Re: Is there a future in space travel?

Robert Henderson wrote:
When I was young in the sixties I was much enthused by the Russian and US space programmes. As I grew older I began to doubt that manned flight was more than a a vanity project by two superpowers.

Even assuming that the problems of the incredible hostile environment of space can be reduced to manageable levels - eg the lethal radiation once one moves away from the earth - a great question arises: where are we going to go? To the moon, yes. To Mars, probably. But then what? No other planet in the solar system apart possibly for Pluto would allow us to land. Mercury and Venus would destroy us with their great heat, the gas giants Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune with their gravity not long after we entered their atmospheres..

So, we are left with the moon and Mars, plus Pluto and some of the moons of gas giants. None of those will be habitable other than in enclosed space stations.

Then there is the question of distance. Even to travel to Pluto would take many years with present technology. But even if we could greatly improve on that, where would it leave us? Suppose we could travel at 90% of the speed of light, it would still take us around six years to travel to the nearest star. Assuming we could do that, what would we be likely to find? Planets unfit for human beings. To take just one perameter gravity. It is very improbable that a planet the size of earth would be found that was suitable for colonisation. Human beings are designed for earth and not elsewhere.

Is there anything else to come from manned space travel? Could we mine minerals for use on earth from the moon or Mars? Very doubtful, but even if we could robots could do it much more efficiently.

Space is a dead end except for those who believe that exploration is an end in itself, a representation of Man's psyche. Is that worthwhile? That can only be a matter of opinion. RH

Apart from the vanity project aspect of it, I don't understand why we don't devote some of this exploratory impulse to exploring the deep ocean. Seems to me astonishing that we probably know more about the surface of the moon than about that comprises a great deal of the surface of our own planet (and probably has more economic potential, com to that). Forget about life on Mars; there's loads of interesting beasties at the bottom of sea that we hardly know anything about.

Steve

--


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Relevant Pages

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