NASA's Vision For Space Exploration is, so far, the only known human attempt to colonise a celestial body. It calls for a permanent human presence on the Moon with a Lunar Base to begin construction around 2019 and completion around 2025.

This all will cost around $16.2 Billion (U.S Billion) U.S Dollars, or around £8 Billion Pounds Sterling which has led to the question as to whether it is worth it or not? The main questions raised are that Robotic Exploration is much cheaper, so why not send Robots? Or why even bother exploring Space at all?

In order for the long term survival of the Human Race, Space needs to be explored. Therefore, it would be wise to get a basic understanding of how to build bases outside our planet and also to educate people on the subject. In the words of Stephen Hawking;

"I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet."

Anyway, your opinions please. We've briefly touched on the subject in several other threads but have not addressed it fully and directly.

I think it's one of the best things we could be pouring money into right now.

Also, thanks for the article on the Vision for Space Exploration, very interesting.

Voted for no idea because I am not that sure about it.

I don't think its totally worth it, but allways better than all those troops in irak.
so rather waste it on space colonisation than on irak IMO

Personally, I think colonizing in space would be pretty cool even if it helps humanity itself or not. I think they should make experiments to see if building a base on the moon can actually work with all of the moon's conditions and such. If they try and build a base now without experimenting first, it could fail and all the money would be gone wasted. But anyways, I actually think this could be a good idea.

Now this would be Money well spent.

Too much too soon.

Admittedly NASA did the brilliance of finding out whether a flaming human skull would go through the tin roof of a Texan farmer, which it will, but I think it's a bit early just yet.

Until we can actually put a shuttle in space without half of it falling off in the process, I don't think we should be attempting to build lunar stations. Unless we're building the JLA moon base...

Yup.

We need to perfect our little Space Station missions before we try anything bigger.

I think it's worth it. Much more than that spent in the war, and I want space colonized to some degree before I die (maybe to the civilian degree )

I'm the type of guy that makes no one really happy. I say just spend that money a little bit everywhere. Spending that much on space exploration, whether a good idea or not, would cause an uproar. That is our money they are spending, so you'd better do something that keeps more than 50% of the population happy.

Anyways, I nulled, cuz I don't know enough about the subject. Good thread Plant.

The Space Shuttle Fleet is being retired in 2010 because it is flawed. The Orion Crew Transportation "Ship" is a design that is much more recent and therefore, logic would suggest, much more efficient/safe. Bear in mind most of the current Fleet were built in the early 1980's/late 1970's, so it is an old design.

We have the technology available currently to build a Lunar Base. We also had the technology around 20 years ago, problem is the funding was never there for NASA or any other Space Agency.

The Justice League Moon Base is crap, lol.

Cma, stuff the population, most of them are too thick to know what Space Colonisation is.

if i edit that e into an o you got my real name

now to something on topic yes nasa should get more funding because we need to prepair for the future.

At the moment, I do not think it is a good idea. Later on, when the United States isn't in such turmoil, we might be able to pull it off. However, I do not think the reliability of the shuttles and lunar buildings are the problems. I think the big problem would be finding settlers. Who would really take a lethal risk, where if they survive they will not be able to see several things again, such as your hometown, friends, family, and other things. Though I still think the DirectTV and Dishnet would still be available

Personally i would love it...

But considering the poverty on Earth and our extreme wealth i would like to see poverty be eradicate and every child put through school (an estimated figure to put every child through primary school is 400m, quite low in comparison to this space exploration!).

After having done this i then believe our human race should be continued into the stars .


RowMac

Definately. We've screwed up the Earth so much that eventually we would have to do this. One thing I do believe we should do is taraform Mars, a.k.a. use bacterias to create an atmosphere and thus be able to reside on Mars. We have spent a current $465.8 billion on the war in Iraq, if the U.S. (mostly George Bush) would have the mental capacity to withdrawl our troops from Iraq and only have soldiers protect pipelines, etc., we wouldn't be so screwed over. Look at Canada or France, they were actually smart enough to stay out of Iraq, because they didn't want to be effed over. Sure, we moved into Iraq because of 9/11 (which I actually believe was a government conspiracy, but that's beside the point), we've already spent more money on the war than it would have costed to rebuild the towers and stand our ground. We should spend the twenty billion dollars or so on space colonisation to maybe find a loophole to global warming. I don't quite believe it's necessary to start now, but in ten years, sure. Once we have found a vantage point in our eco-friendly equipment such as hydrogen fuel cell automobiles, biodiesel, etc. and we're able to save earth, we still need to expand our territory. I do believe we should invest our money into space colonisation and eco-friendly ideas and test them.

You can't buy a way out of poverty, only displace it. It's the first law of free market economics.

As for terraforming Mars, it's not going to happen. First off you need to remember that Mars is an awful lot further from the sun than the Earth and sits at a temperature well below Zero. Considering most bacteria work best at around 37.5 degrees and slow to such a point that they may as well not function below freezing point, that just won't happen. Secondly, we don't understand enough of our own environment to go and blindly stumble into attempting to habituate an alien planet.

Add to that the high probability of there being Alien Microbes there so our bacteria would be virtually dead.

Terraforming Mars will take thousands of years and we don't have the technology now. However we do have the technology to establish colonies on the Moon and *maybe* Mars. If we don't start preparing to go out into Space and leave it like you said, Rob, we'll just wait until everything is fine and then another problem will come up so we'll do it after that, etc...

There will always be big problems like this but the biggest problem is the threat to our Species and ultimately, to every other species on this Planet. Each year we sit by and do nothing is another year closer to our demise.

Well that's thoroughly pessimistic and depressing.

I prefer to wait and see because, historically, every time humans have attempted to do something without observing what happens beforehand, we muck it up royally. When Americans first found Yellowstone National Park, they found a beautiful natural environment which they were determined to conserve. Immediately they set about driving the native Americans off the land in order to preserve it. What they didn't know was that the Native Americans had hunted caribou to the brink of their numbers. Upon stopping hunting them, the caribou multiplied and ate more vegetation which people then attempted to fix, which set about a hilarious chain of events eventually leading to raw sewage bubbling up through the ground in what was a beautifully "natural" environment.

Furthermore, tests were carried out in computer simulations to see if any people could conserve a natural environment. Immediately most people set about making small changes to the environment, attempting to fix every minor error. Most everyone managed to destroy their environment completely. The only ones who managed to conserve their environment were those who sat and watched the simulation run for "decades" before acting.

Each time we rush into fixing a minor problem, we create more. Eventually fixing small problems will create a major problem. That could be something such as making small space bases to preserve our species before eventually putting the whole human race on space ships before time and running out of food and warmth somewhere outside our solar system.

At the moment all we really have the technology to do is destroy. Were we to build a base and eventually move off world, all we would do is destroy a new area, becoming nothing more than parasites destroying world after world. Until we can control ourselves and learn to create, we have no right to leave this planet.

And that post isn't?

I fail to see how building a few colonies on the moon will destory the environment. For starters, there is nothing there. The Moon is a barren wasteland. We couldn't possibly ruin the Moon, unless we de-stablized it's orbit which we shouldn't get into because it is highly unrealistic.

Once again, the Moon hasn't got an environment worth saving. Shouldn't it be put to better use of serving Mankind?

Putting the whole Human Race ina single spaceship is, to put it nicely, stupid. () How big would it have to be? Running out of warmth doesn't even make sense, lmao. Any colony ship would have it's own heating system and renewable energy source that could and would still function long after Solar Power became inefficient due to the low amount of light reaching the craft due to distance from the Sun.

Anyway, we aren't talking about Colony ships, we are talking about our first few steps off of this planet. Around 20 Scientists on the Moon can't be a bad thing, can it? Think of all the tests that could be done to see how different substances react under reduced gravity, or how lifeforms adapt and grow. It would benefit us tremendously.

Eventually, as we do move off of this planet and the majority of the Human Race lives offworld, that can only be seen as good, as it means once our planet dies, we will continue to live on. (Hopefully.) Living on this planet is a huge example of putting all of your eggs in a single basket.

Actually when it comes to environments I just prefer pragmatism, much unlike the rest of my life where I tend to advocate an awful lot of principle. Although I suppose that it's a principle to protect the environment, but still.

I'm interested in this renewable power source to be honest. Considering that we'd spend tens of thousands of years travelling to a habitable planet we'd need an awful lot of power. We have of course got a plethora of wind, water and geo-thermal heat in space with which to power our ships for tens of thousands of years. Even powered radioactively you would need such quantities that such would be almost impossibly difficult without every person on any such ship suffering from radiation poisoning. As such I find that in a vacuum an awful long way below zero that suffering from cold would be a rather strong worry. But God knows, if we have this miracle power source then we don't exactly need to move offworld as it is. We have a never ending supply of green energy. Fantastic.

That was of course a worst case scenario for why things ought to be thought through. With hindsight, most people would find driving the Native Americans off Yellowstone to be stupid, yet no one found it to be at the time.

I still fail to see why we should be accepting that we should allow our planet to die and move onto another. I dislike parasites as a rule.

There must be a first to advance, yes?

For the continuation of the human race, such a measure is necessary. However, I think it's inevitable that the human race will come to an end at some point, so perhaps it's not worth the investment.

this is one of the worlds greatest challenge, it could cost at least $14.3 billion dollars, and everyone knows its a 50/50 chance ,but i belive its worth the risk