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News Briefs 19-03-2010

”Keeping an eye on the world going by my window…”

Thanks to Perceval, Greg, RPJ and the almighty Beatles.

Quote of the Day:

“Running everywhere at such a speed, Till they find, there’s no need…”

J. Lennon

  1. Welcome to my reality
    Mankind nearly went the way of the dinosaurs several times over the last 6 million years. With the current detection systems, you, your family, your friends, and everyone you knew or loved could be blown off the face of the Earth in an instant, with no warning except for the inbound small comet fragment or asteroid’s entry into the atmosphere. Maybe enough time for you to kiss your butt good-bye, but possibly not.

    Out of its $17,000 – $18,000 million per year budget, NASA will spend $20 million on detection (but in fairness WISE and DAWN should be added to that), instead of anywhere near the amounts required.

    The NSF budget and USGS budgets for impact research are small as well.

    What do you think mankinds goal in space should be?
    The awareness that we’re all already passengers on spaceship Earth seems to be growing, at least out here on the “fringe”.

          1. Yes, but…
            Yes, but… unless we have an infinite amount of spaceships, we DO need to agree on one specific destination now, don’t we? 😉

          2. space is reusable
            If we have N spaceships, we can go to N destinations at any 1 (one) time. Then, after each ship gets there, we can go to another N destinations. This second set can include the first set, if we still want to.

            One problem with uniting is similar to that of pacifism – it’s not a stable state.

  2. Earths may be “common”.
    Earths may be “common”. However 1. they haven’t found one yet. Not even close. 2. It doesn’t matter whether we find one that’s habitable; no one can even conceive of a real way of -getting- to one yet. The nearest stars are -centuries- away.

    The only working spaceship we know of is the one we’re sitting on, and we’re ruining it. We’re just beginning to understand how it works. In the past when humans ruined an ecology, they moved on. Not possible any more.

    If the ‘habitable Earths’ out there are ever going to be reachable, we have to stop the bleeding -here- so that we’ll have the resources and finances to get -there-. We have been living in a time when the ‘grab all you can get, there’s no tomorrow’ philosophy has been running rampant for a century. Unless we stop that, we’re never going anywhere.

    Green isn’t just a ‘nice alternative’. It’s the only hope.

    1. Reachable?
      Why should we care if the other Earths are reachable?

      Personally I would be relieved to know that God wasn’t so careless as to invest all of His/Her efforts in just ONE improbable experiment.

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