"Rod Speed" wrote in message
...
Giga" "Giga wrote
Rod Speed wrote
Giga" "Giga wrote
Immortalista wrote

Today I was reading some opinions of people who believe that there
is no reason for humans to leave earth. Are all arguments for moving
into space and onto other bodies in space really that weak and
irrelevant?

To say on the one hand that there is no reason and on the other 'it is
too expensive' is a kind of a contradiction.

Nope, the original is just a loose form of saying that there
is CURRENTLY no reason for humans to colonise space.

I presume by emphasising 'currently' you mean there might be in the
future,

Yes, I'm not silly enough to dismiss that possibility completely.

or perhaps there will be.

Nope.

I suppose if you are already living the good life then why bother, but
billions of people are not.

But its MUCH cheaper to improve their life significantly here on
earth than it is to give them a better life on mars or the moon etc.

This means that if it was a lot cheaper then it would be justified,

Not necessarily, most obviously if no one is interested in being
colonists etc.

I think many people would be interested, me for one,

I bet you wouldnt when it came to the crunch and your nose was rubbed in
the downsides.

Perhaps, its difficult to know in advance, anyway there are many who would.


but I doubt that I would be chosen.

Dunno, someone may want to get rid of you.

: )


and that means there must be some reason for doing it, and the
persons putting forward such an argument obviously recognise that.

Utterly mangled all over again.

So you do not recognise any value human beings exploring space with
manned craft?

No, compare with the much cheaper and more viable alternative of exploring
space with unmanned craft.

That would be an extreme and difficult to justify position.

Wrong, as always. Completely trivial on cost alone in fact.

I read some where recently that the most powerful super computer in the
world, which presumably fills a large building, has only the power of a
cricket (insect). The delay time to Mars is what 18 minutes x 2, each time
your dumb stupid robot needs some guidance. The oprerator has to rely on the
fairly pathetic information gathering systems of said robot to make
decisions as well. And what about the feel of a place, the atmosphere (pure
materialists will dismiss this as just imagination but I would disagree). In
summary you need people on the spot to properly explore it and preferably a
settlement so they have the time to do it throughly. It would take thousands
of people many years of dedicated work to survey Mars if adequately. It
would take 10,000s of robots centuries I would say, so maybe people would be
cheaper in the long run?


So if it just a question of allocation of resources,

It isnt.

rather than fundamental value of the enterprise, then fine, it should
recognised as a financial discussion, not really a philosophical one.

No one ever said it was a philosophical one.