Inuk's Igloo : The Phun Random Chat Thread!

:hi: LV

 

LV :hi:

 

And now we're not going back to the moon either....and for that I blame BO

 

People are always saying why do we need a space program, why spend all that money with no appreciable return when it could be better spent on the problems we have on Earth. And there are so many problems that the billions of dollars a year spent by all the countries involved in any space program could help to alleviate and even solve.

But, it isn't the human way. And this isn't a social or societal point i'm making. The drive which makes us human is not something we can change, without damaging or altering beyond recognition what it is to be human. Carnivorous, sexual, capable of the basest and evil of all things whilst also being able to carry off the greatest acts of kindness, love and sacrifice. That is what it means to be human. The quintissential definition of ying and yang, dark and light, is a human being. Which is the point.

But getting back to the actual point, the space program. There is a short answer, and a long answer. The short answer is that it's next. The long answer explains the cryptic.

Ignoring the still ongoing, and for me, pointless, debate between creationism and evolution, modern man evolved from Cro-Magnon. But what took us on a journey through Homo Erectus to today's Homo Sapiens? Arthur C. Clarke would have you believe it was the development of weapons and killing your neighbour and rival for something you want. And who's to say he's wrong?

We once lived in caves, but something drove our distant ancestors over the hill. That something was the need to see what was there. In every beginning, it's about finding things for ourselves, be it land, water, food, other people or other life, or even technology. But that is superseded by the need to see what's there, to simply no. It's what drives us over the hill, out of the valley, over the next hill, and the next, over the mountains. A river is there to be crossed, a sea there to be sailed, an ocean to be conquered. And when the whole of the Earth has been walked upon or seen, we take to the air. And when we have knocked that off, we seek what is above the air.

Then comes the nearest object in this massive space, that which has
always been there. For millions of years, we pondered the rock that floated around our planet, influencing the seas and oceans, and not a few humans below it. And so we reached for it and Man walked on the Moon. And then we lost interest.

Imagine that from the perspective of Shakespeare or Shelley. We finally reach the long thirsted after target of centuries of wistfulness, and then we lose interest. We could snidely claim it was the Americans that lost interest, but it was perhaps more marked in their actions than everyone elses, and everything done by everyone in those days was coloured by the Cold War.

But throughout Sputnik, Mercury, Apollo and the Moon, through the Shuttle missions and the Mir space station, one thing has remained the constant target : Mars. The Red Planet, the only other planet in our solar system capable of sustaining human life in just a few centuries of hard terraforming. Oh, we send probes to the asteroids, Jupiter, Saturn, Venus and ever
outward, but they come later in the list. First Mars.

Because it's next.

If we stop working our way through the never ending list, then we stop being human. Medicine, electricity, automation, music, everything around you at this moment, would not be there if we did not utilise that drive that makes our journey ever outwards possible.

What's next?

We owe it to humanity to go. We owe it to humanity to explore space, mine space, colonise space, or it's all been for nothing. For those that looked at the sky, that looked at the mountains, that looked across the oceans, the seas and the rivers, the hills.

This solar system has been waiting for 30,000 years for humans to get it together and get off their backsides and into the game.

Because if we ever stop taking that next step, we may as well have stayed in the cave.

 

Hey.

Caught it this time. :wink:

If you get a flat tire, you blame him.

 

:hi: LV

 

:spy:

 

Obama trimmed the $3 billion from NASA's budget that was to be used to get the next manned moon missions going again. Now that has been shelved.

I used to think when I was younger that I would see man land on Mars before I died...now I seriously doubt it

 

I see you, Mountain Man.

 

Brother COLD

:hi: Miles!

 

That's not his fault; if we hadn't pissed around in near-Earth orbit for so damned long, or wasted all that money on the floating boondoggle insultingly called the `International Space Station` (oh, how evocative), we'd be better placed to make a Mars-shot.

 

Fuck Mars! Its InHabitable. Rockets On The Moon!!!!

 

The ISS. God, how pathetic is that? Or `Alpha`, as was the final name in the hat.

It should have been called `Gagarin`, nationality be damned.




And on that bombshell, I need sustenance.

Catch you chaps in a wee while.

 

Awww

What's happening LV?

But it's big

Later Ares

 

Did someone kidnap inuk? Haven't seen him since this morning.

 

Same Old SHit Miles. Just Working And Waiting For The Snow Storm ! :sad:

Ares

 

Hes At Work Sleeping It Off :sgrin:

 

Maybe he needs to catch up what he didn't do yesterday

 

Snow's all gone from here...sun is out today

That must be it, he was still drunk this morning again