pluto has an elliptic orbit, so the distance from sun is not constant; but the average value is around 5 light hours away

That didn't really matter.

The important point is that they satisfied their curiosity, and there's no cure for curiosity, so to answer the TS' question, yes, space exploration is important.

+1 on that...

We can never quench our curiousity on things around us,which includes the magnificent universe

I think we should be thankful that people are trying very hard to research about space. With the advance technology, scientists can predict if there's any big rock that's gonna hit us..

Are you ALSO part of that magnificent universe?

Cos I'm kinda curious you know, lol.

There are actually many reasons to explore the universe, I'll lay one reason out of a few off the top of my head here.

In all of history on Earth, humans have been the only creature to step into a whole new plane of intelligence. There a lots of intelligent animals, everything from octopuses to chimpanzees, but none of them successfully made that leap to this new plane of intelligence that humans did.

For the first time in history, suddenly there was this new species of animal which could influence things on such a grand scale. Most other species were only confined to influencing their immediate environments, but humans could do far more than ever possible.

Before us, all animals lived and died in hands of nature. Their survival and fate was all up to the changing nature. But we humans are no longer subject to that. We adapted, and we recreated our surroundings to suit us. We were able to prevent disasters from happening before they happened or take evasive actions before disaster struck. We now decided what happens to us, we took fate into our own hands and this set us far apart from other animals.

One of the first reasons to explore and gather knowledge about the universe is simply to ensure our survival. Humans have always been intelligent enough to predict disasters before the stuck, and we know that the Earth is not invincible. There are terrible things out there, everything from comets and asteroids to gamma ray bursts and travelling black holes. As a human, I'll be damned if I see this civilisation and all it's glory go extinct like the dinosaurs because of some stupid rock from space or a reverse-polarised solar wind.

We also know that the Earth cannot be life sustaining forever. As time goes on, tidal pressures will slow down Earth's rotation along it's axis, making the days and nights unbearably long. As the Sun burns off it's fuel and grows in size, our oceans will evaporate and in time Earth will be consumed into the inferno. This may all take a long long time to happen, but it takes a long long time to gain enough knowledge to escape this fate.

We have to explore and gain knowledge so that we can develop the techniques and means to defend ourselves from threats to the survival of our species, civilisation and our way of life. Like humans before us, we have to gain knowledge to take our fate into our own hands.

Do you actually care about that (note the bolded and italicized sentence)?

People don't go to space at first because of those anxiety you know.

actually, thats one of the main reason for space exploration - the eventual severing of humanity's ties with the planet that spawned them. humanity would want to survive regardless of what happen to earth. try looking up the pale blue dot.

aren't you???

LOL

Of course I care! Just think of all that we've accomplished so far, it'll be real stupid if we were to let 'fate' decide that it's time to end it all.

People didn't go to space out of anxiety, but assuring the survival of the human race and the human way of life is as good a reason as any to spend the billions. As I said, we are a species with unprecedented intelligence, it'll be a shame if we let this intelligence go to waste by dying the way dinosaurs and thousands of other species did, helpless to change their fate.

If humanity ever goes extinct, I'd prefer it to be due to a war we lost to robots that we made (BSG) or due to some massive event like the collapse of galalactic gravity. Even then I still prefer the robot death than the other one, I'd like it to be such that only humans and nothing else can end the human civilisation.

The reason I focus more on the survival aspect of space exploration is because we know for sure that the Earth cannot sustain us forever, we need to start laying the groundwork to be a spacefaring civilisation as it'll take a very very long time for us to reach the level technological advancement needed to colonise other worlds and other systems all while maintaining communications links between colonies the way we have now between countries.

This post has been edited by DeniseLau: Jul 6 2009, 12:55 PM

Aren't me what? For being magnificent or curious?

You want a perpetual humanity legacy huh. Hopefully that idea of yours isn't too much inspired by science fiction movies, cos we have people in this thread asking us to "repair" Earth FIRST, before even thinking of anything else like human-extinction-meteors rushing for our planet and such.

This post has been edited by Deadlocks: Jul 7 2009, 01:36 AM

it isnt mutually exclusive you know, you can repair the earth AND explore space at the same time

by saying space exploration disadvanges outweights its advantages in this present times, is the same like putting down the invention of the wheel faaaaaaaaaaaaar back in the past. Without their groundwork (wheel), we wouldn't even have a proper bicycle to ride on, not to mention trains and cars now.

I'm sure what has been done and researched today will be a salvation to our future generations.

Some of us can't see past our own benefit (for eg. putting $$$ researching sexual enhancement so we can "use it" when we're 80 yrs old). We prefer everything that man do, we hope to personally enjoy it (even though we are not contributing to it), rather than seeing our children benefit from it.

---

Added on July 7, 2009, 9:34 amYea, its like a dual-prong method. What if mere "repairing" doesnt work? then humans suddenly find out they're stranded on a dying planet with no means of escaping.


This post has been edited by alanyuppie: Jul 7 2009, 09:34 AM

being part of the magnificent universe
but then, sci-fi movies are the ones that make us think that certain things can be created..
One good example is the Star Wars saga...

lol @ Deadlocks, if wanna buaya vivienne85, please do it at kopitiam

Space exploration is very important. The R&D for space exploration can be reverse engineer for daily use. Who know we can found Cybertrone

actually part of the reason for space exploration is to consider living in the space or beyond somewhere in the future when earth can no longer support living creatures..

DP?....i rike....

Quite a number of technologies that are currently in use today had their roots in sci-fi (novels mostly, since movies are usually derived from literary works). Maglev trains, satelites, genetic engineering, terminator genes, even rail guns! Sci fi is a wealth of ideas, and not all of it is far-fetched as u might think.

Of course Star Wars is something else...excuse me while i play jedi mind tricks on my officemates

i felt that this will be a future rich people home

I think thats what makes ppl tick... they want to spend $$ to find something that people have never seen before or heard of to establish fame and knowledge base. Its true though its a good idea to just save the money and make Earth a better place, but this is the world we live in, they always want to make new things and learn new things. We are a curious race, we like to learn whats so special and make it even better.