I consider myself very knowledgeable on this subject (hence my username
), and I wholeheartedly support it.
There are a couple of things I'll address regarding prior comments:
Oil in substantial quantities is very unlikely to be found in
our solar system because of the probable lack of large quantities of carbon-based life in
our solar system.
Natural gas however, is a different story. For those who don't know, planet Saturn has an enormous moon (larger than Mercury), called Titan. Titan is the only body in our solar system apart from Earth with genuine rivers and oceans. These rivers and oceans just so happen to made of
liquid methane and
hydrocarbons.
(I don't really approve of shipping this stuff back to Earth to burn, you could produce stuff over there instead, maybe 300 years or so down the road).
Regarding my previous assertion that there is unlikely to be that much extraterrestrial life in our solar system, we are unlikely to find any substantial quantities on Mars, if any. A better bet would be Jupiter's fourth largest moon,
Europa, which is home to a massive world-spanning under-ice-crust saltwater ocean, likely complete with hydrothermal vents.
It is a certainty, given the insanely colossal age and size of our universe, that there is other life out there in the rest of the universe, but spacetravel to other solar systems (even the nearest one, Proxima Centauri, 4 light years away) is impossible with our current technology. Star-travel will not be in our lifetimes, I'm 95% sure.
An interesting point is, given the development of our planet's species in a couple million years, when compared to the age of the universe (many billion), it is likely that there are an somewhat large number of extremely high-technology races in our own galaxy. It would be fairly reasonable to assume, given this, that they have enacted what we call the "Earth Zoo" principle: that they are allowing us to develop without interference, probably waiting until we have sufficient space-travel technology for them to introduce themselves. If this is the case, than it will not be us finding them, it will be them finding us.
Regarding space colonization, unless we destroy ourselves somehow, we will have to try it. The most likely target would be Mars if it weren't for it's low gravity (we have not yet sufficiently researched the long-term effects of low gravity on human beings). Venus has an extremely similar gravity to Earth, and is also the second closest body to us (apart from the Moon), but it's dense sulphuric acid atmosphere and proximity to the Sun make it one of the most inhospitable places in the Solar System. One of the more plausible scenarios for out of Earth colonization is creating a large, rapidly rotating, sun-orbiting cylinder which would artificially replicate Earth's heat and gravity.
I reluctantly agree with most people the issue of priority. There are big problems here on Earth we need to fix before we really go all out and shoot for the stars, but I entirely support increased research of most space-related programs. No need to go terraforming or colonizing yet, but it would be excellent if we could at least send large amounts of non-manned missions to various unexplored moons and areas of our very own backyard Solar System!
To do list:
-Explore Ceres, a dwarf planet (like Pluto) that lies in the asteroid belt, actually quite close to Earth, relatively speaking.
-Confirm and research Europa's vast under-ice ocean
-Explore Io, the most volcanically active body in the solar system
-Look for more dwarf planets, beyond Pluto, Eris, Haumea, and the rest of the already confirmed lot.
-Find out if it is true that one of Saturn's moons, Rhea, has rings.
-Explore Titan, arguably the most interesting moon in the solar system.
-Build Hubble 2.0, Hubble is aging quickly and isn't keeping pace with new technology.
-Invent new methods of spaceship propulsion
-etc, etc... could go on for ages, just in our own solar system, and think of the entire universe waiting for us!
This stuff actually all has potential economic benefits, albeit in a roundabout fashion. Nothing increases the rate of technological development faster than space research, apart from maybe war. A large amount of modern conveniences are spur technologies from space research, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin-off_technologies
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