I came across a recent article from the BBC in which Captain Picard himself decries space exploration: I'm not sure where to begin. First, the good Captain smacks of Dr. Leonard Jeffries, who was more ethnically-pointed when he hailed the Challenger wreck because it delayed white men in spreading their filth across the Universe. Admittedly, Patrick Stewart is not nearly so vehement in his position, which seems motivated more by an abstract fear than it is political aggression. And Stewart admits that he is a "wet blanket." Nonetheless, he has a point about the state of humanity; but I think the resources he worries about can better be served not by delaying manned exploration of space, but rather by getting over the petty politics that lead humans to squander so many resources on wars. I see the same problems, I think, but differently. From the advent of man, we have stretched out over the face of the planet, and there's no reason that progress should stop just because we're out of "new land" to "discover" on Earth. I do think we have much to work out before we begin colonizing the Universe, and agree with Stewart that the absence of existing life on a given body is irrelevant. Think about it: spice wars, land wars, mining wars, labor wars, energy wars . . . do we really need to continue it into space? (Moon 44 is an oddball, low-budget sci-fi action flick that deals slightly with this issue; the Alien films ....) The answer, however, is not to back off on our evolutionary ambition to propagate and expand the human species beyond its current boundaries. The good Captain raises an important question, but unfortunately proposes the wrong solution. • BBC. "Trek star's space travel unease." February 4, 2004. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3455463.stm • IMDB. Moon 44. See http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097910/
We won't take our wars into space; there's no need to. I don't know what the arrangement is with space exploration, I mean, how much of a planet can a country claim to be theirs, once they've landed on it? Let's assume that they can claim a part of the planet. Now let's assume that the US is in one part, mining the rich seams of gold they discovered and that China is in another, where they've discovered vast oil and mineral resources, so vast in fact, that they are set to make China the richest and most powerful nation the world has ever known? Chances are, that the US will not be satisfied with their gold, once they realise the importance of China's discovery and are bound to want it for themselves. The US won't attack China's ET base, they'll just nuke China without warning! The same thing applies even if a single country could lay claim to a whole planet that was super rich in resources. I don't think war will ever be eradicated; it seems to be an intergral part of the human condition.
