Motivations for Space Exploration

I love science fiction (who here doesn't, right? :lol: ) and specifically space travel and in one of my bouts of random internet research I started thinking about the reasons behind space exploration. I was wondering what everyone here thought about it.

How important do you think that space exploration is? Which aspects of it are most important?

Should we be looking at asteroid mining? Just trying to de-populate Earth by living off-world? Should we be doing it simply because we can?

With what we think and know at the moment, I'd be tending to spending a lot of energy in preserving natural habitats, like wildlife parks. Space Rangers :lol:

They (living planets) seem to be relatively rare in comparison to the amount of other stuff out in the harshness of space. We might have to get a bit Star Trek though, plus of course Jedi!!!!!!!!!!! Meaning we need to become smarter and more responsible as a race, else the vastness of nothing will gobble us up and spit us out probably.

We're going to make a bit of mess here, no avoiding it. Assuming population growth will continue then I think the choice is either turn Earth into an industrialized dead planet ie Coruscant, or shift humanity offworld and try and let it continue as a nature reserve from which we were born (to the Stars).

It's a bit controversial, and assumes a few things about 'spirit', but I'm not sure population control is viable and therefore no matter what technology we come up we will always be faced with the limited space on Earth.

It would be a culture shock to move into Space though, but if our entire perception is the result of electro-chemical processing then it probably can be sufficiently hi res to nourish the mind through advanced neural interfaces in the future.

How important do you think that space exploration is?

Well it was important during the Cold War and the Arms Race. Now? I'd like to see more done on earth for the earth and society/humanity.

I would like to vacation in space before I die though.

in about 7.5 billion years, the sun is going to engulf the earth

my piece of the internet has reported that nasa does not see any asteroids currently on a collision path with us - but they only have a forecast of a few hundred years

the odds of one hitting the earth before the sun grows enough to cook us are -- i dont know lol but the internt reports at least ten good sized hits in the last 2 billion yrs

we also know that global climate change happens even without human intervention - theoretically we can survive extremes in either direction but eh, its not an INcredible hypothesis that extreme enough in either direction could wipe us out if it happened fast enough

theres not really any reason to assume humans will still be around in 7.5 billion years imo - im more concermed with us wiping ourselves out in the next century - but if we do survive the next hundred years or so then i think its a totally fair bet that by that time our advances in medicine and science will make personal immortality accessible

i actually expect this to happen in within the lifetime of someone born today, if not sooner - but even if im jumping the gun by a generation or so, there is ample evidence that our capabilities are getting closer and closer every few years, and the question is eventually going to be "who gets it, at what price, and who doesnt?"

once that happens, overpopulation will definitely be an issue

so basically, a single planet species has got the deck stacked against it from a darwinian perspective - its only a matter of time before the planet itself undergoes changes to which we cannot adapt

there is the hypothetical possibility that we will be able to influence our wheather or protect ourselves from it, but eh, theres also the possibility we wont

and even if we do, we re going to have to deal with the fact eventually that at least some percentage of the population isnt going to die anymore , AND THE SUN IS GOING TO COOK OUR PLANET

lastly, our brains evolved with an inborn drive for exploration - its literally a survival "instinct" for lack of a better word, and while it may be satisfied with familiarity with the local environment at the individual level, i think that as a species we are going to demand exploration as our capability grows

besides being strategically the smart thing to do, it is also psychologically REALLY exciting and attractive

my personal veiw is that the long term goal needs to be to create a space station which is capable of indefinite self sufficiency

by indefinite i mean - a billion years

this would be big enough to take a small nations worth of ecosystem, wildlife included, in a way that gives maximal chance of keeping the whole thing alive

also there has to be manufacturing capabilities with an engineered potential for advancement - we have to be able to manufacture the things we know we will need but also capable of manufacturing new things which we have no idea we will need lol the "unknown unknowns"

there are a bunch of other conditions that go with this, but the basic idea is that i has to be able to survive and explore space for a huge amount of time and must be ready to colonize any wet planet it finds within a certain temperature range

or better yet, it has to be able to produce/manufacture water, which would maybe make things a lot easier

once we have built that indefinite colonizing space station, we need to build about a thousand more, and send them to the corners of space in teams of maybe fifty or one hundred

they have to team up enough to be theoretically ableto assist one another for maybe a billion years, but they also need to be dispersed enough so that loss of any team or even many teams would not result in human extinction -we should assume that most will die in space

imo thats the only way we can even consider that human survival might be "permanent"

without that its just a matter of time

should we WANT to be permanent?

well YEAH lol i think we should

Adder wrote: With what we think and know at the moment, I'd be tending to spending a lot of energy in preserving natural habitats, like wildlife parks. Space Rangers :lol:

They (living planets) seem to be relatively rare in comparison to the amount of other stuff out in the harshness of space. We might have to get a bit Star Trek though, plus of course Jedi!!!!!!!!!!! Meaning we need to become smarter and more responsible as a race, else the vastness of nothing will gobble us up and spit us out probably.

We're going to make a bit of mess here, no avoiding it. Assuming population growth will continue then I think the choice is either turn Earth into an industrialized dead planet ie Coruscant, or shift humanity offworld and try and let it continue as a nature reserve from which we were born (to the Stars).

It's a bit controversial, and assumes a few things about 'spirit', but I'm not sure population control is viable and therefore no matter what technology we come up we will always be faced with the limited space on Earth.

It would be a culture shock to move into Space though, but if our entire perception is the result of electro-chemical processing then it probably can be sufficiently hi res to nourish the mind through advanced neural interfaces in the future.

my thougt was more to create a sustainable human friendly environment within a space station, but neural inferfaces sounds interesting too - could you elaborate on the idea?

what comes to mind is like in the matrix when they put the jacks into the backs of their heads to download information and go "online" to battle the "agents"

neo: "jiu jitsu. im going to learn,,,,, ,,,,, ,,,,,,, jiu jitsu?"
:then spends the next three movies doing photoshop kung fu lolol

OB1Shinobi wrote: my thougt was more to create a sustainable human friendly environment within a space station, but neural inferfaces sounds interesting too - could you elaborate on the idea?

what comes to mind is like in the matrix when they put the jacks into the backs of their heads to download information and to enter the matrix

Yea that is all I meant. Quite literally a neural 'net' that is programmed to grow around the base of the brain around all nerve input points, to collect the bodily feed, compartmentalize it to feed an OS that can manage an external feed/program. As a way to have a holiday without leaving your armchair. A holodeck without the trip hazard.

I don't think a wireless option would be recommended, and the idea does come with its own risks. The point being to be able to 'be' on Earth as much as being on Earth. It probably would not be a good idea to remain in there for too long, so the weekday might be divided into sleep 8, virtual 5, work 6, virtual 5 repeat. Though of course if your work is using the same system, then there might have to be a dedicated unplugged regime of physical training to support the plugged in time. It would make the design and construction of space vehicles and habitats more easily achieved to purpose. As I think it would be burdensome on the resources for the most part to expect too much in the way of artificial habitats created to resemble Earth.

That assumes their is no dimension of reality that our senses don't collect - which is key assumption, else we may be destined to remain here for all I know, we might only exist as a part of the planet itself
:ohmy: :lol:
Certainly the psychologically it would be an issue, as we did evolve here AFAIK!! I've always been interested in the medical aspects of flight (and diving) and space really introduces a strong mental challenge. Broadly astrosociology but more just the psychology of space. Part of my Jedi path is as a 'religion of space travel'
:laugh:

I am huge fan of space exploration (because of Sci-Fi). I get as excited at launches and news now as I did as a kid. One of the biggest moments of my life, my fist first memory is the challenger explosion, and one of the biggest recent ones is when Felix Baumgardnter's stratos jump. To me I think that space is where we as people stop having all of our dividing lines, out there we are earthlings, humans, not black, white, American, Chinese, we are people looking towards the future.

Also, it's a record of our achievements as a people. We went from horses and outhouses to landing on another celestial body and shooting probes outside of our solar system in about 100yrs. That gives me hope that despite all the petty things, we can do the incredible. I think about Gagarin, Leonov, Armstong, all of them and how much courage and bravery it much have taken to take that on. Then there's everything we can learn about our planet just from being off of it. All advancements that were made just to get us up there, but then what we have done and can do up there.

As fart as mining and resources. I think it's smart. People want us to focus on Earth, but the more we gain those resources from extra planetary bodies the less damage we will do at home. So it's a win win in that regard. Things like deforestation will still be an issue, but we can address a number of other issues. With de-populating Earth thing. I think that's something that's still in the distant future, we have so much to learn about just getting to other planets, let alone living on them. Should we do it though? Of course. Mankind is going to, but we should do it because of the opportunities it gives us through the technology.

I cannot wait to see homes with 3D printers and robotic as present as TVs and computers. The housing solutions they develop can be applied here as well, the advances in botany and crop sciences, plus everything we have to overcome because of body chemistry and neruoelectric systems. But those things need a reason to happen to rapidly advance, and for me that's space colonization. There's so much we will reap here and as a people just because we attempt to live on another planet, that I cannot see why we would not.

our advances in medicine and science will make personal immortality accessible

I hope your right.

there is ample evidence that our capabilities are getting closer and closer every few years,

I believe your right and maybe faster than we believe possible now.

the question is eventually going to be "who gets it, at what price, and who doesnt?"

When we can I pray our wisdom on how to answer the question grows at a greater pace than our ability to make it happen.

Rickie wrote:

our advances in medicine and science will make personal immortality accessible

I hope your right.

there is ample evidence that our capabilities are getting closer and closer every few years,

I believe your right and maybe faster than we believe possible now.

the question is eventually going to be "who gets it, at what price, and who doesnt?"

When we can I pray our wisdom on how to answer the question grows at a greater pace than our ability to make it happen.

This topic is really interesting and I'd like to discuss it more, but it would completely derail this thread. As such I have made a new thread here . Thanks.

Personally I love the idea of space exploration. If a real world version of Starfleet started up today I'd be signed up already. I think that there are a lot of things that we could gain from space exploration.

1. We are killing our planet and it might be helpful to be able to survive on a different one.
2. Asteroid mining could yield a lot of great things for us including: not having to destroy our planet to find resources, finding resources that we know our planet is almost out of, making space travel cheaper by not having to take some of the materials and resources up with us, etc.
3. It is just part of human nature to want to explore, why fight that?
4. Learning about other planets could help us learn about our own.
5. Earth is getting pretty crowded, shipping some people off-world could be useful. (although I'm sure our population growth would overtake that particular benefit rather quickly)
6. It's OUTER SPACE!!!!!!! :woohoo:

The last reason is the biggest one personally. :laugh:

One last thought. Many times it's theorized that space exploration, and particularly encountering an Alien race, will bind the planet together finally. I think that is an optimistic but unrealistic view. If there's resources up there (and even territory is a resource) there's going to be fighting over it. Human's can be very petty. It would be nice if Space took us from over 180 nations to one united planet, but I doubt that will happen.