Carl Sagan, one of the thinkers I admire most in the history of literature and science, wrote quite a bit about the pros and cons of space exploration, particularly in light of the problems we face here on our home planet. Pale Blue Dot is a good place to start for anyone who wants to read his thoughts on the matter.

From the book's introduction ("Wanderers"): "That's what this book is about: other worlds, what awaits us on them, what they tell us about ourselves, and—given the urgent problems our species now face—whether it makes sense to go. Should we solve those problems first? Or are they a reason for going?"

Coincidentally, in the paragraph preceding the quote mentioned above, Sagan writes: "No one on Earth, not the richest among us, can afford the passage. [...] There does not seem to be sufficient short-​term profit to motivate private industry. If we humans ever go to these worlds, then, it will be because a nation or a consortium of them believes it to be to its advantage—or to the advantage of the human species."

I can't imagine how excited he would have been to see private industry beginning to invest in space exploration.

Thanks!

In reply to this comment by jan:
*quality

This is a very cool recut of this video by Michael Marantz

http://videosift.com/video/EARTH-The-Pale-Blue-Dot

We gotta start somewhere.>> ^rougy:

Carl Sagan, optimist.

This video has been declared a duplicate by the original submitter; transferring votes to the original video and killing this dupe - dupeof declared by Throbbin.

*dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/EARTH-The-Pale-Blue-Dot

great video, sorry though it's a dupe

http://videosift.com/video/EARTH-The-Pale-Blue-Dot

>> ^Ryjkyj:

Alright, I have dibs on the palebluedot channel when I get my diamond.


I'll vote for that.

Successfully processed your "amazon" invocation - view all Amazonized posts here

You have been awarded 1 Power Point for fixing the embed code for Dead Pool video Remix: The pale blue dot - Carl Sagan. Thank you for helping maintain VideoSift's reliability.

Boring video but upvoting because I think Carl Sagan is one of the most brilliant men of our time, particularly in his ability to make knowledge exciting to dummies like me. Read "Pale Blue Dot," it's beautiful and inspiring.

I never like those 5 videos being my top ones. But anyways, here is a list of top videos from people that are no longer active (or as active as before) and are great videosifters

plastiquemonkey

http://www.videosift.com/video/stephen-colbert-swallows-a-banana-and-totally-loses-it

http://www.videosift.com/video/how-she-gets-to-look-that-beautiful

http://www.videosift.com/video/kevin-spacey-is-really-really-good-at-impressions

http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Monty-Hall-Problem

http://www.videosift.com/video/the-middle-east-its-not-a-crisis-its-an-opportunity

mlx
http://www.videosift.com/video/This-commercial-will-blow-you-away

http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Making-of-the-Shining-pts-1-4-by-Vivian-Kubrick

http://www.videosift.com/video/Johnny-Cash-Hurt-1

http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Pale-Blue-Dot-by-Carl-Sagan-Excerpt-read-by-the-Author

http://www.videosift.com/video/White-Stripes-Icky-Thump

benjee
http://www.videosift.com/video/South-Park-Ms-Garrison-explains-Evolution

http://www.videosift.com/video/IBM-Powers-Of-Ten-amazing-9-minute-science-video

http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Secret-Life-Of-Brian-Monty-Pythonreligion-documentary

http://www.videosift.com/video/Why-We-Fight-BBC-Storyville-US-war-machine-documentary

http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Fog-of-War-11-Lessons-From-The-Life-Of-Robert-McNamara


nickyp
http://www.videosift.com/video/Bill-Hicks-on-dinosaurs

http://www.videosift.com/video/Peter-Bjorn-John-Young-Folks

http://www.videosift.com/video/LCD-Soundsystem-Tribulations

http://www.videosift.com/video/Portishead-All-Mine

http://www.videosift.com/video/Thou-Shalt-always-Kill-dan-le-sac-VS-scroobius-pip

gluonium
http://brain.videosift.com/video/Aluminum-boat-floats-on-nothing

http://brain.videosift.com/video/Quick-Science-Sift-8rapid-vaporization-of-cryogenic-liquid

http://brain.videosift.com/video/Quick-Science-Sift-14-Time-dilation-is-a-real-phenomenon

http://brain.videosift.com/video/What-NOT-to-do-with-metal-objects-and-MRI-machines-10s

http://brain.videosift.com/video/Mmmmmm-64-slices-of-American-cheese

>> ^rychan:
The sentimental and emotional side of me thinks it's tragic that humans haven't left low Earth orbit in 36 years. The rational side of me knows that robotics are hugely more effective per dollar. The poetic side of me knows that humanity's future is beyond this pale blue dot.

I was just talking to someone the other day about the amount of money that's spent on political campaigning. I said that if we could put politics aside and spend all that money, time and effort on things that matter, there would be cures for diseases and we'd probably be colonizing the moon and Mars by now.

It would be even better if we could come together as the human race and quit dividing ourselves into groups like republicans, democrats, christians, muslims, jews, whites, blacks, etc., then we could be out exploring the galaxy and colonizing other solar systems.

Beautiful. If anyone denies that the Apollo program was the greatest achievement of humanity I will fight you.

The sentimental and emotional side of me thinks it's tragic that humans haven't left low Earth orbit in 36 years. The rational side of me knows that robotics are hugely more effective per dollar. The poetic side of me knows that humanity's future is beyond this pale blue dot.

I've seen a lot of clips on the sift put to the "Pale Blue Dot" speech. (or whatever you want to call it)

I'm tempted to say the I can't vote for it because if you type (pale+blue+dot) into the search window, you'll get seven other clips like it. And that's not accounting for all the ones that are inappropriately tagged.

That being said, I still never get tired of watching them. I love that feeling I get when I stare into space through some hubble image or try to imagine the sheer scale of what we can see. I love that there is so much out there that we don't know. I wish everyone else was as humbled by it as some of you appear to be.