NASA - Space

What is the other name for it?

 

Money Pit..

 

That is a very insightful comment. But why would you choose it?

 

Cool. I wonder if we will be able to see little space creatures at some point or another. It would actually be really cool if we could see a planet evolving over time as it might give us an idea as to how our own planet developed.

 

Wouldn't it be crazy if you actually saw little space creatures every day and never even realized it?

 

We do see little space creatures every day. We just don't realize it.

And yeah the more eyes we have out there the better because the first space-faring race that comes our way is going to make us extinct in a hurry and it'd be nice to know they were coming.

 

Well never know they are coming because we "aren't culturally ready". NASA pretty much made that clear to their own pilots and it is recorded publicly, even if it isn't accepted or understood by the public.

 

I believe there is almost no chance, maybe a thousandth of a percent, that anybody in power anywhere is aware of extra-terrestrial intelligent life that has visited the Earth already.

The reason I believe so strongly in our lack of knowledge in this area is that most if not all of the Earth's cultural divisions would vanish very quickly if we became aware of such ETI life.

The X-Files is pure fiction but it points at a real truth, which is that when the wolf is at the door everybody in the household stops fighting and turns their attention and efforts squarely on the wolf.

To those arguing that the powers that be would conceal the wolf in order to maintain cultural divisions that suit their own positions in the heirarchy I'll just point out that a lot of people have sat in high office all over the world over the last century and not one of them has blown the whistle on what would certainly be the biggest story in human history.

Even if you believe that Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and Dwight Eisenhower were all capable of sitting on the same secret you have to acknowledge that Lech Walesa, Nelson Mandela, Fidel Castro and Indira Gandhi all sat on it also and the odds that all 8 of those people could keep the biggest secret of all time from the cultural directions they were coming from is approximately zero.

 

What if rather than a wolf it were something less threatening and more helpful that appeared ... perhaps a mule?

 

It's gonna be a wolf.

If you do the math on the economics of interstellar travel, even after all the improvements in future tech are likely to have transpired, it's an extraordinary sum to move interstellar distances.

Looking around the galaxy can be done at a manageable cost. Following up with physical assets in the places you have looked is just going to be too expensive to manage without a plan to recapture the assets involved.

That plan likely involves either colonization or more likely strip-mining the location in order to power the next move.

Stephen Hawking is right on this one. The most likely aliens to arrive will be locusts intent on eating the Earth, and us.

To understand this better: what are humanities motivations in preparing for the utilization of deep space?

We think that mining the asteroids would be a cool and profitable thing to do. We'd like to setup bases on other planets that might eventually become colonies.

Now take those motivations and make the face of the race that has them non-human and with few if any shared reference points to human morals and values.

 

You're making an awful lot of assumptions - what motivates said life form for example. I'm not saying you're wrong, it just seems like you're way too sure about something you can't know much about.

 

http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2008/08/space_limits?currentPage=all

I'm not this pessimistic, because I believe no generation can look many generations in advance and know what the limits are likely to be.

I do however believe the costs are reasonably described if not absolute in their limitations on future generations.

On the other side of the question, what mobile life does not eat other life as a routine procedure? I can't think of any.

My position just assumes that what we have observed is the most likely thing that we'll see in the future. The "altruistic aliens" position assumes that we'll see something new and different and that what we see will be along a specific vector that does not jibe with the costs involved.

 

Why does life in some other solar system or planet have to follow the rules we know about life on earth?

 

the amount of energy that it takes to travel across the vastness of space is so great, and so expensive (not just form an earth monetary perspective but just from an ability to harness or generate the energy) that it is impossible that we have been visited by an advanced intelligent life form.

that life form would have had to evolve practically at the very beginning of the universe, discovered the knowledge and ability it would take to do so, and then set off right away.

The universe is 13 billion years and change old. we know it takes 5 billion plus years just for life to evolve to our current intelligence level. let's say life took hold within the very first galaxies that evolved, they would be 13 billion light year away at present, but would have been 5 billion light years away when they evolved the technology to travel across the universe. the very best possibility is that they made a direct bee line for earth and could have arrived 3 billion years ago (not counting the expansion of the universe). that just doesn't seem likely to me.

this is a very simplistic model, but reasonable. life is out there, but the size of the universe just makes it unlikely that it has found one another.

 

Occam's Razor. The simplest answer is usually the closest to correct.

In order for extra-terrestrial intelligent life to have different underlying motivations from those that guide terrestrial life we have to manufacture reasons that this is so.

It's much simpler to assume that the underlying motivations of competition for food, space and ultimately life itself are the norm.

It would indeed be a strange world that had produced multiple altruistic life forms that supported each other willingly and sacrificed in the process without eating the life below them on the food chain.

 

That's a silly assumption and it's based on nothing but fear instilled from Hollywood alien invasion flicks. Why would you assume that any alien race to visit earth would be hostile and try to make us extinct? I think it's incredibly more likely that any race advanced enough to travel through space, would also be a much more highly evolved society, including mentally. I think that respect for all sentient beings would be part of their culture by now. Think about it. We've only had space travel capabilities (if you can even call it that) for around 50 years. Compare that to a society that has developed their technology for 1000 years. Obviously based on our current technology via jet propulsion it seems impossible, but who's to say that an advanced society capable of space travel, wouldn't have evolved long past jet propulsion? Chances are they are already aware of our planet if they have technology is capable of reaching us.

Honestly, I'm more worried about some rogue asteroid that we haven't yet seen colliding with earth over a hostile alien race invading. Reality is not an episode of star trek where you have some primitive hostile alien race using technology that they shouldn't even be capable of having based on their mentality.

8 people, really? No offense, but you have no idea what else could be going on. There could be good reasons the public is not aware, it doesn't need to be some nefarious plot to hide the truth. Also if the powers that be threaten the families of the above people, I think it's a given that they'd hide it willingly.

We don't have nearly enough of a sample size to even consider that. You call earth life the norm, because it's the only life we know. We don't know that it's the norm, that is a guess. But one thing that definitely can be applied to earth people is that it HAS gotten substantially better over the years. Yeah, there are still primitive folk fighting for land and fairy tales, but the majority of intellectual society is not like that and we have been moving slowly but surely in the right direction. Now imagine a society that has 10,000 years on us progressing in a similar way. It makes sense to think they would also have empathy for others and have advanced toward a much more global, peaceful society. We are still newbs. Eating food below you on the food chain is one thing, but that doesn't mean these creatures will be hostile invaders or treat humans like animals when we are clearly intelligent beings.

 

If they come it's more likely to find people who can pick their fruit and landscape their office buildings.

 

Right tool, wrong mission..

Because, IMO, we would be better served trying to find more earthlike planets instead of the first galaxy. The "Goldilocks Zone" is what I believe its called. Planets not too far and not too close to its yellow, earthlike sun.

Given that we no longer have a space shuttle to perform routine maintenance on things not connected directly to the ISS, the value of this new satellite might not equal the cost of its operation and upkeep. The information it may provide might help astronomy and perhaps advance our knowledge of T+1sec.

Perhaps if this satellite could be repurposed to seek out asteroids on earth crossing orbits or even look more closely at nearby planets in our own galaxy or star system, we might gain more valuable knowledge in the shorter term.