Planets: Why do we need to visit them?

Is any real value going to come from landing men on the Moon or Mars? It's ridiculously expensive to have men live anywhere but on the Earth. Will the other planets of our solar system ever be of any great need to us? What should man be doing about space besides just staring up at it?

 

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Do you think the Earth is going to last forever? Do you think it's impervious to comets/asteriods, deadly climate changes, etc.?

Maybe you could have asked Christopher Columbus that same question about going to "India" back in 1492.

 

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No theres no real point. You can learn much from probes alone.

 

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Our bodies are not designed for other planets - nor are our foods. It seems unlikely that any attempt to inhabit another planet will be successful. Besides, the Earth isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Doomsday predictions are highly unlikely.

 

Mars is beatifull.

Anyways, one huge asteroid landing on Earth...and humans are gone like the dinosaurs. With a Federation spanning on planets, we will be less susceptible to dangers of this world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98gwaiWmAIo

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I would think that an asteriod hitting the earth would be more calculated than predicted, since we know where a lot of them are. And yes, while unlikely, an asteroid strike on earth has happened before.
No, I agree, the way we've evolved would not allow us to live on other planets (at least in this solar system) besides earth, they way they are now.

I saw a show on Discovery the other night called 'The Universe'. It was an episode about colonizing Mars. They said it might be possible, especially given that scientists swear up and down that water either existed in the past on Mars, or is still there. They also theorized that you could put CO2 producing factories/plants on Mars and warm it up like we're doing here on earth, except it would be a good thing for Mars. Once it warmed up and had enough CO2 on the planet, then plants could be planted to use the CO2 to produce oxygen. I'm not sure how likely, possible that would be, but it seems feasible. It might take a few hundred years for that to happen but it's possible.

One of the commentators on the show was saying that the universe doesn't have a big, 'do not touch' sign on it. We have the ability to change things, as global warming seems to indicate (even if it is on the negative where earth is concerned).

Besides, hasn't something like 200 extrasolar planets been found? Even if not one of those is currently inhabitable, 1. some of them might be able to be modified to accommodate us and 2. 200 planets out of how many, billions, of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy? I refuse to believe that Earth is the only planet we would be able to inhabit in the universe...or even this galaxy.

It's in human nature to be curious, to explore. I don't think that instinct will go away anytime soon.

 

Interesting concept about Mars. But, how are we going to get such a huge amount of CO2 up there? Although there undoubtedly are other planets out there more compatible with our bodies, how are we going to get to them? I don't see us flying anywhere near the speed of light anytime soon.

 

Generational ships.

 

:bugeye: Mars is 95% CO2. Delta V rockets big time.

 

Like I mentioned, just like all the greenhouse gas emitting factories/plants we have here on earth, build a bunch of those on Mars. That will create both a greenhouse effect to warm the planet up, AND will allow us to start planting plants (which intake CO2). The catch is, that until the vegetation/trees, etc. turn that high concentration of CO2 into oxygen, humans would have to wear an oxygen mask when outside, but the atmospheric pressure would allow us to go out without space suits.
They were speculating, though, that this process could take anywhere from a few hundred years, to up to 10,000.

Nickelodeon: no one is going to be paying attention to the words in the posts with an avatar like that.

 

Because. Our destiny 100, 1000, 10000 or 100000 years from now is not to toil over the smaller and smaller offerings of this planet. Well perhaps it is, but that destiny is death and humanity's end. We should seek more. We do this one step at a time. Moon, mars, asteroid mining.....Centauri.

What is good about the Earth, is it gave birth to us. We must not die in her basement.

Another thing I have often said. Satisfy the adventureous persona, the scientist and the explorer. Failure to do this leads to the weapon maker and the warrior. The need must be fullfilled. There are a hundred thousand ways to satisfy the needs of big and small people, but these personalities - very few.

Case study - Robert Oppenheimer. Case Study - Werner von Braun

 

How can we burn fossil fuels on Mars to create CO2 without oxygen - not to mention a source of fossil fuels on Mars?
It seems the advancement of technologies in biology and computer sciences will transform man way before 10000 or 100000 years from now. A scenario of man living the way he does now 100,000 years from now seems very unlikely, short of some apocolyptic event that destroys are technology base.

 

This is just my speculation on this but diesel and kerosene need very little oxygen to burn. The SR-71 blackbird and U-2 spyplanes used a version of kerosene as fuel.
I'm not saying that that's what we'd use on Mars (which does have a very very thin atmosphere.

Here's a little bit of insight from a page summarizing the episode of The Universe: Mars, the Red Planet:
http://www.starstryder.com/2007/06/08/the-universe-the-red-planet-2/

By the time we have the technology to start transforming the atmosphere of Mars for life, then I'm sure we'll have come up with some solution better than burning fossil fuels. You can't just think about the options we have here in the present. I'm sure new developments and technologies will be available by that time.

 

Dragon:

Our ancestors survived the asteroid impact that might have helped wipe out the dinosaurs - why do you think we wouldn't survive now, now that we're that much more advanced?

To make a breathable atmosphere on Mars would require either extracting large quantities of Nitrogen and Oxygen from the rocks/soil, or importing the material from comets, etc. That would take a tremendous effort.

It is far more likely that we would build 'glass' covered structures over small areas, and keep an atmosphere in those 'glass'-houses only, rather than over the entire surface of the planet. Even then, it will be quite an effort to produce a breathable atmosphere in those structures.

 

life can proberly be prolonged by the weaker gravity on mars, the ability to build a space elevator would also be easier. This may allow for big space mirrors warming mars and releasing a (toxic) dense atmosphere

 

A quick question to the doomsayers who wish to only give up on Earth, what resources are on the Moon/Mars?
None, eh?
Hmm...where would they come from then? Oh, this little planet that we live on won't support our life (for long) but a moon swirling around it with absolutely no atmosphere (and thus controlling conditions) can?
Here's food for thought: we can't go anywhere without using more energy than it would take from living in the desert here on Earth. Why leave?
Oh, I forgot, the ENTIRE Earth is going to blow up or get more radioactive than space. Idiot me.

 

We'd still live here, we'd just expand to the other planets too.

 

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tomorrows world doesn't really need that much of a biosphere all it recruires is energy.
Besides domes for the near future (next couple of hunderd years) would be more stable more controlled and less poluted then a global biosphere forced to take in it's own waist products.
Besides the usage of energy and it's evolution shows that it would be possible in time to use these powers to terraform a world

 

Planets. Why do we need to visit them?
As the mountaineers say "Because they are there".

 

There was life on earth before ther was oxygen. If i'm correct Oxygen was the side effect (read wasteproducts) from some organism in the water. And this oxygen was devastating to other lifeforms on our planet. Maybe if they found a way to melt all of the ice on mars this organism can do the same but then again if you look how our planet is able to support life. everyting must be the same. The size of earth, Hit by an enormous astralbody to get the spinning, the moon for calming down our weather.

But yet i believe that there are planets that can support life like we know it.