>> ^Mcboinkens:

This is so ridiculous I can't even really take the comparison seriously. Not discovering the Americas earlier in the history of Earth was mostly due to our own ignorance. We though the world was flat, and assumed nothing else existed. The vikings are alleged to have made it to the Americas much earlier than Columbus, even.
On the other hand, physics is holding us back in space. Sure, if we learn how to bend spacetime or use wormholes we may have a shot at getting off earth, but it's silly as hell to think it will actually happen within the next 1000 years or so. By that time, we'll probably all be extinct already.
Terra-forming is out of the question, it would be impossible in anything but science fiction, and the only reasonable planet we could even do it to is Mars, which we can hardly get a probe to that worked successfully. Will we make progress? Yeah, definitely. But to think we'll leave this planet is absurd. The only hope for humanity is progress in renewable energy, population control(limiting births, not promoting genocide)and learning to accept other people for their culture and religion. The faster we figure that out, the better off we'll be.
Also, that west wing clip was flat out dumb. Sending men to Mars would do nothing for us but inflate our Space-peen. There is literally nothing to gain from sending humans there rather than robots. It is riskier both cost and liability-wise. The only thing remotely useful would be setting up a base, which would require huge funds, and a ridiculous amount of new research. Plus, they really wouldn't be able to do much once it was set up. We already know the atmosphere, composition, and features of Mars. What would a man do?


First, the issue of whether or not the earth was flat was pretty much settled by Pythagoras in the 6th century BCE. Columbus had so much trouble drumming up funds precisely because anyone who knew anything about cartography (i.e., the Portugese) knew that he was either lying or suicidally deluded. We don't know why Columbus thought what he thought, and we probably never will. Perhaps he believed but could not prove that there HAD to be something between the Western coast of Ireland and the eastern coast of Japan. As for why no one else tried it, you're right. Others had. Don't forget that there is strong evidence of others visiting the Americas prior to the Vikings. Given how many Polynesians must have given their lives to map out the ocean currents that led to the fragments of rock jutting out of the ocean, it was apparently something intrinsic to the species, but no longer as strong a yearning.

And I never precluded the use of robots to get us where we're going, at least initially. I do think that there is tremendous hubris in the fields of science when it comes to what we know and what is left for us to discover. It does seem like there's a lot of space out there, and the distance which once seemed so insignificant to the early sci fi writers now seems insurmountable. I take Pascal's Wager (or at least the fallacious logic that drives it) and say that the actions we must take to get us out there would benefit the human race as a whole far more than it would hurt. To give up would be to surrender to a nihilism quite endemic in the species. Consider for a moment the construction of the cathedrals. Would such populist public work projects even be possible in this day and age? Would the average Joe be willing to start a project, knowing that he would not be able to live to see its completion? If we don't get off this rock, I blame that attitude far more than I blame the laws of physics.

To get back to the present topic, it's possible that the railgun technology being developed could serve as a kind of propulsion, but it seems as if they've worked out the mechanics of the propulsion, and only need to get the scale down pat. They know how to send something really fast, but they want to weaponize it, to better kill at a distance, an attitude that has never won us many friends. As a result, I'd pull money out of this program.

Finally, I cannot really respond to your dismissal of a manned trip to Mars, because it's clear that you don't see what I and so many others see. Maybe it's a simple matter of me being that Polynesian sitting on the shore of Rapa Nui, wondering what other islands were out there. You, on the other hand, would rather we invent some better way to catch fish, or to figure out what to tell people so they don't chop all the freaking trees down and doom us all to a nasty population crash. Your instinct and my instinct don't run contrary to each other, as long as I'm willing to plant a few trees on my way out to sea. What you learn and what you do help me to do what I want, and what I might learn would benefit you and what you do.

Gravity... gravity...
gravity...

you never see gravity...

You never see anything....



We are slowly becoming idiots due to these sort of scientific simplifications. There is an ever growing gap between human experience and the theories we use to control nature, to predict.

Scratch Dawkins and you'll find a man searching for the key to the riddle of existence... and the answer is sadly lacking (even purely theoretical knowledge is power - it too corrupts)


On Exactitude in Science

. . . In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.


Jorge Luis Borges