Is going into Outer Space Worth it?

[peacmaker]

I understand we humans want to know if we or not the only planet that has life on it. It just that we are fighting two wars overseas and have huge debt deal with at home along with host of other problems in this nation. My question is it worth to spenting billons, billions, and billons of dollars on space missions? Should we just cut back for now until wars are over and see if NASA can relive it's glory days when it had good leaderships that help us get to moon? Also I feel that NASA has not done even major break throughs in years and our taxes dollars being use to keep that international space station, which is broken down and will probaby one day fall apart. Well, I don't hear even other country paying to keep up the station and hear that Russia is broke. I'am not saying we should shut done the space program, just that again right we have some important matters we need deal with first.

[James Cizuz]

Going into outer space is worth it. For one reason.
It disproves religion. Not god. Religion. I don't care if people believe in god, but when you try to asign that god to a certain religion picked at random/or whatever you were born into then you have a problem. It disproves religion by proving there is more like, like the bacteria they found on mars. Which to this day they say is not bacteria because they are "10 times smaller then any bacteria on earth". However clearly they are, from what the people who studied them said.

We need to go to other planets, it will be our only survival method. We strive to survive, we strive for the unknown. We need the unknown. However we fill the unknown with more and more unknowns when we can not explain that unknown. Without going into space, we will kill ourselves with unknowns.

[II Xion II]

Going into outer space is worth it. For one reason.
It disproves religion. Not god. Religion. I don't care if people believe in god, but when you try to asign that god to a certain religion picked at random/or whatever you were born into then you have a problem. It disproves religion by proving there is more like, like the bacteria they found on mars. Which to this day they say is not bacteria because they are "10 times smaller then any bacteria on earth". However clearly they are, from what the people who studied them said.

We need to go to other planets, it will be our only survival method. We strive to survive, we strive for the unknown. We need the unknown. However we fill the unknown with more and more unknowns when we can not explain that unknown. Without going into space, we will kill ourselves with unknowns.

Why does every topic you post in, turn into a debate about religion? I'm sure the topic could be about kittens and it would somehow end up going down to what made their cuteness. Anyhow, NO, going into outer space is not worth it.

It is a tremendous waste of resources which could better be used to feed the hungry or fund social welfare programs like universal health care. Hell, we haven't even designed a self-maintaining ecosystem on Earth (there was that biodome thing that failed miserably), yet another planet. The research we have in regards to the issue is very little of practical importance, and travel and related logistics are also centuries away at the earliest.

Billions of dollars are squandered which could be used to help people on Earth. The doomsday scenario thing is also unrealistic. Because even if it happened, we would never be able to colonize other planets effectively. It would be a living hell, death would probably be a far better option than barely living in a filthy, problem-prone bubble. I would much prefer being crushed by an asteroid than asphyxiating in an atmospheric accident.

Let's stick to what is practical and benefits the most people of the world who are in need of help now!!!

[VampyreLord]

Why does every topic you post in, turn into a debate about religion? I'm sure the topic could be about kittens and it would somehow end up going down to what made their cuteness. Anyhow, NO, going into outer space is not worth it.

It is a tremendous waste of resources which could better be used to feed the hungry or fund social welfare programs like universal health care. Hell, we haven't even designed a self-maintaining ecosystem on Earth (there was that biodome thing that failed miserably), yet another planet. The research we have in regards to the issue is very little of practical importance, and travel and related logistics are also centuries away at the earliest.

Billions of dollars are squandered which could be used to help people on Earth. The doomsday scenario thing is also unrealistic. Because even if it happened, we would never be able to colonize other planets effectively. It would be a living hell, death would probably be a far better option than barely living in a filthy, problem-prone bubble. I would much prefer being crushed by an asteroid than asphyxiating in an atmospheric accident.

Let's stick to what is practical and benefits the most people of the world who are in need of help now!!!

Quoted for sheer truth. I think he must be Richard Dawkins' son or something, you should have seen the debate he started about why all religious people think athiests are satanists...

/moved to informal debates

[Emmerich]

I say yes. From a scientific perspective, a space program is vital to the advancment (and ultimately the betterment) of civilization. The cost is well worth the rewards. How can we move forward if we stand still?

[SageOfHalo]

I vote yes, as well... to sum up my stance, I'll quote my favorite sci-fi series Babylon 5:

"Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics - and you'll get ten different answers. But there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on: whether it happens in a hundred years, or a thousand years, or a million years, eventually our sun will grow cold, and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us, it'll take Marilyn Monroe, and Lao-tsu, Einstein, Maruputo, Buddy Holly, Aristophanes - all of this. All of this was for nothing, unless we go to the stars."

[James Cizuz]

Not everyone of my posts turn into a religious debate. I just find religion the one thing in the world that needs to go, it was already proven wrong and needs to be abolished, not be law but by reason.

Btw, why does it matter we go into space? Poverty? That has nothing to do with money. Do you think you need money to feed someone? No, people helping feeds people who need help. Teach them how to feed themselves, farm, cultivate. Teach them english. Build them homes, this is what helps poverty go around. Throwing money at a problem will never work, when money caused the problem in the first place.

As for going into space, do you not want to know more about space? It's true scientists can pretty much get evidence for anything in space from ground, until it comes down to proving without a doubt they are right. We need more alternatives to this planet we ****ed. We can not live here for very longer. Global warming can be slowed, and stoped, but can never be reversed. our race will die eventually if we do not go to other planets,

[StoneTitan]

Well alittle fewer launches wouldn't hurt if they just took more with em a time.
then spend more on the research on transport to space, etc.

[Vlad]

Why people started to walk instead of continue to crawl? Why people sailed the oceans for new lands instead of staying safe in there own homes? Why people build flying machines instead of staying on the ground? It's progress. Space is just next logical step. Curiosity and progress is in owe nature even if benefits of those discoveries a lot lower that investment need it.

It's seems that there are no benefits in deep space exploration, but it’s not always going to be like that. It’s like long term investment with a huge payback. When Russian's lunched the very very first artificial satellite in human history some (not that smart) people thought what a waist of money. All that satellite did is send constant signal, which is all it did. How many satellites with so many purposes are in the orbit now? Communication, TV, Radio and many others. All because that first satellite that was a “waist of money” was lunched, so many useful satellites is in orbit.

[II Xion II]

Not everyone of my posts turn into a religious debate. I just find religion the one thing in the world that needs to go, it was already proven wrong and needs to be abolished, not be law but by reason.

Another time, another thread. Show me the formal proof proving religion wrong (ignoring the fact that there are many religions and that religion is a social concept and not a scientific one). You can't because it doesn't exist. As a scientists you should know that there is very little that can be implicitly proved.


Btw, why does it matter we go into space? Poverty? That has nothing to do with money. Do you think you need money to feed someone? No, people helping feeds people who need help. Teach them how to feed themselves, farm, cultivate. Teach them english. Build them homes, this is what helps poverty go around. Throwing money at a problem will never work, when money caused the problem in the first place.

In the world in which we live, poverty has EVERYTHING to do with money. All your "teaching" and good-faith efforts need money to accomplish their goals regardless of the fact that the people themselves take money. Your solution is impossible without money, you are vastly oversimplifying everything and are being led into a logical fallacy. Throwing money at something may work or it may not work. There is no guarantee with anything. If the money is widely monitored and allocated through the proper channels, then it has the capacity to make a difference. Factors such as politics, social class, economics, religion, and tons of other things affect how that money will be used and distributed, but money is not always going to be squandered.


As for going into space, do you not want to know more about space? It's true scientists can pretty much get evidence for anything in space from ground, until it comes down to proving without a doubt they are right. We need more alternatives to this planet we ****ed. We can not live here for very longer. Global warming can be slowed, and stoped, but can never be reversed. our race will die eventually if we do not go to other planets,

Honestly, I care more about the peoples' needs on Earth right now, than some future doomsday scenario which may or may not happen (and if it does, there will be no way to escape it). I think wasting BILLIONS of dollars on spacecraft that can inevitably fail without warning is ridiculous. Can you imagine what that money could do on Earth at this very moment? I agree with you that this planet is in trouble, but I do not agree with you that it's primary problem is global warming. I think that nuclear waste, massive depletion of the rainforests, dumping in the oceans, and massive pollution is far worse than global warming in the short term. Global warming does not cause more powerful and its impact on climate in the short term is minute. Sure, it could be very bad down the road, but it can be slowed dramatically and with a really good effort, reversed. Why can't it be reversed? It's simply the atmosphere acting as a sink to CO2, CH4, H20(G), and other gases. If the world were to suddenly stop producing CO2 as a waste product in industry, then the levels in the atmosphere would drop as the CO2 seeks other sinks like via planat photosynthesis. It's very difficult to reverse global warming's effects though.

The technology for colonizing a planet is centuries a way at best. Our rockets and spacecraft are not ready for large-scale evacuation, building in such environments is still impossible, resource gathering in such environments is beyond impossible (cannot even make a self-sustaining ecosystem on Earth with its ideal conditions). Living there itself would be a tragic existence at best and one I most certainly would not want to experience. Being trapped on another planet with the fear of life-support functions ceasing every day does not seem very fun. I think a lot of you people are only thinking "end of world bad, elsewhere continuing to live good," which ignores the impossible reality of actually living on another planet, the fear, the panic, and all the associated emotions. My point, we're doomed if we do, and we're doomed if we don't. We cannot escape death forever and neither should we fear it. Instead of investing billions into a program that is full of unknowns and is nowhere near ready, we have to invest into our fellow man right now. People are dying by the droves in some parts of the world, let's commit ourselves to help them instead of getting preoccupied in the realm of the theoretical. That's another problem I have with many aspects of science. It ignores the human condition (not that it means too) in favor of advanced "knowledge" and "possibilities." It deals with the theoretical and otherworldly rather than what is blatantly real at the moment and most worth saving. Only when science is applied in such a way as to advance human living conditions can good come to the people that truly depend on it. Science has been a double-edged sword. It has destroyed our very planet and many lives, and it has benefited many. But are the costs worth the rewards? Are we better off with Internet or atomic weapons, with massive pollution and environmental destruction or with immunizations, with space travel or with allocating the tremendous amounts of money invested in thats sector into helping others right now?

[doobiesnacks]

Wow, everyone had some really nice points to make. My only concerns with space travel are the circumstances.

For one, the billions and billions that are put into space travel. Although only a small piece of the pie towards healing planet earth, the funds could be put to better use. People are dirt, dirt, dirt poor on THIS planet, yet all this money, research and brains are going into a project to get away from here rather then replenishing.
That is another concern. Rather then investing on leaving here, why don’t we invest in repairing earth and make it once again a fruitful place like it once was before. It makes no sense to me. It's like the rich are saying they don’t care now so why should they ever? Surely not when they are all in the space ship looking down on the rest of us living in the crap hole they were a major part in creating. (Not saying all rich people are scum, but we can all agree that it is the wealthy that run this world.)
And my last major dislike about the whole space travel is the pollution! All of the metal that is floating around in space. Its like high way trash. All the cans and bottles and god knows what people just throw out the window. If no one picks it up, then eventually it will accumulate. And if someone comes with the argument that outer space is big enough to handle it I’m gonna kill your mom.. lol.. No, but the argument would only make sense if you were blind to pollution in the first place. Out of sight out of mind only exists to set minds at ease when the knowledge of wrongdoing is present. We are not only trashing up our environment, but space around us!

The fact is, that as a whole society we choose to be completely blind to the fact that we are killing our future generations and going further and further away from the way that the cycle of nature and life should be. We are destroying our planet and now that we recognize it, instead of healing we are just gonna jump ship? How cowardess. History tells us nothing but the fact that we will continue on this path till we finally use this planet up, then move on to the next to do the same. Sounds like a parasite!!

At the same time our planet is so overpopulated, that without some sort of war or epidemic we are eventually going to run out of space. At that point space travel would seem to be the only option. This just shows that the problems of this life on earth go far beyond something like space travel and have such deep roots, really a change is impossible.

To the whole religion is proven wrong. My opinion is that no human could ever prove or disprove anything supernatural. When it comes down to it, it is faith! You choose what to have faith in and at that point it becomes reality whether it is so or not. To say that religion has been disproven though, is surely incorrect.

mateff

[Kyouka Suigetsu]

I believe that going into outer space is worth it. Of course, the money could go to better use, but there's a whole bunch of far more dubious areas that our resources are going into. Why not target them over an area that's at least trying to help our understanding of the universe? Space travel can benefit man in the future. Hell, Dr. Hawking believes that we could colonize the moon in a couple decades if we were to get our shit together. This is probably overly idealistic, but it's not like the man is a quack.

Another benefit of research into space is that it fosters dreams. Society stagnates when people stop seeing lofty ideas put into action. The eventual Mars mission will inspire many children to become scientists, engineers, and astronauts. That alone I believe justifies the cost of organizations like NASA. This is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the positive effects.

Space travel is the cutting edge of science. All of the advances made in this area eventually trickle down to the rest of humanity. It may take a couple decades, but we reap the rewards either way. Material, mechanical, and computer engineering are all spurred forward by its demands. A lot of the stuff we value in our daily lifes probably were either influenced or created as a result of research into space.

[James Cizuz]

Another time, another thread. Show me the formal proof proving religion wrong (ignoring the fact that there are many religions and that religion is a social concept and not a scientific one). You can't because it doesn't exist. As a scientists you should know that there is very little that can be implicitly proved.



In the world in which we live, poverty has EVERYTHING to do with money. All your "teaching" and good-faith efforts need money to accomplish their goals regardless of the fact that the people themselves take money. Your solution is impossible without money, you are vastly oversimplifying everything and are being led into a logical fallacy. Throwing money at something may work or it may not work. There is no guarantee with anything. If the money is widely monitored and allocated through the proper channels, then it has the capacity to make a difference. Factors such as politics, social class, economics, religion, and tons of other things affect how that money will be used and distributed, but money is not always going to be squandered.



Honestly, I care more about the peoples' needs on Earth right now, than some future doomsday scenario which may or may not happen (and if it does, there will be no way to escape it). I think wasting BILLIONS of dollars on spacecraft that can inevitably fail without warning is ridiculous. Can you imagine what that money could do on Earth at this very moment? I agree with you that this planet is in trouble, but I do not agree with you that it's primary problem is global warming. I think that nuclear waste, massive depletion of the rainforests, dumping in the oceans, and massive pollution is far worse than global warming in the short term. Global warming does not cause more powerful and its impact on climate in the short term is minute. Sure, it could be very bad down the road, but it can be slowed dramatically and with a really good effort, reversed. Why can't it be reversed? It's simply the atmosphere acting as a sink to CO2, CH4, H20(G), and other gases. If the world were to suddenly stop producing CO2 as a waste product in industry, then the levels in the atmosphere would drop as the CO2 seeks other sinks like via planat photosynthesis. It's very difficult to reverse global warming's effects though.

The technology for colonizing a planet is centuries a way at best. Our rockets and spacecraft are not ready for large-scale evacuation, building in such environments is still impossible, resource gathering in such environments is beyond impossible (cannot even make a self-sustaining ecosystem on Earth with its ideal conditions). Living there itself would be a tragic existence at best and one I most certainly would not want to experience. Being trapped on another planet with the fear of life-support functions ceasing every day does not seem very fun. I think a lot of you people are only thinking "end of world bad, elsewhere continuing to live good," which ignores the impossible reality of actually living on another planet, the fear, the panic, and all the associated emotions. My point, we're doomed if we do, and we're doomed if we don't. We cannot escape death forever and neither should we fear it. Instead of investing billions into a program that is full of unknowns and is nowhere near ready, we have to invest into our fellow man right now. People are dying by the droves in some parts of the world, let's commit ourselves to help them instead of getting preoccupied in the realm of the theoretical. That's another problem I have with many aspects of science. It ignores the human condition (not that it means too) in favor of advanced "knowledge" and "possibilities." It deals with the theoretical and otherworldly rather than what is blatantly real at the moment and most worth saving. Only when science is applied in such a way as to advance human living conditions can good come to the people that truly depend on it. Science has been a double-edged sword. It has destroyed our very planet and many lives, and it has benefited many. But are the costs worth the rewards? Are we better off with Internet or atomic weapons, with massive pollution and environmental destruction or with immunizations, with space travel or with allocating the tremendous amounts of money invested in thats sector into helping others right now?

Money helps poverty? Sure it does. Everytime a country went and lent money to a poorer country, they gave it to the government. It never got to the hands of the people who needed it. Even when they tried to give it to the people who needed it warlords, and gangs stole it, killed countless people. The money ended up doing more trouble then helping.

We need money to help poverty? Hmm, basically what your saying is money is more important then knowledge. Your saying if I teach a man to fish somehow he will need money to fish and eat the fish. If I teach a man to farm, and he has land, can he not grow plants without money? He needs money for seeds? Get them other ways, you can find them anywhere. Needs money for water and tools? I'm sure he might have a bucket and two hands.

Why do you think a lot of charities don't spend the money directly on people in these countries? They spend it on doctors to work their, which does require money. Unless of course you teach them how to treat wounds and such, which requires no money. Hell even some doctors would be willing to go there and work for free. They get people, from over here and pay there travel fee. Then those people come and help them build homes, learn to get water, learn to help themselves. Does this require money thrown right at them? No, mostly it does involve giving people money to help. It does not require it however. Don't go into "you need money to build homes and stuff". We can make homes with an axe, and homemade rope.

Did indians need money when they lived for hundreds of years to live? I don't think so! They did trade, however the community helped everyone else out.


Doomsday? Did I really say that? No no no no! Stop putting words in my mouth. I said we ****ed the planet, which we did. We pushed it into global warming, which in fact, I should not call the planet ****ed, but the environment. We can not reverse what we did, we can slow it down and stop it however. We will still have harsh weather though, and other unreversable things.

Now we go to space. The closest planet to us that can support life would be mars. Only reason I say it can support life is because they found some sort of bacteria on the planet, as well as other signs life may have been there.

Actually, you know it seems everytime I hint, or make on little point on religion you come in, or someone else and try and disprove it, accuse me of starting a religious debate, then instead of droping it(which in saying "don't make this into a religious debate" I would not, but then when you say "don't make it into a religious debate" then try and disprove what I said, do you expect me not to then show you that your wrong?) I would love to not make it into a debate, one of us would have to stop first, I stop the first post, or hint at religion. Do you? No, once you see it you constantly reply to every point I made about religion, then complain when I reply to it.

Now, i'm going to address your point. You can choose afterwards to continue the senseless debate or not. Ok, i'll point out 5 things wrong with noahs flood.
- There is no layer proof of a global flood.
- The demensions for the boat would never hold 20 billion animals.
- 20 billion animals, some of them only live a few days and would of died on the boat, as well as bigger animals killing smaller.
- If the water rose as high as it said it did, you would drown from breathing air.
- If the water rose as high as it said, the global preasure would rise upwards of 1000 times, crushing you from the preasure, and also making the global tempeture rise 2,000 degrees. Guess god gave noah a preasure suit for all the animals and himself, made of heat shields eh?(also the tempeture rise would cause all oceans to melt, causing our planet to become a flash stem planet, the stem hot enough to incenerate any ship itself.)
I could go on forever about thing in the bible as wrong. Like the planet being proven to be 4.5 billion years old, yet people believe it's 6,000-10,000 years old because the bible says it. However I won't, if these little things don't make you say "Hey wait, if I can't trust this story, or this point made in the bible, what can I trust?" however since allmost every point in the bible has been proven false(no evidence for it, and evidence against it) countless hundreds of contridictions. How can people trust the bible? I'm using Christianity as an example, this applies to all religions.

Our planet, sits in a small galaxy called the milky way. This galaxy is 100,000 light years in diameter. A light year is roughly 9 trillion KM. Or the distance light travels in a year. This galaxy is also small. It houses 200 billion stars, of which 80% of atleast 1 planet. 30% are said to have 2 or more planets. Earth, a small blue planet, not very complex at all. A lot of the planets in our own solar system are more complex. Now, seeing as we can observe a estimation of 185 billion other galaxies(mainly we can't count that many, and some would turn out to be just quasars etc, they had computers count to make the estimate). Now when they made the equation for life to start, people said it was near impossible for it to start. However there was still a chance. From what we see now about the universe, is that the equation was wrong, but even if the equation was right, which turn out to be 1/2.34*10^65 chance of happening by itself. Even then there are thousands of chances for life to start, just by taking the number of planets with the ability to support life. Even though the equation was wrong, it did not count for some major factors. Now think about that, we have all this scenary, and you do not want to go to any of it? You think, if there was a god he made it for no reason? If god existed, and made all this, either he intended to make more life on other planets or is giving us a chance to go and explore towards other planets.

I do not know about you, but I want to see whats out there. I want to know how the universe started, without just believing a unproven hypothesis that it was snapped into existence by a genie. If you do not want to know whats out there thats fine. Just don't discredit any findings we find out there, just because you didn't want people up there in the first place.

[Harvey Dent]

@ James first comment.
It could also prove religion is right, I mean for all we know the god that everyone worships. Could come from some planet or something that's out there, I mean whats the difference even if God is from another galaxy.

Another reason is that we could discover new Resources on Asteroid's and things. Or replenish all the Natural Resources that we burn up on Earth. Going to Outer Space is very much worth the money, it isn't just Learning for the Sake of Learning. It could also prove to benefit Humankind alot.

Also it would be a lot easier to react to anything that would collide with the Earth a lot faster too, So we can continue to survive.

[James Cizuz]

@ James first comment.
It could also prove religion is right, I mean for all we know the god that everyone worships. Could come from some planet or something that's out there, I mean whats the difference even if God is from another galaxy.
Another reason is that we could discover new Resources on Asteroid's and things. Or replenish all the Natural Resources that we burn up on Earth. Going to Outer Space is very much worth the money, it isn't just Learning for the Sake of Learning. It could also prove to benefit Humankind alot.
Also it would be a lot easier to react to anything that would collide with the Earth a lot faster too, So we can continue to survive.
My first post was, if people know what i'm like I hate the idea of religion. I don't mind the idea of a god, I just don't believe because there is no evidence. I just posted why it would be important to me, disproving religion. Believe in a god? Fine. Don't try to put that god in any religion though, because then you are insane.

Thats all, he however jumped on my comment like crazy.

[peacmaker]

I really do want us to explore space, but way the White House, Congress, NASA has waste money over years like dump heads. Also do poor planning of wars overseas, which costing us taxprayers billions and billions of dollars. That another reason why I feel we need slow down space program until some dumps heads can learn to spent money right way and do things right too, the poor will stay poor and will never make even major breakthroughs in space travel. Again, we don't have leadership at time that will help reach the next step in space travel in next several years. I mean if look at NASA after the moonwalk, it has lost it way and putting money into projects that people don't care about.

[II Xion II]

Money helps poverty? Sure it does. Everytime a country went and lent money to a poorer country, they gave it to the government. It never got to the hands of the people who needed it. Even when they tried to give it to the people who needed it warlords, and gangs stole it, killed countless people. The money ended up doing more trouble then helping.
We need money to help poverty? Hmm, basically what your saying is money is more important then knowledge. Your saying if I teach a man to fish somehow he will need money to fish and eat the fish. If I teach a man to farm, and he has land, can he not grow plants without money? He needs money for seeds? Get them other ways, you can find them anywhere. Needs money for water and tools? I'm sure he might have a bucket and two hands.
Why do you think a lot of charities don't spend the money directly on people in these countries? They spend it on doctors to work their, which does require money. Unless of course you teach them how to treat wounds and such, which requires no money. Hell even some doctors would be willing to go there and work for free. They get people, from over here and pay there travel fee. Then those people come and help them build homes, learn to get water, learn to help themselves. Does this require money thrown right at them? No, mostly it does involve giving people money to help. It does not require it however. Don't go into "you need money to build homes and stuff". We can make homes with an axe, and homemade rope. Did indians need money when they lived for hundreds of years to live? I don't think so! They did trade, however the community helped everyone else out.

This is quite amusing. Instead of noticing the entire picture, you are only focusing on a few minute details. Like the fact that money directly in the hands of people causes all sorts of problems. This is not a truth. It is a possibility, but to state it as fact is utterly ignorant. How do you suppose the people who impart knowledge or work for free to build homes get their goods, materials, travel, livelihood, etc. in order? I'll give you a hint: they pay for it!!!! You said yourself that they need money for travel fees and other expenses, so why are you saying I am wrong. I am not saying that the money in the space program should just be lackadaisically distributed to any Joe or Jane, but that it should be channeled through the appropriate organizations or people for other purposes that directly benefit mankind, like how other humanitarian organizations accomplish their goals. You are making an issue of a non-issue.

Doomsday? Did I really say that? No no no no! Stop putting words in my mouth. I said we ****ed the planet, which we did. We pushed it into global warming, which in fact, I should not call the planet ****ed, but the environment. We can not reverse what we did, we can slow it down and stop it however. We will still have harsh weather though, and other unreversable things.

Calm down! Self control is a beautiful thing. I am simply using the word "doomsday" to refer to an environmental or planetary catastrophe, which would be the primary reason we would have to colonize space because of. Not everything has to be religious in connotation, just because I used the term "doomsday" does not mean I'm using it religiously.

Now we go to space. The closest planet to us that can support life would be mars. Only reason I say it can support life is because they found some sort of bacteria on the planet, as well as other signs life may have been there.

True, it is the closest planet that could possibly support life, but there are a plethora of problems we have to deal with before that could even possibly occur since we cannot even create a proper self-sustaining ecosystem on Earth. Logistics, costs, fuel, time to arrival, etc. are only a few of the issues dealing with travel there alone. Colonizing the planet is a whole other can of worms. The engineering feat alone of a small compound would be extremely costly and difficult; creating a self-sustaining city is just a dream that will never become a reality.


Actually, you know it seems everytime I hint, or make on little point on religion you come in, or someone else and try and disprove it, accuse me of starting a religious debate, then instead of droping it(which in saying "don't make this into a religious debate" I would not, but then when you say "don't make it into a religious debate" then try and disprove what I said, do you expect me not to then show you that your wrong?)

Then stop going off-topic and start posting in the appropriate threads. Or if one does not exist, then start one, I will be by very quickly ;). This topic had nothing to do with religion, so not missing a beat, you decided to turn it into one. The purpose of a debate is to debate, so if you say something, even if it is not appropriate to the topic at hand, I will respond to it in passing before addressing the main topic.

I would love to not make it into a debate, one of us would have to stop first, I stop the first post, or hint at religion. Do you? No, once you see it you constantly reply to every point I made about religion, then complain when I reply to it.
Now, i'm going to address your point. You can choose afterwards to continue the senseless debate or not. Ok, i'll point out 5 things wrong with noahs flood.
- There is no layer proof of a global flood.
- The demensions for the boat would never hold 20 billion animals.
- 20 billion animals, some of them only live a few days and would of died on the boat, as well as bigger animals killing smaller.
- If the water rose as high as it said it did, you would drown from breathing air.
- If the water rose as high as it said, the global preasure would rise upwards of 1000 times, crushing you from the preasure, and also making the global tempeture rise 2,000 degrees. Guess god gave noah a preasure suit for all the animals and himself, made of heat shields eh?(also the tempeture rise would cause all oceans to melt, causing our planet to become a flash stem planet, the stem hot enough to incenerate any ship itself.)


Wow, you are really off-topic! But, congratulations for being smart enough to realize that the boat would never hold 20 billion animals. I am surprised you have never heard of an allegory. Posting this "opinion" of yours in this thread just confirms the suspicions of Nathan and I that you are out to ironically start a Crusade against religion one thread at a time ignoring all forum etiquette while you are at it.

I could go on forever about thing in the bible as wrong. Like the planet being proven to be 4.5 billion years old, yet people believe it's 6,000-10,000 years old because the bible says it. However I won't, if these little things don't make you say "Hey wait, if I can't trust this story, or this point made in the bible, what can I trust?" however since allmost every point in the bible has been proven false(no evidence for it, and evidence against it) countless hundreds of contridictions. How can people trust the bible? I'm using Christianity as an example, this applies to all religions.

Actually I think that the planet is even older than most estimates claim (they are not proven, claiming anything as proven is wrong, but I am not going to go over formal proofs with you). As for your other points, I have exhaustively covered them in other threads.

Our planet, sits in a small galaxy called the milky way. This galaxy is 100,000 light years in diameter. A light year is roughly 9 trillion KM. Or the distance light travels in a year. This galaxy is also small. It houses 200 billion stars, of which 80% of atleast 1 planet. 30% are said to have 2 or more planets. Earth, a small blue planet, not very complex at all. A lot of the planets in our own solar system are more complex. Now, seeing as we can observe a estimation of 185 billion other galaxies(mainly we can't count that many, and some would turn out to be just quasars etc, they had computers count to make the estimate). Now when they made the equation for life to start, people said it was near impossible for it to start. However there was still a chance. From what we see now about the universe, is that the equation was wrong, but even if the equation was right, which turn out to be 1/2.34*10^65 chance of happening by itself. Even then there are thousands of chances for life to start, just by taking the number of planets with the ability to support life. Even though the equation was wrong, it did not count for some major factors. Now think about that, we have all this scenary, and you do not want to go to any of it? You think, if there was a god he made it for no reason? If god existed, and made all this, either he intended to make more life on other planets or is giving us a chance to go and explore towards other planets.
I do not know about you, but I want to see whats out there. I want to know how the universe started, without just believing a unproven hypothesis that it was snapped into existence by a genie. If you do not want to know whats out there thats fine. Just don't discredit any findings we find out there, just because you didn't want people up there in the first place.

Life is vastly complex and the Earth is undoubtedly the most complex planet known to us. Why? One simple answer, life, and us as human beings. Even the head of the Human Genome Project believes in God (or an equivalent force) due to the extreme complexity and sheer enormity of life and its processes. My views regarding the origin and meaning of life are not confined to scientific theories or religious dogmas. I seek the middle ground and I have already explained my views in other threads. Question how you knew all of the above, observe the theories and the processes that led to their discovery. Once you know the many facets of scientific and religious processes down to how the theories and discoveries were made, you can see where the holes are and where there is solid proof.

Don't try to put that god in any religion though, because then you are insane.
Try to have some respect for people who believe in God or religion, just because they do not agree with you does not make them stupid. I think that I am proof enough of that.

I am not personally attacking you, but please for future reference, post appropriately. And for the record, I will debate what you have to say quote for quote if I feel like it, you reserve the same right as well. Get back to the topic!!!

[James Cizuz]

This is quite amusing. Instead of noticing the entire picture, you are only focusing on a few minute details. Like the fact that money directly in the hands of people causes all sorts of problems. This is not a truth. It is a possibility, but to state it as fact is utterly ignorant. How do you suppose the people who impart knowledge or work for free to build homes get their goods, materials, travel, livelihood, etc. in order? I'll give you a hint: they pay for it!!!! You said yourself that they need money for travel fees and other expenses, so why are you saying I am wrong. I am not saying that the money in the space program should just be lackadaisically distributed to any Joe or Jane, but that it should be channeled through the appropriate organizations or people for other purposes that directly benefit mankind, like how other humanitarian organizations accomplish their goals. You are making an issue of a non-issue.

Sorry to say it is a truth. Their are bad people in this world. These people do not care for the lower class. These people, go into small villages and try and take everything they have, money wise. Do you suggest we make it worse, and give them money so they have it just taken off them?
Also btw, I am going to be volunteering this summer in africa. I have to pay my flight over there, and if I choose to live in a hotel I have to pay for that also. The rules we have are we are not aloud to bring money with us, give it to people, or buy them anything. Why? Same reason I posted. We will be building homes, teaching them basic things like building, fishing, irigation, making tools etc. We however do this with no money(Unless you count our tools as money). We do have, as they told us people who come with us, military helpers. Just incase you know, something comes up we and the village are protected. It's true I will be paying around 5,000$ for my 2 month stay, however I don't have to pay this, I just want to help, and also have something close to home to live in. Instead of living in a small hut we make. So, the bare minimium is the 800$ for the flight. However, thats not money going to them, just help.

Calm down! Self control is a beautiful thing. I am simply using the word "doomsday" to refer to an environmental or planetary catastrophe, which would be the primary reason we would have to colonize space because of. Not everything has to be religious in connotation, just because I used the term "doomsday" does not mean I'm using it religiously.

Never said doomsday was religious. Simply said we ****ed the planet and can not reverse it. We need to find new places to live. Thats all, we can continue to live here but life will continue to get harder, in the sense of weather and such.

True, it is the closest planet that could possibly support life, but there are a plethora of problems we have to deal with before that could even possibly occur since we cannot even create a proper self-sustaining ecosystem on Earth. Logistics, costs, fuel, time to arrival, etc. are only a few of the issues dealing with travel there alone. Colonizing the planet is a whole other can of worms. The engineering feat alone of a small compound would be extremely costly and difficult; creating a self-sustaining city is just a dream that will never become a reality.

Time of arrival is with our space programs now does infact take long. Did I suggest right away? When I said soon as possible, we first need a place to live. Our technology can not change the atomosphere on mars to liveable. Not in a short ammount of time anyway. I said we should first make a place to live, make sure it works, then send people over to see if it will work. Thats all. Also, new theories on space travel, if proven true will allow us to travel at 10%-120% the speed of light. Also Albert Eintsein was wrong, you can move faster then light. They found out he was wrong when they finally measure the speed of gravity. Which is between 2-35 times the speed of light. To fast to get a precise measurment, but between 2, and 35 times the speed of light. However the friction in space would tear apart any object we could send in space at the speed of light, and when we do figure out how to make it go just as fast, or faster were going to need to figure out how to shield it.

Then stop going off-topic and start posting in the appropriate threads. Or if one does not exist, then start one, I will be by very quickly ;). This topic had nothing to do with religion, so not missing a beat, you decided to turn it into one. The purpose of a debate is to debate, so if you say something, even if it is not appropriate to the topic at hand, I will respond to it in passing before addressing the main topic.

It's not off topic. I said one of the biggest reasons I want people to go into outer space, other then survival of our species is that it proves religion wrong. Not god, god could exist, but I don't believe becuase no evidence supports the idea, or existence of god. However religions are easy to disprove. Thats all. You did not have to jump on it.

Wow, you are really off-topic! But, congratulations for being smart enough to realize that the boat would never hold 20 billion animals. I am surprised you have never heard of an allegory. Posting this "opinion" of yours in this thread just confirms the suspicions of Nathan and I that you are out to ironically start a Crusade against religion one thread at a time ignoring all forum etiquette while you are at it.

I should not say it, however you started it. I said why it's important to me and you went off accusing me of always making it a debate on religion. Then you said how I was wrong, tempting me to post again.
Also, I know Richard Dawkins is a very smart man. However I still think he is a douche just for the records. Not that I think hes wrong, I just hate the way he talks.
Oh, and yeah you are right, I am against religion and would like nothing more then to see it go away. However I do not respect anyone who believe in any religion, actually I think they need serious help. I do respect there right to continue believing in what they want, proven wrong or not it's there right and I would never take it away. I just don't respect there views, I am sure they don't respect mine. I can tell they don't, since they always say i'm going to some fictious hell.

Actually I think that the planet is even older than most estimates claim (they are not proven, claiming anything as proven is wrong, but I am not going to go over formal proofs with you). As for your other points, I have exhaustively covered them in other threads.

True, kind of. Except, the estimates are not estimates. We used around, 15 different dating methods on rocks, and found that they were between 4.2-4.8 billion years old. Different methods all pointed to an average of 4.5 billion years old. So, at the very least the planet is around 4 billion years old, however the planet could be much older. The rocks we tested could not be the oldest as we thought they were. Also, highly unlikly but those rocks could of also been pieces of other planets, and earth itself be younger. However unlikely, since they did these tests on thousands of samples, in many different areas.

Life is vastly complex and the Earth is undoubtedly the most complex planet known to us. Why? One simple answer, life, and us as human beings. Even the head of the Human Genome Project believes in God (or an equivalent force) due to the extreme complexity and sheer enormity of life and its processes. My views regarding the origin and meaning of life are not confined to scientific theories or religious dogmas. I seek the middle ground and I have already explained my views in other threads. Question how you knew all of the above, observe the theories and the processes that led to their discovery. Once you know the many facets of scientific and religious processes down to how the theories and discoveries were made, you can see where the holes are and where there is solid proof.

I guess I don't see life as you. I am un-bais when it comes to life. Most people are bais, when we see something complex on a species, we judge all other species of animals based on that. That is why people get the precept that we are quite complex. However, when you break it down, we thinks humans are the most complex right?
- Although humans have some of the worst eyesight.
- Humans have some of the worst ears.
- Humans are built rather odd, our structure degrades as we age because of the shape. To much preasure on joints.
- We are quite weak muscle wise on average compared to other animals. Even our muscle structure is quite weal, animals with smaller muscles are more powerful because the muscles work different.
- We are not very fast, or built to go fast.
- We do not have much of a immunity against disease. However we compensate with our medical advancments.
- Our reproductive system is very poor. We have one of the highest rates of losing our childern from it, but with our medical advancments we compensate.
- Our sewage system is horrible. It invites disease, and other problems. Not even a retarded monkey would ever think of designing it like that.
- The only think we reall have going for us, is our brains. Our ever increasing knowledge and brain power. However our brain organ takes much more blood, and oxygen then it should. It is increasing slowly in size, this is why in the last 3000 years we no longer need our wisdom teeth. It takes much needed oxygen from our muscles making us yet again weaker in sense to what we could be. Yet our brain power has served us better then any trate. It seems to be the king of trates, why need muscles when we have something no animal can stop? Technology. When we invented the bullet, we became the ruler of the world with that one invention. No animal could withstand it. Even before then we invented stuff that no animal could withstand, if we could not overpower it, we overthought it. We became weaker, but smarter. Also, when people thought up with little green men look like, I bet in a few hundred thousand years, we will look somewhat simliar. Smaller, weaker, smarter.
Take all those points look at them bais, and you get a conclusion. We are not that advanced a life form. Unless you judge by intelligence, and even then we would only be the most intelligant thing we know of. If evolution happened a different way, it could of turned out a lot different, more intelligence, perhaps more muscle less intelligence. Perhaps if evolution is taking place of other planets, which it is, and started before us. Then intelligence could be far more superior. You are quite bais in thinking our planet is complex just because it has life on it. Because it has life? That means, at the least the only thing I could agree is we have the most complex life of any planet we know of. Or think we do.
Take it this way, if evolution never started on planet earth, CO2, and the little water we had on the planet(traped in steam, because the CO2 would be something like the ammount on venus) and the tempeture was around 200 degrees C. Evolution started, started converting the CO2 into oxygen. That oxygen started combining with hydrogen in the air making more water. This also in turn took more CO2 our of the air for the bacteria to live, making the earth cool. This caused great changes, now that oxygen was more abundent, and water, new bacteria started to form. Water started covering the planet. More and more, and more. The earth changed shape. It began to change more and more, till we get something like today. Even if you took all the life off this planet and looked at it, it would still look complex. However go back to the begining, stop evolution, jump ahead, and guess what? Earth would look, prolly like venus, or mars, or a combination of both. This is what I mean by being bais. I can look at the planet for what it should be, not what it is because life changed it. This world was not made for us, this world is not perfect for us. Actually we change the world to suit us, we shaped the world to be perfect for us. We grew with the world.
Planets like venus, are very simliar to when they were made. This means we don't have to be bais about it, we can look at it and know this is what the planet was, and is now. Our earth is much harder to say that.
Try to have some respect for people who believe in God or religion, just because they do not agree with you does not make them stupid. I think that I am proof enough of that.

Fine, they don't agree. Does not mean I can't call them a moron. Or I do not respect there decesion. Say, if you are a serial killer and think it's right, should I respect you? Just because they think killing is ok, and I should respect them because there not "stupid".
Btw, i'm not say religions are serial killers. Basically what you were saying was respect their decesion because they made it and are not stupid for it. I always say, believe in a god fine. I can see how your not stupid there. Even though there is no evidence for god, you can believe because you can't see how we could exist without a god. Or that god can not be proven to not exist(unless you count no evidence for his existance, which is the same as evidence against).
However for me, I am an atheist. Thats not a religion btw. When people take god, then try and put god in a certain religion. I get angry, not only did these people not pick the religion by themselves(most had it forced upon them when they were childern, unable to know the difference. Or just took the majority.) when their religion depicts god as evil, and dumb. Dumb in the sense that if he created earth hes a moron, since he messed up a lot. Not only that but how can they possibly say their religion is right when there are hundreds, no... thousands of other religions. Thing is they can't. This causes almost every war to date. Even most wars that started for other reasons turned out to continue because of religion. I just can't respect that. I can respect them believing in god, but I can not respect them believing in any religion. I can respect myself because I do not claim to be right, or claim I am 100% right, I just claim I do not believe because of the evidence. Here is my evidence, where is yours? Even then I give them the benifit of the doubt and say I still may not be right.
I do respect their decesion for a religion. It is their right. However they won't get respect out of me, or pretty much(if your a christian) 4/5ths of the world. Simply because no religion is the majority of the planet. 1.3 billion people on this planet are atheist/secular/agnostic(agnostics also make me mad). 2 billion are christians, and 1.4 are islamic. Rest are different religions.
Why do agnostics make me mad? Because agnostic, is not a term to describe full belief. It's a starting term. I myself am an agnostic atheist. I hate people who claim to be only agnostic. That is impossible. Then when they try to say why they are only agnostic, they give the wrong definition. Agnostic simply means without knowledge, or without absolute knowledge. I simply say, "I have no way absolutely that god does not exist, or claim absolute knowledge god does not exist, however with the evidence presented I choose the side with more evidence, and that side is the side of non-existence, which makes me not believe. However I still admit I may be wrong".
There is also Gnostic. Which means your a moron if your gnostic. Some atheists are Gnostic, I call them morons. However most atheists are agnostic. Isn't it funny most atheists are agnostic, while most religious are gnostic? Simply put a gnostic person would say "I know there is a god, nothing you can do can change that, simply because you can not prove there is not god, and there is." same can be said for the gnostic atheists. This is a horrible way to describe ones self. It's like inviting people to call you a moron. Also, yes a lot of religious people are agnostic, however I think they want to believe so bad, that most become gnostic and deny anything and everything.

Edit: What I meant about agnostics claiming to only be agnostic is this. If you claim there is no way of knowing fine. However you have to believe one way or the other, you can believe, like me, no way of knowing. However you still have to have your mind, or thoughts drift one way or the other. You can't not believe, and believe at the same time. Thats is really, impossible actually.

I am not personally attacking you, but please for future reference, post appropriately. And for the record, I will debate what you have to say quote for quote if I feel like it, you reserve the same right as well. Get back to the topic!!!
I'll try. How about, on any new threads made, if I see you make a religious claim, or me make a religious claim either way just ignore it? I'll agree to that. Any threads prior to this agreement we can still argue, just because I think you want to address some points I made. Even in this post.

[II Xion II]

Sorry to say it is a truth. Their are bad people in this world. These people do not care for the lower class. These people, go into small villages and try and take everything they have, money wise. Do you suggest we make it worse, and give them money so they have it just taken off them?
Also btw, I am going to be volunteering this summer in africa. I have to pay my flight over there, and if I choose to live in a hotel I have to pay for that also. The rules we have are we are not aloud to bring money with us, give it to people, or buy them anything. Why? Same reason I posted. We will be building homes, teaching them basic things like building, fishing, irigation, making tools etc. We however do this with no money(Unless you count our tools as money). We do have, as they told us people who come with us, military helpers. Just incase you know, something comes up we and the village are protected. It's true I will be paying around 5,000$ for my 2 month stay, however I don't have to pay this, I just want to help, and also have something close to home to live in. Instead of living in a small hut we make. So, the bare minimium is the 800$ for the flight. However, thats not money going to them, just help.

You are slightly over analyzing what I am saying. I am simply stating that the less money put into the space program, the more money available for other more humanitarian needs. And it's good to see somebody doing something for the world community.

Never said doomsday was religious. Simply said we ****ed the planet and can not reverse it. We need to find new places to live. Thats all, we can continue to live here but life will continue to get harder, in the sense of weather and such.

I think we should focus on saving our planet NOW, rather than hypothesizing the livability of planets with unlivable atmospheres. Our planet is not as ****ed as everyone believes, and at the very least, it is A LOT more livable (even if there is global pollution and ozone holes everywhere) than a place like Mars.


Time of arrival is with our space programs now does infact take long. Did I suggest right away? When I said soon as possible, we first need a place to live. Our technology can not change the atomosphere on mars to liveable. Not in a short ammount of time anyway. I said we should first make a place to live, make sure it works, then send people over to see if it will work. Thats all. Also, new theories on space travel, if proven true will allow us to travel at 10%-120% the speed of light. Also Albert Eintsein was wrong, you can move faster then light. They found out he was wrong when they finally measure the speed of gravity. Which is between 2-35 times the speed of light. To fast to get a precise measurment, but between 2, and 35 times the speed of light. However the friction in space would tear apart any object we could send in space at the speed of light, and when we do figure out how to make it go just as fast, or faster were going to need to figure out how to shield it.

I'll assume you meant 10-20% the speed of light. As for going faster than the speed of light, I am no expert on general relativity (and I am too tired to go to Wikipedia and look it up in depth), but after perusing some Wikipedia articles I found out that it is both possible and impossible to achieve faster than light speeds (depending on what you are sending). Thank you, I have gained some more info on a topic I did not know a horribly lot about.

It's not off topic. I said one of the biggest reasons I want people to go into outer space, other then survival of our species is that it proves religion wrong. Not god, god could exist, but I don't believe becuase no evidence supports the idea, or existence of god. However religions are easy to disprove. Thats all. You did not have to jump on it.

You cannot disprove religion because religion is not a unified set of universal dogma. It is diverse and rich in culture, tradition, and history. There are thousands of religions, by lumping them together into a container set called "religion" you are oversimplifying it. Some can be "disproved," but religion itself cannot be disproved because it is not a single metaphysical entity, but many such entities (philosophical metaphysical, not the other one). And my set of beliefs or "religion" easily accounts for space and numerous other arguments other have put forth against it. Easily.

I should not say it, however you started it. I said why it's important to me and you went off accusing me of always making it a debate on religion. Then you said how I was wrong, tempting me to post again.

Lead us not into temptation. :)

Also, I know Richard Dawkins is a very smart man. However I still think he is a douche just for the records. Not that I think hes wrong, I just hate the way he talks.

Define smart :). I never mentioned Richard Dawkins, that was Nathan, but I don't like him either (Dawkins, not Nathan).

Oh, and yeah you are right, I am against religion and would like nothing more then to see it go away. However I do not respect anyone who believe in any religion, actually I think they need serious help. I do respect there right to continue believing in what they want, proven wrong or not it's there right and I would never take it away. I just don't respect there views, I am sure they don't respect mine. I can tell they don't, since they always say i'm going to some fictious hell.

I respect your views. I enjoy disagreeing with you, it gives me something to do in between Bleach chapters and the research I conduct helps to expand my knowledge base. Point-by-point responses are both efficient and easy, I apologize if it feels as though I am "jumping" on you.


True, kind of. Except, the estimates are not estimates. We used around, 15 different dating methods on rocks, and found that they were between 4.2-4.8 billion years old. Different methods all pointed to an average of 4.5 billion years old. So, at the very least the planet is around 4 billion years old, however the planet could be much older. The rocks we tested could not be the oldest as we thought they were. Also, highly unlikly but those rocks could of also been pieces of other planets, and earth itself be younger. However unlikely, since they did these tests on thousands of samples, in many different areas.

I agree with you. Yes, I said it. I agree that the Earth is at least 4 billion years old and common sense tells you that it is likely the oldest specimens were not found. Just like when a hurricane with an 880 mbar barometric pressure is observed, common sense tells you that sometime during history there were storms with lower pressures. The Earth can be much, much older as I believe it is.


I guess I don't see life as you. I am un-bais when it comes to life. Most people are bais, when we see something complex on a species, we judge all other species of animals based on that. That is why people get the precept that we are quite complex. However, when you break it down, we thinks humans are the most complex right?
- Although humans have some of the worst eyesight.
- Humans have some of the worst ears.
- Humans are built rather odd, our structure degrades as we age because of the shape. To much preasure on joints.
- We are quite weak muscle wise on average compared to other animals. Even our muscle structure is quite weal, animals with smaller muscles are more powerful because the muscles work different.
- We are not very fast, or built to go fast.
- We do not have much of a immunity against disease. However we compensate with our medical advancments.
- Our reproductive system is very poor. We have one of the highest rates of losing our childern from it, but with our medical advancments we compensate.
- Our sewage system is horrible. It invites disease, and other problems. Not even a retarded monkey would ever think of designing it like that.
- The only think we reall have going for us, is our brains. Our ever increasing knowledge and brain power. However our brain organ takes much more blood, and oxygen then it should. It is increasing slowly in size, this is why in the last 3000 years we no longer need our wisdom teeth. It takes much needed oxygen from our muscles making us yet again weaker in sense to what we could be. Yet our brain power has served us better then any trate. It seems to be the king of trates, why need muscles when we have something no animal can stop? Technology. When we invented the bullet, we became the ruler of the world with that one invention. No animal could withstand it. Even before then we invented stuff that no animal could withstand, if we could not overpower it, we overthought it. We became weaker, but smarter. Also, when people thought up with little green men look like, I bet in a few hundred thousand years, we will look somewhat simliar. Smaller, weaker, smarter.
Take all those points look at them bais, and you get a conclusion. We are not that advanced a life form. Unless you judge by intelligence, and even then we would only be the most intelligant thing we know of. If evolution happened a different way, it could of turned out a lot different, more intelligence, perhaps more muscle less intelligence. Perhaps if evolution is taking place of other planets, which it is, and started before us. Then intelligence could be far more superior. You are quite bais in thinking our planet is complex just because it has life on it. Because it has life? That means, at the least the only thing I could agree is we have the most complex life of any planet we know of. Or think we do.
Take it this way, if evolution never started on planet earth, CO2, and the little water we had on the planet(traped in steam, because the CO2 would be something like the ammount on venus) and the tempeture was around 200 degrees C. Evolution started, started converting the CO2 into oxygen. That oxygen started combining with hydrogen in the air making more water. This also in turn took more CO2 our of the air for the bacteria to live, making the earth cool. This caused great changes, now that oxygen was more abundent, and water, new bacteria started to form. Water started covering the planet. More and more, and more. The earth changed shape. It began to change more and more, till we get something like today. Even if you took all the life off this planet and looked at it, it would still look complex. However go back to the begining, stop evolution, jump ahead, and guess what? Earth would look, prolly like venus, or mars, or a combination of both. This is what I mean by being bais. I can look at the planet for what it should be, not what it is because life changed it. This world was not made for us, this world is not perfect for us. Actually we change the world to suit us, we shaped the world to be perfect for us. We grew with the world.
Planets like venus, are very simliar to when they were made. This means we don't have to be bais about it, we can look at it and know this is what the planet was, and is now. Our earth is much harder to say that.

Earth IS the most complex planet we know of because of us. And although we are far from perfect, the very fact that I am able to type this message to you and we able to debate it is proof enough of its complexity. Simplifying things down to H2 and 02 combine to create water and water slowly changed its shape is all fine and good for a child's textbook perspective of life (I am not personally referring to you, but just the perspective), but life is dynamic and EXTREMELY COMPLEX. We hardly know anything about the brain and its diverse functions and relationships to possibly metaphysical (philosophy) entities and our own body (the mind-body problem). Yet, we are supposed to know how it evolved? Ontology, epistemology, ethics; entire schools of thought exist to just attempt to explain what we are doing now. The fact that we are debating existence, religion, etc. is proof enough that we ARE the most complex and advanced organism on this planet.


Fine, they don't agree. Does not mean I can't call them a moron. Or I do not respect there decesion. Say, if you are a serial killer and think it's right, should I respect you? Just because they think killing is ok, and I should respect them because there not "stupid".

That's a huge hyperbole that uses extreme contrasts to justify your aversion and ill-feelings towards "religious" people.

Why do agnostics make me mad? Because agnostic, is not a term to describe full belief. It's a starting term. I myself am an agnostic atheist. I hate people who claim to be only agnostic. That is impossible. Then when they try to say why they are only agnostic, they give the wrong definition. Agnostic simply means without knowledge, or without absolute knowledge. I simply say, "I have no way absolutely that god does not exist, or claim absolute knowledge god does not exist, however with the evidence presented I choose the side with more evidence, and that side is the side of non-existence, which makes me not believe. However I still admit I may be wrong".

Agnostics are unsure until presented with more evidence, in truth everyone is technically a gnostic. Atheists are people who reject the idea of theism, not religion itself. You should just call yourself non-religious.

There is also Gnostic. Which means your a moron if your gnostic. Some atheists are Gnostic, I call them morons. However most atheists are agnostic. Isn't it funny most atheists are agnostic, while most religious are gnostic? Simply put a gnostic person would say "I know there is a god, nothing you can do can change that, simply because you can not prove there is not god, and there is." same can be said for the gnostic atheists. This is a horrible way to describe ones self. It's like inviting people to call you a moron. Also, yes a lot of religious people are agnostic, however I think they want to believe so bad, that most become gnostic and deny anything and everything.
Edit: What I meant about agnostics claiming to only be agnostic is this. If you claim there is no way of knowing fine. However you have to believe one way or the other, you can believe, like me, no way of knowing. However you still have to have your mind, or thoughts drift one way or the other. You can't not believe, and believe at the same time. Thats is really, impossible actually.
I'll try. How about, on any new threads made, if I see you make a religious claim, or me make a religious claim either way just ignore it? I'll agree to that. Any threads prior to this agreement we can still argue, just because I think you want to address some points I made. Even in this post.

I am technically a neo-Gnostic occultist (I hate that prefix "neo"), I believe your definition of Gnostic is confused. I honestly enjoy arguing with you, just try (try....) to avoid making religious issues out of some of these topics and I will not be tempted in the moment to rebut them. If you make the appropriate threads I would love to argue them with you.

[James Cizuz]

You are slightly over analyzing what I am saying. I am simply stating that the less money put into the space program, the more money available for other more humanitarian needs. And it's good to see somebody doing something for the world community.
I think we should focus on saving our planet NOW, rather than hypothesizing the livability of planets with unlivable atmospheres. Our planet is not as ****ed as everyone believes, and at the very least, it is A LOT more livable (even if there is global pollution and ozone holes everywhere) than a place like Mars.

Myself I'd rather get rid of war, then the space program. How about meanless stuff like government funding of churchs and such(i'm not sure, but in the USA do you still have government funded churchs, I keep getting mixed information from sites. However excluding the US a lot of countries spend to much on church, can they not worship without government funding?) stuff like that. More money going to medical care. Sure, even money to pay people to help. Although something like space exploration, is not nearly as expensive as a lot of things. Heck, they pay farmers 300 billion$ a year for crops that didn't sell well. Oh btw, they destroy those crops instead of trying to bring them to anywhere to feed people that need it. That seems like a waste to me, why not use that 300 billion to buy the crops off the farmers and send it over there. The 300 billion a year is so farmers stay in business.

Also, not sure if it's entirely correct but NASA's anual budget, according to wikipedia is 16.4 billion dollars. Yeah, thats nothing in comparsion to 300 billion spent on farmers, or what about the 427 billion wasted on military. Not waste, but you know what I mean.

I have no idea, it just dawned on me but I use USA for almost every example I can, even though I live in Canada. Huh... Weird.

This is why I see no problem with the space program. Oh, and you are right when it comes down to it money helps, but it's not required. Some people will volunteer for free, some need to be payed.

Also, not a doomsday. We can live on this planet fine. I just said it's getting worse, not better. We can not save the planet, and global warming can not be reversed. It can be stoped, but you can not just make the CO2 go away. Oh and eventually the new ice age will come, and we can not stop something like that, most of our cities will be destroied. We will survive, like we always have.

I'll assume you meant 10-20% the speed of light. As for going faster than the speed of light, I am no expert on general relativity (and I am too tired to go to Wikipedia and look it up in depth), but after perusing some Wikipedia articles I found out that it is both possible and impossible to achieve faster than light speeds (depending on what you are sending). Thank you, I have gained some more info on a topic I did not know a horribly lot about.

No I meant 10-120%. Thing is, when Einstein made these theories, he did not account for a lot of things. Most people have no proven his theories wrong, just incomplete. Or certain parts wrong because of some factors not accounted for. The man was a genius. However no one gets it right the first time, they improve it over time. Thats how sciences works, either that or it's proven wrong and thrown out the door. New theories of moving an a ship are completely impossible at the moment. Most require energy so fast, they require vacuum energy. I don't want to go into vacuum energy, but lets just say inside one hydrogen atom is more energy then in all the stars, in all the matter for the next 20 billion light years. Control just a fraction, and passing lightspeed is no problem. (Also vacuum energy is energy on planck scale, people think a vacuum is empty, but for eternal self consistancy it is required for there to be 2.54*10^99(in about the space between a nuclus of a hydrogen atom, and the electron) joules.)


You cannot disprove religion because religion is not a unified set of universal dogma. It is diverse and rich in culture, tradition, and history. There are thousands of religions, by lumping them together into a container set called "religion" you are oversimplifying it. Some can be "disproved," but religion itself cannot be disproved because it is not a single metaphysical entity, but many such entities (philosophical metaphysical, not the other one). And my set of beliefs or "religion" easily accounts for space and numerous other arguments other have put forth against it. Easily.

Are you sure? Because, like I said I gave an example as to why noahs flood couldn't of, and did not happen. Is that not proving that story wrong? That is proving one aspect of that religion wrong. If we can eventually control vacuum energy, explore this universe, and find out the universe is infact 15.8 billion years old, it did infact orginate from a singularity(or big bang) that disproves almost every religion there. Because if the creation story is wrong, then the rest is also. Although, we have evidence for the big bang now, but it's not enough. It's only observable, and testable evidence. Well background radiation is testable, the rest is observable.

Lead us not into temptation. :)

I guess I can return this right back to you?

Define smart :). I never mentioned Richard Dawkins, that was Nathan, but I don't like him either (Dawkins, not Nathan).

I know, I was kinda refering to both of you. Smart? I would define it as a rational desecion made of sound mind, being un-bais. Also a decent IQ helps.

I respect your views. I enjoy disagreeing with you, it gives me something to do in between Bleach chapters and the research I conduct helps to expand my knowledge base. Point-by-point responses are both efficient and easy, I apologize if it feels as though I am "jumping" on you.

I'm actually really parinoid. So don't mind the jumping acusation. Although you did kind of do that.

I agree with you. Yes, I said it. I agree that the Earth is at least 4 billion years old and common sense tells you that it is likely the oldest specimens were not found. Just like when a hurricane with an 880 mbar barometric pressure is observed, common sense tells you that sometime during history there were storms with lower pressures. The Earth can be much, much older as I believe it is.

Earth IS the most complex planet we know of because of us. And although we are far from perfect, the very fact that I am able to type this message to you and we able to debate it is proof enough of its complexity. Simplifying things down to H2 and 02 combine to create water and water slowly changed its shape is all fine and good for a child's textbook perspective of life (I am not personally referring to you, but just the perspective), but life is dynamic and EXTREMELY COMPLEX. We hardly know anything about the brain and its diverse functions and relationships to possibly metaphysical (philosophy) entities and our own body (the mind-body problem). Yet, we are supposed to know how it evolved? Ontology, epistemology, ethics; entire schools of thought exist to just attempt to explain what we are doing now. The fact that we are debating existence, religion, etc. is proof enough that we ARE the most complex and advanced organism on this planet.

Life does not make a planet more complex. Life makes life more complex.
Most scientists agree the most complex world in our solar system ranges between saturan, neptune, uranus, or jupiter. Just because the varity of weather, strange happenings, and how the planet works. Take neptune for example, neptune is at -150to-200. Yet it rains diamonds. How? Actually this is a mystery no one has solved yet. On these gasious planets strange stuff like this happens all the time, liquid diamonds falling when it is not near the tempeture to melt. Little is known about these four planets, but even then most scientists agree what they know about these planets is more complex then earth. Earth is quite a dull rock, we do have weather but it's quite constant. We can predict it, and it barly changes. As for life, yes life is complex. Does discussing ones existance make life that lifeform any more complex? Depends. You say we are the most advanced life form. In intelligence yes, which matters the most. However almost every other trate we have is crushed in comparision to other animals. If all trates were equated to be equal, then we would be around average on the complexity level. But, different trates are more equal then others it seems.


That's a huge hyperbole that uses extreme contrasts to justify your aversion and ill-feelings towards "religious" people.

I usually use something extreme to get the point accross.

Agnostics are unsure until presented with more evidence, in truth everyone is technically a gnostic. Atheists are people who reject the idea of theism, not religion itself. You should just call yourself non-religious.

Atheists reject supernatural happenings, or god. A godly force, or anything simliar. We don't reject, but are more along the lines of not believing.

Science proves stuff does not exist, by trying to prove it does. People have looked for evidence for god for thousands of years. They have found none, thats basically all the evidence you need to not believe until proven it existed. The burden or proof is always on the claiment. Thats why most atheists are agnostic, we can't say 100% god does not exist, or know for sure. However no evidence is presented for his existence, so we say he must not exist then. He still could however.

I am technically a neo-Gnostic occultist (I hate that prefix "neo"), I believe your definition of Gnostic is confused. I honestly enjoy arguing with you, just try (try....) to avoid making religious issues out of some of these topics and I will not be tempted in the moment to rebut them. If you make the appropriate threads I would love to argue them with you.
Not confused, I just used the wrong examples to explain it. Like moron. Like I can be gnostic about the laws of science, even if some day those laws are proven false. Because as of now they are proven true, you can be gnostic about that. However is something has no proof to exist. Then how can you be gnostic either way?

[James Cizuz]

Going into outer space is worth it. For one reason.
It disproves religion. Not god. Religion. I don't care if people believe in god, but when you try to asign that god to a certain religion picked at random/or whatever you were born into then you have a problem. It disproves religion by proving there is more like, like the bacteria they found on mars. Which to this day they say is not bacteria because they are "10 times smaller then any bacteria on earth". However clearly they are, from what the people who studied them said.

so what your saying is.... GOD CANT MAKE BACTERIA!! ZOMG! knowing that He cant make simple organisms on a planet other than Earth totally opens me up.

Never said god can't did I. I said it disproves religion, where did I say disproves god. If we prove the universe started from the big bang, that still does not prove god does not exist. Maybe you shouldn't of jumped to that conclusion? Or perhaps read my other posts, in this same thread addressing it. Religion is easy to stomp over, and since most religion say some indication of god giving special consideration to earth as in life. I guess I should not say this, but did any holy text even mention another planet and how it works? Did any holy text mention life on other planets(Excluding the insane scientoligists)? Well no they didn't. Most say god made the planet, made life, made it only a certain number of years ago. Most creationist cling onto the view that life can not start, it has to be designed. However since most creationist think also that earth is the only designed planet with life, finding life on other worlds is great for proving them wrong. Life does not like to give up, and when it becomes alive, it will adapt to anything you do to it. We have bacteria on earth that cling to the lava vents at the bottom of the ocean. They survive in tempetures of 500-600 degrees C. Does that not protest to the will of something to adapt? Some organisms survive fridged tempetures of -120.

God can do anything, however your religious god can not. If you believe in a religion, there is no "it really ment this" bullshit to try and make it relivant to today. Does not matter, what it meant when it was written is what it means now. Sadly they try and nitpick. Take christians with dinosaurs, they actually believe it's mentioned in Job in the bible. Because job talks about behemoths. Although no record is recorded anywhere or paintings of the dinosaur found anywhere, when they only went extinct 3,000 years ago. This is what I mean by nit picking. We proved they are 65,000,000 years old, they tried to interperate something to prove us wrong. Also, if you have a copy of the older translated hebrew version Job was clearly talking about elephants almost going extinct 3000-4500 years ago. Not dinosaurs.

This is what I mean, did you really understand at all when I said disproves religion? Just to make sure people were clear what I meant I said "It disproves religion. NOT GOD." see that second part? So don't bring up how god can make simple bacteria when I didn't say he couldn't. I just said any religious god couldn't have, since we have to take what he wrote literal. Also, before I mean what the people wrote, after having delusions of some god telling them what to write. Just to clarify that.

Lets see, if we go to a planet thats at it's lowest level of evolution. We then can observe evolution at a much faster pace then now. Simply because there would only be single celled organisms, and the less complex evolve faster. That would prove evolution right. Also, it was proven true btw already.

Most creationist came up with some bull about "micro" and "macro" evolution. Saying yes evolution happens on cellular level, but there is no proof that one species can turn into another. When this became aparent I wanted to kill myself my head hurt so much. How can they be so stupid? No matter what they call it, it's still evolution. Not only that, but they have no idea how evolution works. They think evolution is some magic force that makes you walk 1,000 miles in 1 step.(Turing one species into another instantly). However evolution works on a small level, small changes over time. 1 step at a time will take you a long time to get 1,000 miles, but it will eventually. Just like small gene mutations passed on over generation will soon change that animal into a new species.

It's become aparrent by just what we can observe, even if we use the old formula for life starting "by chance" it would still be impossible for life to not start. Creationists used to rely on some old outdated formula on the chances of life starting. This formula turned out life had a 1/5.34*10^45 chance of starting by accsident. Thats not the real number, I am just to lazy to find it at the moment, the power is 45 however. However when counting in that we can observe 185 billion lightyears of galaxies, that is the new estimate for the size of the universe. What we can observe. This actually when factored in(before we knew how abundent planets really were, and how abundent planets the right distance from the sun, and abundent space is) turned out that there were 2.3*10^12 chances, from what we observe, using the old outdated formula. For life to start by chance. The old formula creationists used to try and prove god existed, or they were right. The new formula accounts for a lot more stuff, and turns out an even greater ammount of chances.(Although this is just our understanding on how life could start by chance, it could be wrong in all aspects, but it's supported by evidence)

Actually you know what, instead of me posted a 5 page paper about whats wrong with what you just said, in response to my post. Please, tell me how it's wrong. I'm to tired to tell you every aspect.
(not to be a ***** about it but, you messed up on quoting somehow. Didn't you just press the "quote" butten or what?)

[CrushDance]

Second poster is an idiot, way to tear apart the question.

Anyway I don't think it's worth it at the moment. We really need to take care of things down here first. If so much time has passed and we can't get along to this day then theres no way we'll survive in space.

Also I don't want us screwing around with other planets and what not also. The littlest things can change something and we could potentially wipe out a species to be or whatever.

[Guy]

@James Cizcuz and Xion: You two are debating more about religion than the topic at hand. I'm not a mod, but I find that annoying. And James, I do feel you are not respecting religious people. I'm agnostic, but even I feel a bit offended by some of your strong comments in this and other threads.

Back to the topic at hand: the money to fund to space programs should be cut, but not entirely dismiss. We can prolong our lives here on earth by fighting global warming. We are not close to having the right technologies to colonize other planets for millions of people. If we solve the problems of global warming, we can postpone doomsday on earth and possibly by the time doomsday comes, we will have the right technology to bring everyone from Earth to other planets.

For now, we should use more money to solve our energy crisis by developing alternative energy. Not to make more wars or contribute even more to greenhouse gas emissions (launching rockets releases... I don't even want to know how much amount of greenhouse gases), but rather, to have a cleaner earth. As far as we're concerned, nowhere else in this solar system is suitable to have life. As far as I'm concerned, we should solve earth's problem before worrying about the stuff outside of our solar system.

[Habanero]

There isn't really much to debate if you give it a serious thought. The nearest few dozen galaxies aren't going "anywhere", and we have shitloads of problems in our hands on our own planet.

Humankind has been around for a pathetically short time, and we're already doing pretty good job destroying the whole planet, without any realistic means to escape it and continue living somewhere else. But we still continue to waste our efforts and resources on all things unnecessary, warfare being the greatest resource sink of them all I guess. Someone made a prediction that if the G8 countries put their military budget into researching fusion-energy, we'd have a working fusion powerplant by 2020.

Thinking about all the things humankind could do better makes my head ache... so back to the subject.

You can't really say going to outer space isn't worth it, since planet earth can't support life after a 200-300 million years because of the Sun. But that time period is so vast compared to our time of existence that we shouldn't worry too much about it yet.

In short: Yes, going to outer space is worth it, but we should deal with more alarming problems first. (Though, as an astronomy student, I would prefer keeping the funds on space research too :p)

[James Cizuz]

@James Cizcuz and Xion: You two are debating more about religion than the topic at hand. I'm not a mod, but I find that annoying. And James, I do feel you are not respecting religious people. I'm agnostic, but even I feel a bit offended by some of your strong comments in this and other threads.
Back to the topic at hand: the money to fund to space programs should be cut, but not entirely dismiss. We can prolong our lives here on earth by fighting global warming. We are not close to having the right technologies to colonize other planets for millions of people. If we solve the problems of global warming, we can postpone doomsday on earth and possibly by the time doomsday comes, we will have the right technology to bring everyone from Earth to other planets.
For now, we should use more money to solve our energy crisis by developing alternative energy. Not to make more wars or contribute even more to greenhouse gas emissions (launching rockets releases... I don't even want to know how much amount of greenhouse gases), but rather, to have a cleaner earth. As far as we're concerned, nowhere else in this solar system is suitable to have life. As far as I'm concerned, we should solve earth's problem before worrying about the stuff outside of our solar system.
Well I just gave a reason it was important to me. Then he started the debate, I debated back. Fair enough. Also, I never said I was trying to respect religions. Infact I said I dislike, and disrespect religion greatly. Believe in a god? Fine, thats reasonable. Believe in a religion? Fine it's your right, but it does not condone my respect.

Fine, lets use more money on energy. Perhaps use the 300 billion per year for the food we buy off of farmers, that we destroy. We simply buy it to keep the farmers in business. By us, I mean america. NASA spends 16.4 billion a year. Nothing in comparision, and one helps, and the other does not. One that does not is the farmer issue. I could see spending the money, if we did something with the food. Perhaps use the ethonal in the corn, or use the overall food for third world countries. Also does america really need 450 billion$ a year for military?
I agree, lets make alternative energy. In fact I agree so much i've already said it before. Such as fusion, all of our energy problems would be solved there. Nuclear fusion, no pollution, tremendous energy(glass of water could power a normal city... for a year), only problem is keeping the fusion stable, even if it goes unstable it poses no threat as it just burns itself out in a fraction of a second, but if we can't keep it stable, we can't use it as a energy source. This also leads into stuff, such as vacuum energy I was talking about. If scientists ever learn how to use such energy that could possibly destroy our earth in a fraction of a second from a small error. Then should we not try to colinize other planets? People here may die, but our race will still live on.

Your an agnostic? Agnostic what exactly? Agnostic Theist, or Atheist. Does not matter if you believe there is no way of knowing if there is a god or not. You still have to believe one way. Like me, I am an agnostic atheist. God could exist, he could not, however I choose to say he does not, simply because no evidence points to him existing.


There isn't really much to debate if you give it a serious thought. The nearest few dozen galaxies aren't going "anywhere", and we have shitloads of problems in our hands on our own planet.

Humankind has been around for a pathetically short time, and we're already doing pretty good job destroying the whole planet, without any realistic means to escape it and continue living somewhere else. But we still continue to waste our efforts and resources on all things unnecessary, warfare being the greatest resource sink of them all I guess. Someone made a prediction that if the G8 countries put their military budget into researching fusion-energy, we'd have a working fusion powerplant by 2020.

Thinking about all the things humankind could do better makes my head ache... so back to the subject.

You can't really say going to outer space isn't worth it, since planet earth can't support life after a 200-300 million years because of the Sun. But that time period is so vast compared to our time of existence that we shouldn't worry too much about it yet.

In short: Yes, going to outer space is worth it, but we should deal with more alarming problems first. (Though, as an astronomy student, I would prefer keeping the funds on space research too )

The whole universe is moving outwards from us. Some galaxies have already reached the horizon, meaning no light from the galaxy will ever reach us again, and we can never be sure where it is, or send any information to it(at light speed that is)

Even galaxies close to us are moving outwards at around 12% the speed of light outwards. Other then that we are at the same rate, and same direction, however they are slightly off. Most estimates are they are moving 1,500-7,000 KPH away from eachother threw the expansion. You are right about then not being out of our reach in 200-300 million however should that matter? Also, our sun is quite stable and in it's adult age. It's still got about, if nothing happens and continues to fuse hydrogen like it is now around 2-5 billion years. Before we can no longer live on earth, that is.

[Habanero]

Even galaxies close to us are moving outwards at around 12% the speed of light outwards. Other then that we are at the same rate, and same direction, however they are slightly off. Most estimates are they are moving 1,500-7,000 KPH away from eachother threw the expansion. You are right about then not being out of our reach in 200-300 million

Actually, our local galaxy group, which consists of about 50 galaxies, is too massive to break apart by any known force or event. Assuming a hyperdrive is possible to make, they'll never be out of our reach. The Milky Way is quite a big galaxy though, so there should be plenty of planets to inhabit before having to go that far really, but it's nice to know there are other possibilities too.

Also, our sun is quite stable and in it's adult age. It's still got about, if nothing happens and continues to fuse hydrogen like it is now around 2-5 billion years. Before we can no longer live on earth, that is.

That's what I was thinking a few weeks back. But actually even before the super giant phase, stars grow constantly. When our sun was born, it was only some 80% of its current size in volume and it is constantly growing. In a few hundred million years its radiation will be too intense for anything to survive on earth.

Unless we don't finish off ourselves, time shouldn't be a problem anyway. Looking at how much we've come to learn in a few hundred years, I think we should be well able to leave the planet in a millenium at most.

[James Cizuz]

Actually, our local galaxy group, which consists of about 50 galaxies, is too massive to break apart by any known force or event. Assuming a hyperdrive is possible to make, they'll never be out of our reach. The Milky Way is quite a big galaxy though, so there should be plenty of planets to inhabit before having to go that far really, but it's nice to know there are other possibilities too.
That's what I was thinking a few weeks back. But actually even before the super giant phase, stars grow constantly. When our sun was born, it was only some 80% of its current size in volume and it is constantly growing. In a few hundred million years its radiation will be too intense for anything to survive on earth.
Unless we don't finish off ourselves, time shouldn't be a problem anyway. Looking at how much we've come to learn in a few hundred years, I think we should be well able to leave the planet in a millenium at most.
Our universe when started was a single point, singularity full of energy. When it released and exploded it went in all directions, making our universe somewhat like a ball. Think of a ballon, put 3 dots on a balloon close together when it's half full. Now blow slowly, eventually those dots get further and further away. Of course our galaxy, in comparsion to the universe on a ball would be like an atom on a balloon. So it will take a lot more expanding, but we are moving away from all other galaxies, such as they are. Oh also, we are also moving at an ever increasing rate. This is caused due to dark matter from the big bang pushing us outwards, faster and faster. In around 100 billion years, our speed will be pushed to the breaking point, just past light speed where all matter will begin to tear, and shred itself apart and continue to disipate and go faster. No scientist knows if this dark energy has a top speed of will ever increse our speed by pushing, or does have a top speed and will eventually slow down, and we will also. Ïf it does slow down then gravity might bring us back into the starting point, or bring everything back together.

When a sun begins, it eats up matter quite fast during early stages. It becomes massive very fast eating up all it can for fusion. When it loses it's gas cloud, it begins to move into the mature stage. Where it stops growing, and just continues fusing. When our planet began, the sun was at it's mature stage. Around 3-4 billion years ago. This stage allowed our planet to foster life. It's now in it's transition into adult stage, which is not any big difference. It's like saying it's half way to the next stage. Next stage, predicted 3-5 billions years from now is the expansion fusion stage. The suns core gets hotter, it starts fusing heavier elements. The sun expands and lets off cooler light. That is due to the core being hotter does produce more energy, but the expansion also keeps the top layer at a range about the same as now. This expansion stage will effect the planet with heat, but it will still be liveable. It's not until the red giant stage is the problem. The stage where the sun constantly gets cooler because of massive expansion, but hotter in it's core. It fuses heavier and heavier elements. The sun lets off less radiation, and heat energy, but we feel it a lot more due to the sun being closer. Then the final stages of a sun is when it fuses iron for the first time it dies. Anyway other then that, the suspected "plan" is to move our planet every year out a little further for the suns predicted expansion. Of course thats billions of years away, I hope they find a sollution then to the little problem of moving a 65 quintillion ton ball of iron by then.

[Habanero]

Our universe when started was a single point, singularity full of energy. When it released and exploded it went in all directions, making our universe somewhat like a ball. Think of a ballon, put 3 dots on a balloon close together when it's half full. Now blow slowly, eventually those dots get further and further away. Of course our galaxy, in comparsion to the universe on a ball would be like an atom on a balloon. So it will take a lot more expanding, but we are moving away from all other galaxies, such as they are.

The thing is, weren't moving away from all galaxies. "Only" those that do not belong to our local group, which consists of about 50 galaxies. It's not yet known if the local super group of galaxies will be able to stick together, that would bring thousands of more galaxies within our grasp. But of course the overwhelming majority will be out of our reach forever, unless we figure out some way to travel that exceeds even the most wildest dreams of today's sci-fi.

Oh also, we are also moving at an ever increasing rate. This is caused due to dark matter from the big bang pushing us outwards, faster and faster. In around 100 billion years, our speed will be pushed to the breaking point, just past light speed where all matter will begin to tear, and shred itself apart and continue to disipate and go faster. No scientist knows if this dark energy has a top speed of will ever increse our speed by pushing, or does have a top speed and will eventually slow down, and we will also. Ïf it does slow down then gravity might bring us back into the starting point, or bring everything back together.

That's a nice cosmological theory. One of many possible endings for our universe.

When a sun begins, it eats up matter quite fast during early stages. It becomes massive very fast eating up all it can for fusion. When it loses it's gas cloud, it begins to move into the mature stage. Where it stops growing, and just continues fusing. When our planet began, the sun was at it's mature stage. Around 3-4 billion years ago. This stage allowed our planet to foster life. It's now in it's transition into adult stage, which is not any big difference. It's like saying it's half way to the next stage.

That's correct, but the following is way off:

Next stage, predicted 3-5 billions years from now is the expansion fusion stage. The suns core gets hotter, it starts fusing heavier elements. The sun expands and lets off cooler light. That is due to the core being hotter does produce more energy, but the expansion also keeps the top layer at a range about the same as now. This expansion stage will effect the planet with heat, but it will still be liveable. It's not until the red giant stage is the problem. The stage where the sun constantly gets cooler because of massive expansion, but hotter in it's core. It fuses heavier and heavier elements. The sun lets off less radiation, and heat energy, but we feel it a lot more due to the sun being closer. Then the final stages of a sun is when it fuses iron for the first time it dies. Anyway other then that, the suspected "plan" is to move our planet every year out a little further for the suns predicted expansion. Of course thats billions of years away, I hope they find a sollution then to the little problem of moving a 65 quintillion ton ball of iron by then.

Our Sun is a fairly small star and won't ever fuse anything heavier than hydrogen. The developement you described is for super massive stars which weigh more than 15 times the mass of our sun and will result in either a proton star or a black hole.

If you wish, I'll write more thoroughly of what's going to happen to our sun, but it's getting rather late here and I'm off to bed :p

[Striker-tai]

question where is this topic going other than off topic? I personally feel that humanity will benifit greatly from inter-solar travel (extra-solar is probably 200 years off at best). The ammount of recources within our own solar system and the ammount of space is enough as people leave earth the burden of over-taxing the planets recource deminishes, and the earth get's a little time to recover, and at the same time we begin life anew on mars or any of the other solid bodies withing the solar system.

[dragoneyes001]

here's your answer in a nutshell:

yes it is!

if we never developed any space travel and all the technology involved we'd be blissfully ignorant about our atmospheres deterioration and global warming we'd not be making any plans to reduces greenhouse gases and other harmful products. so we'd be headed towards an irreversible problem without even knowing it existed.

[M-50]

I have read pretty much all of the posts that were not too long and I can see that people are clearly divided between the two as it should be otherwise this is a waste of time.
Firstly, space travel is a necessity as was said by SageofHalo on the first page. His quote is one reason why. Others are because of disease, war, famine, the enhanced greenhouse effect leading to global warming and nuclear wars. Now many people have said that this is a waste of money but just logically thinking about it you can see that it is not. Space travel does not cost that much. Richard Branson is sending people up to space for six minutes at a time I believe and it costs $1 million, or ~ £600,000. That is per person and the craft that takes them up in can hold up to six I think. So 6 x $1mil = $6 mill. Obviously he makes profit upon that so the real figure is lower than that. What that is I dont know. But to facillitate the rest of my post I will assume that he makes no profit. Now taking that into consideration every time NASA sends up a space shuttle it obviously uses more fuel because it weighs a lot more and has to travel farther. Then let us say that each trip costs $60 million there and back. That is to the moon. Now when NASA are to biuld the base upon the surface of the moon one estimate that has been said is that they will need to take 300 trips to send everything over to the moon including materials and personnel to build it. 300 x $60 mill = $18 000 000 000. Spending that much will allow us to have a base upon the moon, which will hold upto 300 personnel, will allow space trips from the moon to be allowed and that will cost significantly less as the gravity of the moon is 1/6 of earths. earth's is 9.81 on average and a sixth of that is 1.635. That will allow us to hold more fuel on board the space shuttle, use less fuel on take-off and allow the shuttle to travel further because of improved efficiency and a lower effect of gravity upon the shuttle.
Also space travel is a necessity is humanity is to survive. 1: The sun is only going to run for around 5 billion more years. Most people look at that figure and say it is a long time away. Granted it is, but the way we are going, terrorists are going to start using bio-bombs and nuclear bombs which have lasting effects of thousands of years. So think if nuclear bombs have been used in a city, that city would be uninhabitable for at least a good few thousand years and the area around it for at least the same amount of time if not more. The area around it would be anything withing about a 100 mile radius at least.
2: When the sun stops burning hydrogen, it will become a red giant and the increase in gravity will suck everything until the asteroid belt past mars in and consume it. The extra mass will result in the balance shifting again and the sun gradually decreasing in size.

[Habanero]

You're absolutely right. Money doesn't make very good of an excuse to not give more funds to space exploration and all things related, considering the astronomical amounts of resources that are used on military. But I guess humankind is still too young and stupid to start thinking about the things that really matter... :sad

But we still have a few hundred millions of years to make our leave before the planet becomes unhabitable.

2: When the sun stops burning hydrogen, it will become a red giant and the increase in gravity will suck everything until the asteroid belt past mars in and consume it. The extra mass will result in the balance shifting again and the sun gradually decreasing in size.

I have to correct this a bit :p

There won't really be any noticeable change in sun's gravity, since 99% of our solar system's matter/weight consists of the sun itself. It is because of the changes of pressure in its inner parts that causes the sun to expand itself to somewhere between earth and mars.

Because of the expanding, the sun will cool off rather "rapidly", and the inner pressure will beat the the force keeping the sun's matter together and most of the sun's matter will be blown to space along with the remaining planets. This event will form a galactic cloud of matter which "slowly" expands and eventually blends to the rest of the intergalactic matter. This is not a supernovae, which is a more dramatic event and would require the star to be a bit bigger.

What's left of our sun after the process is a white dwarf.

[James Cizuz]

The thing is, weren't moving away from all galaxies. "Only" those that do not belong to our local group, which consists of about 50 galaxies. It's not yet known if the local super group of galaxies will be able to stick together, that would bring thousands of more galaxies within our grasp. But of course the overwhelming majority will be out of our reach forever, unless we figure out some way to travel that exceeds even the most wildest dreams of today's sci-fi.



That's a nice cosmological theory. One of many possible endings for our universe.



That's correct, but the following is way off:



Our Sun is a fairly small star and won't ever fuse anything heavier than hydrogen. The developement you described is for super massive stars which weigh more than 15 times the mass of our sun and will result in either a proton star or a black hole.

If you wish, I'll write more thoroughly of what's going to happen to our sun, but it's getting rather late here and I'm off to bed :p
Newer theories suggest the sun does increase in heat, no matter the size. This is caused by the sun being constantly fed(Space is not empty, it has a certain ammount of hydrogen in the vacuum at all times, as well as other particles). The sun also recycles the heat it creates due to fusion. The sun is in a constant fusion cycle, helium holds more heat without fusing then hydrogen(since hydrogen fuses at 10 million C, while helium can go up to 100 million C). This slowly, coupled with the more helium over time, the feeding, and less hydrogen cause the sun to get slightly bigger, and hotter over time. The mass of our sun, determines how long it will continue to burn, until it either burns itself out(No one knows why this happens, but suggestions are a star slows down fusion, until it exhausts all resources and just burns out), or will continue to burn, until eventually it creates a supernova(due to fusing iron).

I know why you were correcting me, however I think you should redo your research on stars and other structures, they have changed a lot in the last few years.

[Habanero]

Now you're just making me repeat myself...

What I said earlier is as accurate as it gets. I guess there's no way for you to know it, but your "facts" aren't really up to date.

The sun consists of 99% of all the matter in our solar system, so the small amount of intergalactic matter still loose won't affect the sun's "life" in any way. And it certainly isn't enough to start the fusing of helium.

Our sun isn't massive enough to cause a supernova. My last post describes exactly how our sun will die. I guess that by burning itself out you mean running out of matter to fuse, which happens to all stars eventually and there's nothing mysterious about it.

I don't have to redo any research. I've been studying astronomy in university for two years now, that should be enough proof for my words.

[mooks]

Personally, I don't think we should get ahead of ourselves as a civil society...

When the major causes of death in this world is by preventable diseases... all notions of space exploration and the like seem somewhat inadequate in terms of priority...

No thanks, i'd rather save a couple starving kids than find out whats out there...


First take care of the problems down here before you start looking up there, but hey... thats just me

[Polygon]

Exploring Space is definitely worth it. Think of all the things we could learn. Of course, there are risks but the Astronauts understand that and are willing to risk their life.

What if there is life in another part of the universe? What if we could colonize another planet? Obtain resources that don't exist on earth?

[L'Arc Enzeru]

Yep ! Worth i think

Cuz' we can learn the other things that might be not exist in earth, but not Alien !!! There's no Alien in this Galaxy !!! So although we can't find alien, we still can observe other Planets, star and other things that doesn't exist in earth.

[opusx]

I can't even fathom the thought of stopping space exploration until we finish a war. How about we end the war and continue space exploration. Terra forming is something we must find out if we can do. We must learn about the expansion and movement of ours and other galaxies, we are on a collision course with at least one. The human race thrives and has done so in the past because of our nature to explore and understand the mysteries surrounding us. It is the very basis of what makes us a worthwhile race. Pushing out into space to test our theories on physics or developing new ones will have tremendous impact here on earth. War may be the best reason to be in space, if we continue like this we may have no planet left and will need to colonize elsewhere.

[dawin45]

well recently I heard on the news that a guy "sleped" 20 years in a hospital,so now the nasa guys found theyre live human guyni pig, which demonstrate that humans could survive a "hibernation" proces, so it's worth finding a new place...
they should use clones for that...

[Rihaku]

Low-gravity colonization has the potential to extend the human lifespan by 10 to 40 years, most scientists postulate. Less pressure on the body overall means wear and tear doesn't affect people nearly as much.

[Alex26]

Say, why go to all the process of making a colony on outer space, constructing a "dome" (simpsons style XD) and find a way to make the enviroment "stable" on another planet when we can do it here? Sure, if lets say, terrorists or goverments starts bombing the planet with nuclear armament the earth will be pretty much inhabitable and radiation will be a problem (if its worldwide >.<), however, it'll be pretty much the same thing if we cr