@ Yoni: "I thought that lower gravity would make mining cheaper and easier (especially in-situ mining)"

It would make it cheaper than mining on somewhere like Venus, certainly, but it still remains so far from being economically viable that it will never happen under any circumstances. There is an outside chance that mining asteroids may be worth doing if we're desperate and someone finds handy asteroids that are especially rich in resources, but Mars is a complete non-starter.

ok, private enterprise is good/bad?

should the government be involved in medical care or rocketry? and can you say yes to rocketry and no to medical care??

The most useful resource to mine outside of our gravity well will not be an asteroid/planet/moon, it will be man-made satellites - we know what they are made of and where we left them, plus we need to clear up all the junk before it starts crashing into things... much cheaper than sending new parts into space...

but 'our economy and way of life' is not dependent on massive exploitation of 'natural resources', it depends on the production of consumer products, which can be done entirely via recycling (or landfill harvesting, whichever is easier, i'd recommend looking at your own products as an investment in future resources to harvest, and then design them to be easily re-used...)

any even in geological scales, 500 years is nothing, if we can't survive another 10,000 years on this rocks we don't deserve to get off it. What is with the rush? the US hasn't even been around 500 years, look at everything which has changed in that little time.

China has about 4,000 years of history. They will continue to progress and collapse and reform as they always have, as necessary. I do think Thucy's doom and gloom predictions are a little short-sighted.

Our shuttle program has been a giant failure. $150 billion and what has it produced? Accidents and disasters. There is no intelligent life on other planets and we're not going to be able to colonize other planets. Each of these pointless space shuttle launches costs over a billion dollars. What have been the practical results of any of them? Planting a flag on the moon?

And I lol'd when Invictus claims we've exercised "restraint" when it comes to the militarization of space. My god, how much pro-US koolaid do you drink per day?

http://www.cdi.org/missile-defense/spaceweapons.cfm
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/18/business/18space.html?pagewanted=all
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18752

And Bush ended the shuttle program, Obama has simply carried out that policy.

Really no intelligent life. Bummer guess we are the center of the universe.

no intelligent life found on any of the planets we have explored, which isn't that surprising, infact i'm pretty sure we could have just looked as there are all within radio telescope range...

@putin's link "For nearly 40 years, there has been an unspoken agreement among the world's space powers to refrain from putting weapons in orbit. Military use of space has been limited to surveillance and communications satellites, and scientific and commercial endeavors have largely been able to develop with minimal concerns about military interference or the possibility of becoming wartime casualties."

this got me thinking, WHAT THE FUCK? there is a unspoken, but rather written and signed and ratified treaty regarding the militarization of space...

so then i read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty

and i quote:
"[the treaty] bars States Parties to the Treaty from placing nuclear weapons or any other weapons of mass destruction in orbit of Earth"

well at least it does this much. You can place anti-satellite missiles up there, or build missiles on the earth designed to take out orbiting spy satellites. But no nukes.

it goes on "The treaty also states that the exploration of outer space shall be done to benefit all countries and shall be free for exploration and use by all States."

I'm so glad, that means the US/NASA exploration is being done for the benefit of all countries, because you signed an agreement and not doing so would be a violation of international law. And thus mean war... so please take all the above conversation about 'keeping america in the lead' with this in mind.

if I see anyone looking like they are planning to break international law then i will be calling my friends in the UN and warning them!

Also, fear not, China has signed aswell!

finally it adds "outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means"

That means there can be no colonies with their own national sovereignty. Though corporate ownership and exploitation may yet be possible!

In School they taught me the world did not revolve around me. Well the universe does not revolve around Humans. I personally believe there are other intelligent species. Maybe not on our level but certainly to some extent. Dogs are a intelligent species when compared to inferior species.

I just hope they continue it. Space exploration is so mind blowing. Of course other countries will so its not so bad.

One thing that everyone seems to ignore is the general motive behind the space program. Space is the future, the 'final frontier.' The mineral and scientific wealth is limitless, infinite. Now, what we all must realize is whichever country masters space first, and taps into that immeasurable wealth, will gain an enormous advantage over all other countries, arguably the power to rule the world. The goal of the space program is not to "[Be] a giant failure ... [Waste] $150 billion ... [Cause] Accidents and disasters." It is to harness space first.

As to other intelligence, although improbable, it is not impossible. Somewhere, out in the vast stretches of universe, I have no doubt that there is life. Because of the sheer size of the universe, there has to be at least one other planet with the right temperature, mineral composition, stellar ray protection that is just perfect to create and sustain life.

But will we ever meet it? I doubt it.

I said fig-leaf restraint, Putin33. As in not much at all. We never put Gatling guns on the shuttle, for instance. Not that you would bother to actually read what I said. How much anti-US Koo-aid must you drink to produce such a knee jerk reaction?

We need to be in space for two reasons: defense and pure exploration (not necessarily in that order). Defense because we need a presence in space to defend our military satellites and God knows what else. Exploration because that's humanity's destiny. It doesn't matter if there is intelligent life nearby or if we can realistically colonize the solar system or (hundreds of years from now) beyond. We need to explore for its own sake. Just as man crawled out of the mud somewhere in Ethiopia and made it all the way to Antarctica, so should he continue to travel on to other worlds.

@Putin
The search for extra-terrestrial life isn't a main part of the space program as, if it does exist, it's likely beyond the limits of human flight.
And on the topic of ET. Where do you get off saying there's no intelligent life elsewhere in the universe? That seems like a rather outlandish statement.

When you ask "what has it produced?" What do you want it to produce?

This is often my issue with space exploration and astrophysics (and some nuclear physics for that matter). It's almost an art. Exploration for the sake of exploration. Not that there is necessarily anything wrong with it but progress is difficult to define in a way that is meaningful to a large array of people.

Yeah where's the "fig leaf". We're unabashedly militarizing space and make no apologies for it. Bush wanted to bring back Star Wars for christ's sake. Wondering where that fig leaf comes in. But please, continue your incessant China bashing and fearmongering. I can't get enough of it.

Anyway if anything we need to be removing our thousands of satellites from space. The space for satellites is do damn crowded they're crashing into each other and creating a mess of debris. It's not enough that we ruin our own planet, we have to put a bunch of garbage in space too. The mess of debris is one of the reasons why it's dangerous to launch shuttle missions, because these billions of fragments can cause serious damage.

So it doesn't matter that we pour billions into a money hole that's produced nothing of value except to stoke our own ego, we have to do it *just because*. I'll remember next time you ever whine about government spending. At a time when kids can barely read and ordinary people are being targeted with savage cuts you want us to spend billions on a pointless shuttle program just so we can say we have bigger balls than the Chinese.

"What do you want it to produce?"

Something besides tragic, horrific accidents and miserable failures. 160 launches have failed in the half century we've had the shuttle program. A number of them catastrophically so.

"Where do you get off saying there's no intelligent life elsewhere in the universe?"

Because intelligent life is highly improbable even on Earth. For most of Earth's history they were no mammals, let alone humans. The number of contingencies required for intelligent life to exist makes it exceedingly unlikely that there is other intelligent life out there, much less that we'd ever be have the capacity to make contact with it.

You must be a lot of fun at parties.

That was random.

"That was random"?

I guess the whole communist grad student thing was just a ruse. You're really a 14 year old girl.

sometimes you guys are funny...

It is not often you are this wrong about something, Putin. I find it quite refreshing! I don't think you've quite grasped how big the universe is. Other alien life is not just probable, it's damned near a certainty (in fact, there is a greater chance, from my perspective, that the US is a myth invented by Europeans to make their lives appear better in comparison than there is that intelligent alien life doesn't exist).

When it comes down to it, the justification for the space program is rather simple. One day the Earth will die. When this happens it won't matter one jot what anyone ever did, said, loved, or dreamed about. We will be gone and our effect on the wider universe will be no greater than as if are atoms had never bothered with this life lark and stayed as a collection of rocks.

If we invest in space, then for the first time in the planet's history a form of life will gain some control over the random events (asteroid impacts, solar flares, climate change etc) that have so often killed off the higher forms of life that have existed here. If we continue to invest we may even manage to outlive our solar system and keep the story of humanity going.

If we don't then our story is like a book that is never published or read. Humanity will be the tree that falls when no one is there to hear.

I think as long as there is an organised sports industry, quibbling about cheap and tiny little things like space programs is silly.

You want to save money? Start with sports.

Or art. I've never seen a painting feed the proletariat.

Again, art is coffee money. I'm talking bout the big bucks.

By the way; this is the final word on art:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1132193/

Is feeding the proletariat (I do love these archaic words) that important? When push come to shove humanity can afford to lose several billion people. It cannot afford to lose the dream of space travel.

"You're really a 14 year old girl."

? What's with the machismo? I'm not getting where this line of attack is coming from.

Octav; you may be on to something there, I think we can take out two birds with one stone by killing all the sports fans.

" One day the Earth will die. When this happens it won't matter one jot what anyone ever did, said, loved, or dreamed about. We will be gone and our effect on the wider universe will be no greater than as if are atoms had never bothered with this life lark and stayed as a collection of rocks."

Humanity is going to end up like that long before the Earth itself dies. In the meantime we need to stop acting like a giant rash for the planet. How about we invest in minimizing our own deleterious impact on this rare and improbable planet so that we don't have a mass extinction event in the next 50-100 years? How about we stop acting as if we can do whatever we like and not give a damn about its effect on other life on the planet? That makes a hell of a lot more sense and would have a much more immediate positive effect than clinging to the ridiculous dream that somehow we're going to colonize space through the space shuttle program.

"Start with sports."

What federal or state government agency spends money on sports?

First--

While artists and atheletes are overpaid, to be sure...let's have no more of this "Well, let's cut sports and art to save money!" talk.

It's absurd.
It won't happen.
It SHOULDN'T happen, as the NFL/NHL/NBA/MLB etc. are privately-owned.
It WON'T happen, as both are integral parts of our culture.

It's as useless, meaningless, empty jabber

First of all.

Second of all, I'll say there's certainly a cost factor, but even so, exploration to the degree humanity has practiced it has been a defining feature of our race, and that should not and will not end--in time (maybe when it's more cost-effective or done in the private sector) manned exploration and travel in space will resume.

For now--yes, there are more important issues, but none of them may be solved by "cutting" sports or art--sorry, this isn't running a college here, slashing entire departments and fields doesn't quite work in a world of free enterprise--and it won't be solved by giving up on exploration; postponing it for a bit due to those other, more pressing issues I can see, but eventually, it should continue, and will, in some form or another.

"Octav; you may be on to something there, I think we can take out two birds with one stone by killing all the sports fans."

What do you do for recreation?

Incidentally I agree that private citizens, local governments and especially universities (in the US anyway) spend way too much on sports. If we made sports amateur that would be a great positive change. I don't think many people would mind the NFL and NBA going down in flames.

"I don't think many people would mind the NFL and NBA going down in flames."

Wanna bet?

Professional sports isn't a multi-billion dollar industry without reason, Putin...

People CLEARLY enjoy it as a form of entertainment; hell, even the strikes, to an extent, are entertaining, just to see all the rich folks wring their hands about who's abut to get even richer and who's not.




I love professional sports, but--for the most part--it's "hollow" entertainment...

Which people LOVE!

Doubt it?

Then why was there near round-the-new-hour coverage of The Royals Will and Kate over here in Los Angeles doing...NOTHING OF ANY IMPORTANCE, REALLY (I'd add "As is the case with most 'royal visits,' but I don't wish to offend those across the Pond too much, so I'll just leave it at this--it's a WEEK after July 4th, the day we celebrate for kicking the Crown OUT...and there were MULTIPLE 30-minute discussions on WHAT GODDAMN DRESS KATE WAS WEARING...Washington, Adams, and Franklin are rolling in their graves...so, yes, plenty of people still LOVE hollow, cheap thrills...what thrills they get from watching a Range Rover with two British people who's biggest actions while here will be to play a game of polo I have no idea, but I guess they in turn could ask what thrill I could get from paying money to watch a guy throw a ball which another guy hits with a stick.)