We’ve been here a while. We’ll be here another while.
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Better to be ready to go now than need to go and not be ready later
Not on cosmic scales we haven’t.
I wouldn’t disagree with that. But I suppose the heyday of space exploration was a cold war thing with huge amounts of national and ideological prestige attached to it. It was literally a race driven by enmity between the US and the USSR, another example of technology driven by (cold) war. I think I read that NASA was at one point taking up 4% of the entire US budget. It’s currently 0.48%. It’s one of those things that while extremely interesting and indeed worthwhile on an intellectual level, is sort of a luxury project and society in general prefers that money be spent on less glamourous bread and butter things.
I hope it won’t be necessary because if it is humanity genuinely will be fucked. I certainly can’t see large or even small numbers of people ever wanting to live on the Moon or anywhere else and even if they did I find it hard to see how it could happen without advances in technology that we can currently only dream of.
Is it possible to grow anything on the Moon? A quick Netscape would suggest it is problematic to say the least.
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This sounds like a friday morning conversation in a sitting room of a college house where everyone has been blazed for a few days
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You say that like it’s a bad thing?
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I just said it. I can’t control how you interpet it. Pick one
You’re right and it is expensive. But if we could divert a fraction of the money we waste on other shite towards space exploration, it would be amazing. Neil DeGrasse Tyson attributes a huge proportion of scientific progress in all fields to people being inspired by the lunar landings. Whether he’s right or wrong I dont know but personally, anytime I think about it I do find it inspiring. Channel 4 ran a program on it a few years back for the anniversary and it had the same effect on me as some bullshit Roy Curtis tweets have on other posters here. It was an amazing achievement (or hoax cc @Locke )
No, as it stands it’s not possible to grow anything on the moon. Mars is most likely the same, unless we can find a way to terra-form it. Anything we do in space will be “problematic” at best. But the alternative is death for us as a species here.
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I was blazed last night but I’m 99% I’m not now. Unfortunately
Well, I’d like to visit the moon
On a rocketship high in the air
Yes, I’d like to visit the moon
But I don’t think I’d like to live there
Though I’d like to look down at the Earth from above
I would miss all the places and people I love
So although I might like it for one afternoon
I don’t wanna live on the moon
~ Ernie. Sesame Street
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Whatever they are going to build on the moon to save us, would surely be easier built here.
My understanding is that when we do eventually find somewhere that is habitable we’ll need something bigger and quicker than the space equivalent of the 46a to get us there. It won’t be a person that locates somewhere habitable.
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It probably wont. But we’ll need to send a few lads ahead to see if its suitable for the rest of us.
In the short term (by cosmic standards), having humans on two or more planets/moons/whatever nearly guarantees our survival as a species should another big rock could hurtling at us from space, or other such apocalyptic event.
I’ve given that post a like for this line. I don’t think I’ve read a better line all week.
I think you’re over-egging it with the “death as a species” thing. Sure it’s possible there might be a cataclysm for humanity that makes the Holocaust look like an episode of Balamory, but bar some supervillain dropping an atomic bomb which literally wipes out the planet, I think there will always be capacity for life on it. Even in that case there might still be capacity for life. I mean if 99.99% of the population of the earth was wiped out and only 0.01% remained, that’s still 800,000 people, and humanity would still ultimately find a way to regenerate. if we had only 80,000 people on earth we’d still find a way to regenerate. Also if such a cataclysm does happen we aren’t going to getting to the moon or to Mars because we’d probably be going back to hunter-gatherer status.
There isn’t going to be a scenario where “we have to get to the moon and form a new civilisation before the end of the earth at 1pm on February 28th, 2095”.
Actually, in some ways it would be really cool if you were in a town of 80,000 people and everywhere else on the planet suddenly ceased to exist. Well, for a few days at least.
Hey man, pass me that spliff, who’s presenting This Morning these days?
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Has The Simpsons not predicted what would happen in that case? It has already predicted everything else.
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This discussion is producing some superb lines. 
I’m at work so cant be high, much and all as it would make it more betterer.
No there wont be. But one way or another, our planet will eventually die. As will our star. We are the only intelligent life in the universe (that we know of). We have a responsibility to survive, otherwise, for all we know, intelligence and consciousness goes with us. For eternity.
I’d argue we also have a responsibility to seek out new horizons anyway. It literally produces the best in us, forcing new and better technologies to be discovered. Space has opened the door to so much that is good that exploration, dangerous and all as it is, will always be worth it.
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Was the aborted Apollo 13 mission a conspiracy theory too then or a more realistic indication of the shortcomings?
That’s vv good 
Mars doesn’t sound great tbh.