMAGINE FOR ONE MOMENT: Everything... all that you have EVER known and experience in your life... all that you have seen, smelt, heard and touched originated from this ONE planet... isn't it just mind-boggling that there are countless BILLIONS more planets with sights to see, scents to smell, things to touch, exploits to conquer? Can't you just imagine what wonders they contain? What exotic fauna and flora will have evolved on these strange, distant worlds? This is less science fiction and more science fact with every passing day.
Astrobiology
If you do not feel the same way as I do about these tantalizing and fantastic things, then I have even less in common with you all than I previously thought.
There is nothing I am more adamant about than space exploration.
H.R.M. DARVNIVS MAXIMVS EX TENEBRIS EXIT REX DEVSQVE GORONORVMQVE TENDORVM ROMANORVM ET GRÆCORVM OMNIS SEMPER EST