Space...the final frontier?

[Lee]

In 1957 Sputnik was launched by the former USSR, in 1961 there was the first official successful human who traveled to space and in 1969 man landed on the moon. In those years since this there have been 268 manned spaceflights which have left planet Earth. In 2001 we had our first space tourist and since then a number of tourist agencies have rocketed up (pun intended). Now with the Earth being explored and man being naturally an inquisitive race, is space really teh final frontier?

One would assume so, I fully believe that space exploration is possible and I would expect to see the first of these leave Earth within the next 50 years or so. I feel though that this will be a huge risk, realistically I can see the first one being of a few people who in turn would not return to Earth but instead be sent out with a few years worth of food, drink a fuel to see how far this would happen.

 

[Dexter]

I'd agree, but I don't see it being a NASA project. Space travel is expensive and government-run projects just aren't going to profit enough from it to justify spending public money on it. I even recall NASA recently saying they aren't planning to do another manned trip to the moon anytime in the foreseeable future. I forget where I read it but I can go Googling for it if anyone calls me on it.

I think any future space exploration, and especially colonization, will be a privately funded venture for profit. There seems to be a huge interest in space tourism, and I couldn't even imagine how much money would be in a space vacation to some sort of private orbiting station or even some sort of "resort" on the moon or Mars. Maybe that sounds a bit sci-fi right now but it's certainly doable and I expect to see it within my lifetime.

 

[FromTheSouth]

We know more about space than we do about our own oceans. Some quotes from Robert Ballard, discoverer of the Titanic...

A number of people have emailed me this awesome video, and it was posted on the forums. Some quotes from Robert Ballard:

"NASA's annual budget for space exploration could fund NOAA's budget for ocean exploration for 1600 years."

NASA is rife with failure. The international space station has cost ten times the original planned budget. Two shuttles have exploded, killing two crews. The Hubble telescope was behind schedule, and once it was launched, it needed repairs before it worked correctly. SETI is a remarkable failure and money drain. A meteorite with supposed extra terrestrial material was showcased by the space agency, only to be shown to contain earthly bacteria weeks later. The NOAA could use some of that money to explore deep water, mine for resources, discover new species, and better understand plate techtonics. The Mariana plate and the Pacific plate meet deep in the trench, and scientists could actually monitor the movement of these plates, which would lead to a way to understand earthquakes and possibly form a methodology to predict them. The public safety benefits far outweigh anything NASA could provide.

"Fifty percent of the United States of America is underneath the ocean. And we have better maps of Mars than those areas."

Once again, understanding the oceans seems more important to me than understanding space. We could find oil pockets to reduce the price of energy. There could be deposits of resources. The financial benefits to better exploring the oceans seems to have real solutions that effect real people. The idea of looking to the heavens for inspiration and a spirit of exploration are all well and good, but not a single one of those ideas helps put food on the tables of real people. I think we should explore space, but I also believe in priorities.

"The deep sea is the largest museum on earth, it contains more history than all the museums on land combined, and yet we're only now penetrating it."

We still use so many ancient technologies. All or our tools, be they hammers and microscopes, are more advanced versions of tools that have been around for centuries. Finding new ships may lead to new technology. Beyond that, the biology of corals has led to treatments for diseases. Perhaps finding new plant and animal life could save lives. We are chasing ghosts looking for alien civilization. We could be chasing solutions right here, off our own coasts.

We have not built submersibles capable of exploring the entire Marianas Trench. We only know the depth through echo sounding. Who knows what species live there, what kind of techtonic activity exists at the depth, etc?

Space truly is the final frontier, as we will be able to explore deep water before man can explore deep space, but as of right now, our own oceans remain a mystery to us as well.