Jupiter moon Europa has shallow lakes

The problem with people these days, is your heads are all stuck in the ground, in the present. Economically, the world might be suffering NOW, but the world can still afford space exploration NOW and any new discoveries could be potentially very important for the FUTURE. It is NOT expensive 'willy waving' (how ridiculous) it is vital for the advancement for the human race. Stop whining about the present, how a cup of water is not worth it blah blah blah and think of the future, and the potential life on other heavenly bodies can be the potential to live on other places!! We've only hit a slow patch due to the shuttles being decommissioned
 
teaboy5 said:
This is one of the reason's why I think going into space is a waste of time and money. I read the link and just thought big deal it's a lake with water in it.

The amount of money spent finding that out could have been spent on something useful.
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Surely finding life on another planet would be one of the largest discoverys ever to date?
 
teaboy5 said:
Space ports really? And you talk about me having a crystal ball?

I don't think we will ever colonise another planet. Think of the manpower and equipment that would need to be lifted into space just to build a small base for a few people to live in, and even at that it would take 20 plus years to even do that going by the way things are done at the minute.
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20 years is pretty quick going in the scale of things.

If the first small steps are not taken at some point we won't be able to progress in the hundreds and thousands of years to come.
 
Ahleckz said:
No we can't, otherwise we'd probably do it. Why must we do it? There are 1001 other, more beneficial things, that the money could be spent on today that would have real benefits for us today.

Ultimately, does it really matter if we are alone or not? It won't change anything. People will continue with their lives and not give a second thought that bacteria lives 3km under Jupiters moon.

Ultimately, it probably doesn't matter if there is or isn't bacteria 'out there'. It will be unlikely to help us, today, here, in any way.

Yes, there are possibilities with fuel and elements 'out there' that would be beneficial to obtain and mine. However the cost/benefit just isn't there at the minute as we have plenty of other ways to generate power.

Space exploration is an academic adventure, and much like the space race originally it is expensive willy waving.
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depends on your view.
theres a great theory out there regarding evolution and where were heading etc (forgotten what it is) but ultimately it boils down to exploring space, the universe etc etc.

why do something tomorrow when we can do it today?
and whilst it doesnt matter now that were alone, it will be important to advance and more so to understand our own lifes and place in the universe.

after all we are on this ****** planet with no other outside contact doing what exactly? living our life not having a clue about anything else outside of our bubble - to me thats pretty sad and pathetic when theres a whole galaxy out there to explore, we are intelligant and we should use everything in our powers to find other species to grow more as beings.
 
We need to find places we can go after we've wrecked this planet. Water is going to be a high priority wherever it is we go.

This is a joke, however in a few hundred/thousand years it might not seem like one.
 
Globul said:
The problem with people these days, is your heads are all stuck in the ground, in the present. Economically, the world might be suffering NOW, but the world can still afford space exploration NOW and any new discoveries could be potentially very important for the FUTURE. It is NOT expensive 'willy waving' (how ridiculous) it is vital for the advancement for the human race. Stop whining about the present, how a cup of water is not worth it blah blah blah and think of the future, and the potential life on other heavenly bodies can be the potential to live on other places!! We've only hit a slow patch due to the shuttles being decommissioned
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How, and why can we afford it now? Why is it really so important? Yes, any new discoveries COULD be important in the future, but there are also many things that could be helped massively, today, by spending the money on Earth.
It isn't vital for the advancement of the human race at all. I'm not even sure why you think that it will.
I'm not whining about the present, I'm stating that there are many many many problems on the planet today that could easily be resolved through the allocation of funds that States are wasting on a unnecessary space programme.
We may colonise in the future, hundreds of years from now on, but right now it isn't necessary nor possible.
 
Some people just don't seem to understand science. I can never be unimportant because it is humanity, it is the embodiment of all that is good about us - our curiosity, our desire to learn and to know the truth. Finding living bacteria on a planet other than our own would be huge. Finding multi-cellular organisms would be out of this world :p

Sadly we don't currently have the technology to get an autonomous craft capable of getting through several miles of ice and broadcasting lots of sensor data back to Earth, but maybe that's because it hasn't been a priority. Maybe this will spark interest :)
 
greywolf said:
Eh...

There maybe life present there which is a very big deal.

.
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its not going to make a difference to anyone's life, it may be interesting however we are so far from being able to colonise other planets there is not much point exploring them to any degree, we cannot even get to the moon easily...

even though I find it very interesting we should totally forget about going to any planet for now and concentrate on the moon, once we people living on the moon and being able to do something productive maybe then explore the outer planets with a view to exploiting their resources
 
PermaBanned said:
Some people just don't seem to understand science. I can never be unimportant because it is humanity, it is the embodiment of all that is good about us - our curiosity, our desire to learn and to know the truth. Finding living bacteria on a planet other than our own would be huge. Finding multi-cellular organisms would be out of this world :p

Sadly we don't currently have the technology to get an autonomous craft capable of getting through several miles of ice and broadcasting lots of sensor data back to Earth, but maybe that's because it hasn't been a priority. Maybe this will spark interest :)
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I understand science very well, and space greatly excites me. But I think it's hard to justify how it is anything but an academic adventure that will provide us with some interesting facts but will do little to change or benefit our lives on Earth.
 
Yes, that would be fine if we had limitless cash reserves. We don't however, and it would be better to spend the limited money that we do have on programmes that would deliver real, benefical results rather than igniting billions of dollars of rocket fuel on a hunch.
 
PermaBanned said:
Finding multi-cellular organisms would be out of this world :p

:)
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we could use the money on things that will make the lives of people better? on technology to feed people, or if we must explore space we should be looking at projects designed to get us onto the moon and make a viable base / colony there...

I admit be very exciting if alien fish were in the sea, but thats gonna make no difference to anyone's life on this planet for 100's of years
 
It's not about money. And it's not about going because you think you're going to find something specific. If you did then there would be little need to go. It's about going to find out what's there. I'll just leave this here:

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As Hank Green likes to say, there are two ways to make the world a better place. The first is to decrease suck, and the second is to increase awesome. Space exploration does do more of the first than most people realize, but by god is it the best way we have to do the second, and if we don't improve that then we will stagnate as a species, caring about nothing more than our continued survival. And correct me if i'm wrong, but isn't that the definition of a zombie?
 
That graph is stupid. Pretty much everyone has a military, and a military is important. Not everyone has a space programme, nor does anyone really need one (beyond geostationary satelites).
 
proving the existence of extra terrestrial life is one of the man kinds most important endeavours. To know that "we are not alone" might just be the biggest discovery of our generation, and it's within our grasp. It suggests that ANY planet which harbours a similar environment to our own, of which there are many, have a very high likelihood of complex, potentially intelligent, life.

B@
 
PermaBanned said:
You don't think there's something wrong with that?
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I think that money could be cut from arms budgets around the World, but I think that a arms budget and army is essential to almost every country in the World. I don't believe that space exploration for the purposes described in this thread is entirely necessary. And where it is, then private companies should pick up the bill.
 
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