The Galapagos islands do not exist for the benefit of "civilized" humanity. Nor do the Amazon rainforest or the Serengeti. Wherever Western civilization goes, it provides no beneift to those places in which is plants its oversized feet.
Tourism is WRONG. Plain and simple. It is inherently exploitive and destructive. If you as an American want to help the rest of the world, STAY HOME. The best thing we can do for the rest of the world is to leave it alone; we've already done more than enough.
ANd just how does Dr. Lowell plan to MOVE MARS CLOSER TO THE SUN in order to make his "shirt-sleeve' temperatures sustainable?
And finally, even if we could terraform Mars -- WHAT WOULD BE THE POINT? Aside from the spectacular views, Mars is like the Moon -- there isn't any THERE there. There are little to no useful mineral resources, making the soil fertile for even simple agriculture would be a monumental feat, and no sane human being would put up with the six-month journey each way to get there.
Plus, he says it will take a century -- about five times as long as it will take technological civilization of Earth to go completely down the tubes. If we're going to kill our own planet, we should at least have the decency to die with it!
No. Based on what the commercial I saw on TV today, it looks like the sort of thing where if you carry it in your pocket you'll find yourself hearing odd things, accidentally calling up random people in Kazakhstan and causing "White and Nerdy" to play at Volume 25 form your general direction every time you sneeze. And God Forbid you should trip and fall...
There's a sort of recursiveness to the shuttle program; the ISS exists to give the shuttle a reason to exist, which in turn gives the ISS a reason to exist.
The shuttle fleet needs to be retired. Not after this mission, not after the ISS is completed. NOW. To continue to send up these fragile, aging birds is asking for another accident. And someone needs to ask, seriously and without fear of being attacked as cowardly, what the point actually is to sending human beings into space. We went to the moon, and found nothing particularly interesting there (certainly nothing compelling enough to make us want to go back). Technological society on earth itself is in a fragile state; perhaps now is not the time for human beings to be going out into space. Perhaps the time will never really come outside of fantasy novels.
Slashdot Mirror
The Galapagos islands do not exist for the benefit of "civilized" humanity. Nor do the Amazon rainforest or the Serengeti. Wherever Western civilization goes, it provides no beneift to those places in which is plants its oversized feet. Tourism is WRONG. Plain and simple. It is inherently exploitive and destructive. If you as an American want to help the rest of the world, STAY HOME. The best thing we can do for the rest of the world is to leave it alone; we've already done more than enough.
ANd just how does Dr. Lowell plan to MOVE MARS CLOSER TO THE SUN in order to make his "shirt-sleeve' temperatures sustainable? And finally, even if we could terraform Mars -- WHAT WOULD BE THE POINT? Aside from the spectacular views, Mars is like the Moon -- there isn't any THERE there. There are little to no useful mineral resources, making the soil fertile for even simple agriculture would be a monumental feat, and no sane human being would put up with the six-month journey each way to get there. Plus, he says it will take a century -- about five times as long as it will take technological civilization of Earth to go completely down the tubes. If we're going to kill our own planet, we should at least have the decency to die with it!
No. Based on what the commercial I saw on TV today, it looks like the sort of thing where if you carry it in your pocket you'll find yourself hearing odd things, accidentally calling up random people in Kazakhstan and causing "White and Nerdy" to play at Volume 25 form your general direction every time you sneeze. And God Forbid you should trip and fall...
There's a sort of recursiveness to the shuttle program; the ISS exists to give the shuttle a reason to exist, which in turn gives the ISS a reason to exist. The shuttle fleet needs to be retired. Not after this mission, not after the ISS is completed. NOW. To continue to send up these fragile, aging birds is asking for another accident. And someone needs to ask, seriously and without fear of being attacked as cowardly, what the point actually is to sending human beings into space. We went to the moon, and found nothing particularly interesting there (certainly nothing compelling enough to make us want to go back). Technological society on earth itself is in a fragile state; perhaps now is not the time for human beings to be going out into space. Perhaps the time will never really come outside of fantasy novels.