Space Opinions Survey

[hunter]

37. Humankind is not that special, and we are not yet space-worthy.

At the moment we are not so different from the introduced rats that have severely damaged many island ecosystems. From the environmental perspective we are in fact much worse.

That said, I would greatly increase the budget for robotic space exploration, including heavy investments in autonomous artificial intelligences capable of real-time exploration.

I'm mildly opposed to sending humans to Mars anytime soon. With current technology, and even with foreseeable technology, it would simply be a very expensive and dangerous stunt very likely to kill the explorers.

Instead we ought to send a few extremely high resolution "spy" satellites to Mars and then crowd source the data obtained; in effect generating a high resolution "street view" of Mars that can be browsed by anyone on earth. More specialized robot explorers could then be deployed to further explore the curiosities found.

When the time comes, if we become true space-faring creatures, our decedents in space will no longer be human. Places like Mars won't be terraformed, instead the people there will be adapted to living in that environment, no air-locks or EVA suits required. Likewise, deep space explorers won't be people like us either; they won't require fragile life support systems and may not be biological beings at all.

Ultimately, in this universe, I think when biological creatures such as ourselves "leave the nest" they go to places unobservable to creatures such as ourselves. I trust this universe is full of life, but it rarely expands from its solar system or even it's home planet as an intelligence observable to us.

I enjoy Star Trek and Dr. Who, but in this universe it seems warp drives and time travel are very unlikely.