Cranberry
05-07-2005, 08:12
I'm not against space exploration - it's just that I don't see the point of it. How does it help people - seems particularly appropriate to consider this in the light of world poverty.
Fair enough sending satellites up can help with weather forecasting providing the information is acted upon. Firing rockets at meteors is beyond my comprehension though - if's it's to do with the origins of the solar system then who is interested?
If we discover some cheap energy source that allows up to whizz around the universe without polluting the atmosphere then there might be a point but that looks extremely unlikely.
The only useful application of all the exploration so far appears to have been the development of Teflon and even that's not all it's cracked up to be.
I like the original Star Trek, Close Encounters, Star Wars - when it was just light entertainment and the original War of the Worlds but any of those scenarios look like just a good use of imaginative powers and little resemblance to likely future reality.
As I said I'm not anti space exploration and there must be good reasons for it but what are they?
Fair enough sending satellites up can help with weather forecasting providing the information is acted upon. Firing rockets at meteors is beyond my comprehension though - if's it's to do with the origins of the solar system then who is interested?
If we discover some cheap energy source that allows up to whizz around the universe without polluting the atmosphere then there might be a point but that looks extremely unlikely.
The only useful application of all the exploration so far appears to have been the development of Teflon and even that's not all it's cracked up to be.
I like the original Star Trek, Close Encounters, Star Wars - when it was just light entertainment and the original War of the Worlds but any of those scenarios look like just a good use of imaginative powers and little resemblance to likely future reality.
As I said I'm not anti space exploration and there must be good reasons for it but what are they?