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The Top Three Reasons for Humans in Space
An anonymous reader writes "Why humans in space? The Space Review has the top three reasons: 3. To work. 2. To live. 1. To survive. 'To work' means doing stuff in space: research, explore, visit, etc. 'To live' means to have humans/life beyond Earth in colonies/settlements. 'To survive' means that putting humans/life beyond Earth is a very Good Thing in case a very Bad Thing happens to humans/life on Earth."
Rather interesting order this article puts the reasons in...
'to work' is not a real reason to go to space, instead, the article really shold have focused on a) the abundant energy and raw materials available in space, and b) the nearly infinitely-customizable work environments abailable in space. At any rate, this is only a secondary reason.
'to live'? Exactly what sort of reason is this? Sure, life is important (of course I think that...I'm a living being...I can't help it), but does that mean it's our manifest destiny to spread life throughout the universe, merely for the sake of spreading life? Again, this reason, although important, is purely secondary.
'to survive'. Finally we come to the heart of the matter...the reason that should have been number one, with the two reasons listed above in support of it. Humankind must colonize space, and do it soon. Between the dwindling rescources available to us while we remain shackled to a gravity well, and the impending mass-extinction events (asteroid, pandemic, super-volcano...take your pick), we are left with very little time in which to secure our species' future. Establishing a viable space-community should be the primary goal of the human race.
(BTW, more interesting information regarding our continued survival can be found here.)
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Seems to me these are the same reasons for being on Earth...
love is just extroverted narcissism
I/we want to know what's out there.
Give a hand, not a hand-out.
If we can't survive here on Earth, our chances somewhere else are worse.
Someone you trust is one of us.
Instead of pushing outward in it's exploration ventures, NASA should push inward and delve deep into Earth's oceans. There's a lot of possibilites for research and discovery right in our "big backyard bathtub" if only we'd take the plunge.
Mission costs would be lower, and I really believe the payoff would be much, much greater!
GET FREE APPLE STUFF!
Why store data at multiple locations? Disks can be destroyed in a fire at all locations after all. It's called redundancy, and it works with living beings too. If humans are on multiple planets the race will survive one being destroyed.
its true, any problems they try to escape will just follow us, its human nature. They probably thought that moving to North America would solve the problems they were having in the old world, they just followed us, and everyone developed new problems to deal with anyway
- My question is: Can Slashdot be Slashdotted? -
In the heart of any exploration, any advance of human genius, there was always some personal itch needed to be scratched.
"oh, we can get to India faster" or "oh, we can fly mail to South America in 3 days" or "oh, we can throw explosives further", all this comes later as part of the speech aimed at the venture capitalists, etc. The foundation, the basic desire is always just because it is there. The practical needs come later.
It's a perfectly valid point! Everybody wants to "Space", but unless there's money to be made, the Big Men With Dollars aren't going to look in your direction. Which means you either need to talk the government into it - hard enough in good times - or you need an angel investor.
Whichever way you look at it, whichever way it works, finding the mysterious #2 in this case IS our best case to getting into space. Space tourism is risky and expensive, but it's only a start. If we could come up with some good, financial, bottom-line-friendly reasons to get into space, we could get some serious money - and effort - behind it.
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Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Assuming that you're correct and man cannot damage the earth to the point of it being uninhabitable, there are certainly plenty of other ways for us to not survive here that the article specifically mentions
Not the least of which is self-annihilation by nuclear or biological weapons (which have proven that they are ready and capable of killing many of us very quickly). The article also mentions natural disasters, which (once again) have proven themselves able to wipe out huge portions of the earth.
We are also aware of certain natural disasters that might be able to wipe out ALL LIFE on this planet pretty much within a day. I won't bother naming any because most educated people should be able to come up with at least 3 good ones, including as least one inevitability.
That kind of argument can potentially keep humans out of space forever. Theoretically, there will always be superior technology on the horizon, and if we always decide to wait for it, then we'll never get anywhere.
Also, there is the distinct possibility that the decision for humans to travel to space would actually act as a catalyst for innovation. After all, necessity is the mother of invention.
I must disagree.
When Europeans moved to North America, they did solve some real problems. Granted, we still have problems, but they are different than the ones Europeans had circa 1000 A.D. It's a fairly trivial exercise to show things are much better now.
OK, what can moving into space do for humanity? First, there is the not putting all our eggs in one basket factor. Secondly, we can try new things. Some of our experiments will succeed; some will fail. Successful experiments can be emulated. Our failures can teach us what not to do.
Starting back in the 17th century, the part of North America governed by first England and now the United States and Canada tried doing some new things with regard to government and society. These experiments proved so successful that parent societies in Europe adopted many of the new ideas first tried in North America.
We haven't acheived any sort of utopia, but we have made significant progress.
"Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy." -- B. Franklin
Because it would be really fucking cool!
KFG
We weren't ready to go to the moon in the 60's, but we did it. We did it with slide rules.
We did it because we had to.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Still, the author does put a nice economic sounding spin to his argument.
Risk management catchphrases:
Supply and demand:
This all sounds well and good but I think the author might give "cost-effectiveness" a look.
Cost-effectiveness is "a comparison between the relative expenditure (costs) and outcome (effects) associated with two or more courses of outcome."
The US administration contends that the Koyoto agreement is too costly to implement. How about increasing the value of our current investment (earth) by decreasing the probability that something might go wrong (global warming).
Surely it is more cost-effective to limit Co2 emissions that to burn away and aim for Mars in 2030?
Also, if life is so valuble due to its rarity, why jump the gun and send astronauts out to do what robots can do just as well (and they can for now)? Investing in artificial intelligence has a higher probability of returning an eventual profit that investing in life support. We're more likely to be able to use AI in various indurstries than we are of making earth inhabitable in the near future.
When we've got the AI technology right, we'll send robots out to colonize and will therefore have to do less research into life support.
Treo + Kaffi = Traffi
Slight oversimplification, but the idea is there.
Oh and by the way, IAARS (I am a rocket scientist).
IWARS.
People, in general, disappoint me. Politicians even more so.
So you want humans to die out? OK...you first.
OK, maybe my thoughts on this matter are a bit simplistic, but if you consider the Malthusian Catastrophe (sometimes known as the Malthusian Dilemma), it boils down to two things:
While, in theory, some would argue we should adopt economies based upon sustainability rather than growth, I think it's more realistic to say that this will only happen when we have no choice. In the meantime, in our never-ending quest for resources, we can look at those two bullet points and notice that the real limiting factor isn't "resources", but "our planet."
I certainly don't believe we can solve our population problems via space exploration, nor do I think it's likely we're soon going to be in a position to utilize enough space-based resources to make a difference at the bottom of our gravity well. However, we can still spread the human race further and increase our chances of survival (as mentioned in the article) by ensuring that some humans are not dependent on our planet's resources.
But as a last ditch effort to sway those Harvard business school types who really don't understand the long-term benefits we get from space exploration, here's a short list of technologies have been directly a direct result or space research or greatly enhanced by said research:
I've ranted a bit more about this in one of my journals.
You are absolutely right, if there is a species threatening event in the next century, we are not prepared to deal with it. That is precicely why we have to go into space now. In that way we can deal with species threatening events when they arrive.
The problem with the species threatening events is that we do not know when they may happen, but we know that some of them will happen. Major impacts being a minor such threat. Some of them we will have warnings about a long time in advance, such as the inevitable fact that the Sun is going to run out of energy and inflate past the orbit of the earth. Others we will not have much of a warning about at all, such as a significant gamma ray burst in our neighborhood (within a few hundred lights).
With events where we have a warning, there will be (when they approach) a strong demand for evacuation, so we need to be prepared for that. Developing such technology will take millennia (or centuries at least). With the events where we will have no real warning, life on earth will be wiped out. Our safety net in that case is the fact that we have already colonized areas where the burst does not wipe out life.
Both scenarios requires we go into space big time as soon as possible.