Thanks LibWhacker.
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Posted on 03/02/2018 3:39:16 PM PST by LibWhacker
We are using tin cans with strings. Aliens are really on a different frequency.
Some of this exploration is extremely jumping the gun.
We are barely in the kindergarten stage of space exploration, and hundreds of years away from actually exploring the stars beyond our own system - which leaves five times that hundreds of years in decades, before such information will have an ounce of practicality to human space exploration - leaving amble time for such endeavors in the future.
Meanwhile the practical limits of our current kindergarten stage of actual exploration are starved for funds so much that priorities on those funds limit what we can do to less than what we know we can do.
We should waste less funds on the not-yet-practical and shift all NASA funding to what we can practically do now, and practically do sooner; not what we won’t need to know for hundreds of years.
In 1870 it was said:
We are barely in the kindergarten stage of oil-powered vehicles, and hundreds of years away from actually exploring automobiles...
Puny Earthlings!
Send your box cameras into space!
What you will see is our invasion fleet getting closer and closer!
Soon, you will know the wrath of the Glaxnovian Fleet as we conquer you and free our brothers, the squirrels!
Actually, no one in 1870 said that.
The closest star is how far? And human DNA is already degraded by spaceflight on as short of distances we presently make. And we can yet see the technologies that will allow spaceflight durations that will last many years, perhaps a lifetime. No, the analogy from automobiles to space travel does not work. Too many things are not parallel at all.
Just making the point, technology is exponentially advancing...
Thanks LibWhacker.
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We should waste less funds on the not-yet-practical and shift all NASA funding to what we can practically do now, and practically do sooner; not what we won’t need to know for hundreds of years.
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It would be very easy to construct a counter-argument, that learning what we can about our galactic neighborhood is more important than scratching around on local solar system rocks.
I want us to do both those things but my only point is you are so sure one is a waste of money and I think if I was at my computer and not on my phone right now I could easily list reasons why space telescopes are the best things to spend our space dollars on at this time in our history.
I am not opposed to space telescopes in general. I have even proposed that our moon would make a good space telescope-base location.
As far as giving priority with any government funded space telescopes, in a specific program of searching for “earth-like” “exoplanets”, I see that as the lowest of the low of space telescope priorities at this time.
When would such knowledge have practical import to our own human-exploration space program? When we have “conquered” our own solar system and are technologically prepared to go, humanly, beyond it.
How many generations do we have before that is a reality?
More than the current fantasy predictions think.
By now, according to predictions just fifty years ago, we were already supposed to be out exploring our solar system, with colonies on the moon and mars, everyone driving “air cars”, ect., ect.
No. I am satisfied that now is not the time for making search’s for “earth like” planets a priority. Folks can do it. I just don’t think tax dollars should have anything to do with it.
Whether life exists elsewhere is an important question for many people. I think you’ve been outvoted.
It is not a question of whether “life” elsewhere is “important”. Over the millenniums ahead of us it no doubt will be. We are so far away from any practicality of that to humans at this time, it’s ridiculous.
“Life” on Mars, or somewhere in this solar system. Yes, we have some practical use in that now, as we begin to get prepared to humanly explore our own solar system.
“Life” on some “exoplanet” 1,000 light years from us? Zero practical importance at this time, and we have a long ways ahead of us in which it will be reasonable for us to see it as important in any practical sense.
“Life” on some “exoplanet” 1,000 light years from us? Zero practical importance at this time, and we have a long ways ahead of us in which it will be reasonable for us to see it as important in any practical sense.
...
It has zero practical importance to you, but it has has inspirational value to many, and that can be very valuable.
“but it has has inspirational value to many, and that can be very valuable”
Valuable to whom? To those who want the taxpayers to foot the bills for it?
Do I consider whether “life” exists on some other planets somewhere? Sure. Am I concerned about it? No. Do I lose sleep over it? No. Do I think it is an immediate pressing human concern? No. “Inspirational value”? Why and in what way?
We have plenty of time ahead of us for answering questions like that.
Right now it’s like asking to tell two year olds about sex. There is as yet no need to know, and we are less than “two year olds” when it comes to exploring the universe.
Go ahead. Look for “planet X”. Just don’t dun the taxpayers for it.
Like I said, you’ve been outvoted on the issue.
Science is not a “consensus” nor does it take votes.
It’s a good thing you’re not the dictator of what projects get funded.
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