NationStates Jolt Archive

Should the nations of the world, in particular, the United States, continue space exploration?

*slap* Wrong forum. Read the descriptions next time.

that's okay, vote anyway.

COME< DEBATE AND VOTE!!

the quest for knowledge should always be a priority

yes it should

Wrong forum. Let the thread die and remake it in the correct forum. Thank you.

COME< DEBATE AND VOTE!!

It looks like no one's opposing it...yet

that's one reason I like this game, everone's fairly intelligent

I hope you're right

Space spending has no purpose. What are we gonna do, find more dust on other worthless chunks of rock? Everything humanity needs is on Earth, and because we get energy from the sun, there is no real way to run out of resources. Funding should be cut completely and we should work on the betterment of humanity, not the betterment of rocks.

The betterment of humanity is affected by space exploration. Why would we go into space in the first place? It is not done for rocks, as you so lightly put it, but for humans.

Ok, so not everyone is brilliant. Dude, our main power-source is not solor power. It is sadly coal and oil, both very limited sources. Space research gets us closer to discovering new civilizations that may contribute to the betterment of humanity. Also, if you read discover magazine or popular science, you know about the moon of saturn's that is basically an oil bath.
Research may allow us to eventually retrieve this fuel.

I gotta go, but try to keep people coming and debating. I'll be back tomorrow.

I know full well the sun isn't presently the major energy source, but it is the outside source for the Earth as a whole, and so it is truly the only resource that isn't limited. Solar energy goes to plants, which go to food, and to animals, etc. It's a very long chain. The world needs to learn how to live off of fuels that never go away. If we just start mining a moon of Saturn, we will only hold off the inevitable time when we run out of oil fuels, etc.

The inevitable time? How long does the human race have though? The way you talk you make it sound like the human race is going to live millions of years! And by then the sun will expand, eating up the earth, and the only way humans can survive is if we have colonized another planet far far away, where technology must be good enough to allow us to travel there.

The sun will die in about 4 and a half billion years. I think that is enough time to fix Earth then move to the stars don't you? We went from first flight to the moon in about 100 years... so I think we fit into the time scale.

By the logic that space is just rocks and dust, we should have never explored antartica since its just ice... exploration and curiosity are deeply rooted human drives. The desire to see new things, to find out the how and why are intrisic to humanity. Space exploration and the science that went with it gave us the GPS system that is now used to help find resources, satalite communications, and many other factors in modern life. To say that we shouldnt spend money, time and yes even lives on exploration until we have totally fixed everything here is foolish and shortsited. The drive to find something new, something better is what founded and strenghend this country. Maybe we will find new ways to do things, new worlds and reasources to tap... maybe we wont, but it is far better to try, struggle and fail than to have never stirred from lethargy and remain sleeping and unaware.

when i said millions i meant billions, and now you want to fix earth and then just die?

And we have now arived on the only working argument I can think of. Why do we explore space? Because we want to. Humans care more about the stars than ourselves, most logic says its foolishness, but it doesn't seem to be to us does it? Yes, I would rather we explore space still, and if we do, we can spread humanity so far and wide that no force in the universe could ever touch us. That is the real goal.

Edit: I just want to point out I was playing Devil's Advocate.

The thing is that every reaons why we SHOULDNT do exploration cannot possibly outweigh, the truth of the matter is that unless we get off this rock we will inevitably die (asteroid crash, environmental collapse, accidental nuclear war .etc .etc list goes on). Our only hope as survival of species as a whole and to gurantee that is to spread ourselves in the galaxy so much that one catastrophie couldnt not possibly kill all of humankind. Yes, it may be expensive, yes we could be saving people with that money, but in the end, all those people saved dont really matter because we all die if we don't colonize