In The News

[Bjørn Half-hand]

Can't help it. In other news, Ken Ham is at it again.

http://io9.com/creationists-say-smithsonian-is-pushing-religion-of-na-1566137794/+Mark-Strauss

I love this from the comment section

''I used to work for a book store with a pretty large "home school" section. One book that was never sold (and that every employee made fun of) was Ken Ham's book for kids on dinosaurs. According to Ken Ham, we used to live as one with the dinosaurs-riding them and eating them. Then we sinned and they all drowned in the flood. Yay!

The pictures of drowning dinosaurs while Noah's ark just sails away were GOLD.''

[DoomRulz]

I bet it's worth tons on eBay.

[Topazora]

The office cooler discussion for today is: Manned mission to Mars.

http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-chief-says-manned-mission-to-mars--absolutely-necessary--for-human-race-s-survival-162659397.html

How should we go about colonizing a new planet? 
Having outposts along the way to and from the planet for emergencies?
Who decides what to bring from Earth for psychological benefit such as pets, flowers, recording sounds? 
How to establish an amicable system of government?

Since the population of our species is growing, we need space.  Not only does a fence create a good neighbor, so does distance.   We can try living peacefully with one other, but I think that's a lot ask for a species that is stubborn, territorial and everyone has their own ideas on everything- and we're stubborn about it.  And not everybody likes living on top of each other.  But lets also take into account that humanity is a nomadic species, and our population has grown so large as to make Earth one big habitat, the only other direction for us to nomad to is space.
Though, I don't think we're at that extremely high population number yet, the planet could definitely support more people, we don't want to wait till until we've reached the planet's breaking point.
Make it a point to not colonize planets that already have life on it, make sure the planet is devoid of life, but can made to support life if terraformed.
Well, for one, we need plants and flowers are just essential, we would want to have many plants as possible for a balanced ecology.  They better let us have our pets, I think for most people, animals are crucial for companionship.
I would imagine the colonies are going to have their own form of government.  We can't seem to form a single system of government on one planet- maybe a form of alliance, we're not a single world government.  The idea of it happening out in space is pretty unlikely.

I say we fix our planet first before taking our problems to another one.

we may need to move people off planet before we can fix ours, and we're always going to have problems.  I don't see why we can't just do both: send a good number of people off planet to colonize space all the while leaving the humans, who want to stay, here to clean it up.  It'll certainly make it easier for us to get the planet pristine again when there's not so many people here.
Though, to be frank, the whole environment thing has become so political and a lot of people have their own ideas on what fixing the planet means.  If we put off space colonization in an effort to 'fix the planet', we could end up destroying our habitat before we fixed it, and now we're all leaving the planet in a desperate attempt to survive and leaving it used up and pitiful.

[KirklandSignature]

The office cooler discussion for today is: Manned mission to Mars.

http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-chief-says-manned-mission-to-mars--absolutely-necessary--for-human-race-s-survival-162659397.html

How should we go about colonizing a new planet? 
Having outposts along the way to and from the planet for emergencies?
Who decides what to bring from Earth for psychological benefit such as pets, flowers, recording sounds? 
How to establish an amicable system of government?

Since the population of our species is growing, we need space.  Not only does a fence create a good neighbor, so does distance.   We can try living peacefully with one other, but I think that's a lot ask for a species that is stubborn, territorial and everyone has their own ideas on everything- and we're stubborn about it.  And not everybody likes living on top of each other.  But lets also take into account that humanity is a nomadic species, and our population has grown so large as to make Earth one big habitat, the only other direction for us to nomad to is space.
Though, I don't think we're at that extremely high population number yet, the planet could definitely support more people, we don't want to wait till until we've reached the planet's breaking point.
Make it a point to not colonize planets that already have life on it, make sure the planet is devoid of life, but can made to support life if terraformed.
Well, for one, we need plants and flowers are just essential, we would want to have many plants as possible for a balanced ecology.  They better let us have our pets, I think for most people, animals are crucial for companionship.
I would imagine the colonies are going to have their own form of government.  We can't seem to form a single system of government on one planet- maybe a form of alliance, we're not a single world government.  The idea of it happening out in space is pretty unlikely.

I say we fix our planet first before taking our problems to another one.

we may need to move people off planet before we can fix ours, and we're always going to have problems.  I don't see why we can't just do both: send a good number of people off planet to colonize space all the while leaving the humans, who want to stay, here to clean it up.  It'll certainly make it easier for us to get the planet pristine again when there's not so many people here.
Though, to be frank, the whole environment thing has become so political and a lot of people have their own ideas on what fixing the planet means.  If we put off space colonization in an effort to 'fix the planet', we could end up destroying our habitat before we fixed it, and now we're all leaving the planet in a desperate attempt to survive and leaving it used up and pitiful.

Religion needs to go extinct before we can even dream about colonizing other planets. I actually think colonization is at least a few hundred years away if it's even possible financially and technologically.

[AliceApocalypse]

In the cosmic shooting gallery that is space, you need to have your eggs in more than one basket.

The Sun will one day grow large enough to swallow Earth anyways.  Might as well give our successors a head start on space exploration by putting civilization on Mars.

Alice I was just joking about the Mars being a sole US Colony.  No one country will be able to claim it for themselves.

Riiiiight 

Seriously, so far what we have come up with have been some interesting outposts, space pets, but where it all gets snagged so far seems to be developing a central authority.  International committees seems to be leading the discussion. 

@Topazora, those are great points.  Especially with pets, they are a comfort factor for most of us.  For me, the ability to move or transport goods to and from Mars would be key.   So having transportation and outposts available will be necessary. Outposts that feel like home to a certain degree.  It will take at least a generation to colonize Mars effectively, in my humble opinion.

[Kimarhi]

I imagine there will be a coalition of countries willing to invest in space exploration and willing to gamble on potential resources there.  Those countries will probably form the corps of authority for any colonies established off of earth. 

[KirklandSignature]

I imagine there will be a coalition of countries willing to invest in space exploration and willing to gamble on potential resources there.  Those countries will probably form the corps of authority for any colonies established off of earth.

There needs to a unified global government in order to have an organization like the UNSC in Halo. The current space agencies today are a clusterf**k of independent institutions with different objectives. I can see the Unites States being the sole space-faring country with all other countries serving under their auspices. Sort of like NATO/UN but in space.

[AliceApocalypse]

A collaborated effort is possible

[Kimarhi]

I imagine there will be a coalition of countries willing to invest in space exploration and willing to gamble on potential resources there.  Those countries will probably form the corps of authority for any colonies established off of earth.

There needs to a unified global government in order to have an organization like the UNSC in Halo. The current space agencies today are a clusterf**k of independent institutions with different objectives. I can see the Unites States being the sole space-faring country with all other countries serving under their auspices. Sort of like NATO/UN but in space.

The UNSC is the United Nations.  Halo just took it a step further and used the UN as a unifying agent.  It makes sense but I doubt it'd ever happen without war.  Too many different agendas.

I'd say that the US will ally with UK/Australia/Japan/Canada and any other countries that traditionally follow along with it and under those countries the shared financial burden of exploration will happen.  If other nontraditional countries want to align with the US to do this then I think they'd be allowed if they were willing to play ball. 

When it comes to resources though countries that are rival powers don't like to share.  I can't ever see China and Russia allying with the US in space with their views so different from each other and China being so resource hungry.  Ravenous hungry.  Things like the ISS are different because they are exploratory. 

But I've been wrong before.  Maybe we will find Alien civilization and all of the world's governments will freak and we will unite under a world banner. 

[AliceApocalypse]

Unless we find...

[Cvalda]

NASA's a brokedown shadow of what it used to be with no money. The only way we'll go to space again will be on the backs of corporations, and then they'll just spread their same greedy, toxic shit from this world to space. Yay.

[The1PerfectOrganism]

NASA's a brokedown shadow of what it used to be with no money. The only way we'll go to space again will be on the backs of corporations, and then they'll just spread their same greedy, toxic shit from this world to space. Yay.

"Building Better Worlds"

[Kimarhi]

Maybe they will appropriate some of that defense budget spending into their budget. 

[Cal427eb]

We talked about this subject a lot in my space class. The biggest problem is that the majority of people don't care enough to try to and push it forward as a major priority, so it's just going to sit on the back burner until interest is wide spread, or the public sees a way that it could directly effect their life in a positive manner. If it has no effect on them they simply won't care enough. That's why as Cvalda said, the only way anything is going to get done is gonna be because of some private corporations.

[Kimarhi]

That's because its hard for common people to be invested in billion dollar machines.  If you sent people out there the interest would be much higher.

We just don't have politicians that know how to do anything anymore but spread hate about the other party.