Mining the Solar System --Will Spur Our Future Colonization of the Milky Way? (VIDEO)

 

Comments

[Mr. Faith And Physics]

Our? OUR? REALLY!? You mean the Corporations, the Multi-Nationals and their top people will get to see such development. And they can trash and despoil along the way until we get our asses kicked by some species who doesn't find our capitalist system so amusing. I hope they never let us leave the planet. Make the rich sobs kids live here in the same trashed world that we will have to live in.

We are not ready to leave this planet. I will pray to the aliens every night to come down and stop us - if they can, if they are there. God help the Universe if they are not there to stop us. More damage, cheap goods, and trash planets - that will be our legacy until we fracking wake up and smell the evil elite and just what HORRIBLE leaders they are.

If we really value our FREE MARKET system, can anyone tell me why we owe TRILLONS TO A COMMUNIST COUNTRY?

This makes me sick to my stomach.

[Charles W. Isbell]

This video seems more like an ad seen in the movies; lot's of "power" in the words, no sence in the presentation(s)

[Tosca Z]

This is a truly depressing article, for it tells us that no matter how much we wonder at the magnificence of the cosmos and how far our technology allows us to see into it, those with the money and power will treat it as yet another piece of real estate to be exploited in the same old ways. I'm with you, Mr Faith and Physics: if we are not willing to change our greedy, land-grabbing, trashing ways, I pray that wiser beings will restrain us. We are not worthy of the cosmos. Heavens! Our leaders and corporations are not even fit for this earth.

[Noone]

That's BS.
"For humanity's benefit" ---- Correction: For the multi millionaire and billionaire slime that walk this earth. Nothing that corporations do help the "whole" of mankind. EVER.
They help a select few while dismissing the rest as they aren't part of this world.

And oh yea, lets trash our world, rape it's resources uncontrollably, not learn how to harness energy properly (Thermoelectric power, tides, sun etc...) and spend all our money to send a bloody probe into space to mine something that will never benefit the entire population. Doesn't make sense. One NASA mission can feed the entire poor of the world many times over. ONE.

We need to get rid of corporations. We need to get our priorities in check. We need to stop imbeciles like these who think they are innovative and revolutionary.
Once everyone in the world is fed, housed, educated and given a fair chance at everything, then we can explore space.

[Tom Mazanec]

A typical NASA mission might be a couple billion dollars. There are at least a couple billion poor people on the Earth. How can you feed them many times over with one dollar per capita?

[noone]

Tom,
It is because of people like you that we are in peril.
There's a bigger picture in the comment I made.

[DwarfGalaxy]

Future colonization of the milky way? It's a bit far fetched no? Human space technology barely takes us down the pub (relatively speaking). What I can say is when it happens humans will be much much different from today, either for worse or better (which is subjective). They won't look like the same species, both in behaviour as in appearance.

[FireflyMal]

Mr. Faith And Physics,

On June 25, 2012 you posted: “Our? OUR? REALLY!? You mean the Corporations, the Multi-Nationals and their top people will get to see such development.”

Let me put this in perspective:

On the back of events still yet to occur (i.e. “Our future Colonization of the Milky Way”), you draw conclusion regarding attitudes of individuals (who have not yet engaged in aforementioned events – much less been identified to even exist … yet), and based on those nonexistent events, people, and motivating attitudes, you proceed to smear and besmirch said people who do not exist, for something you claim they’ve withheld, resulting from said nonexistent activities and events – and by this you are … outraged?

Oh the horrible criminal nerve of these individuals who DO NOT EXIST and have done NOTHING!

While your outrage is suitable only as subject for ridicule – I will take a moment to address the other points (and I’m being generous here by addressing them as such) you’ve presented:

You make a notably incomplete argument that production of goods is “damage,” stating “they can trash and despoil along the way …”

I point out that human beings have existed, labored, and engaged in production for hundreds of thousands of years … (counting from the earliest production of flint blades forward to the high-speed semi robotic assembly lines and oceanic drilling platforms of today).

Observe: the world is notably in existence and life (not just human life, but all life) thrives. Thus the world is, notably, not “trashed.”

Implicit in your statement is the notion that human activity to acquire and use those things nature provides is to commit some unspecified crime against nature –this is absurd.

All life consumes materials existent in nature.

All life either preys upon other life, or consumes chemical compounds or minerals in order to energize metabolism. Your notion of “exploitation” is a false notion. It is merely the natural state of things.

By using the word “damage” you seem to imply the universe should be untouched by the activities of life – another notion that is patiently absurd.

Further you seem to imply that any “change” is the equivalent of vandalism …

This may be a shocker to you, so brace yourself: change is the natural state of affairs in the universe.

In response to your anti corporate tirade:

Corporations are merely groups of people laboring by freely arrived at mutual agreement and consent to exchange work (i.e. effort, or labor) for an agreed upon wage to produce products people want, desire, and need.

I have to ask: Do you want to eliminate people? Or do you want to eliminate agreement, cooperation, and mutual effort? Do you want to ban men from receiving benefit of their labors? Or do you want to eliminate production?

Advanced manufacturing techniques and transportation technologies bring an abundance of affordable goods -- including food, and medicines -- in addition to consumer luxury items to vast populations -- an abundance no individual could independently manufacture, grow, or in any way produce, let alone sell at present day price levels or (baring such production) could afford to buy at anything below a kingly fortune.

Because goods are manufactured in bulk – they are cheap. Because of the existence of corporately developed mechanized agriculture, and extensive transportation networks -- foodstuffs flood markets – the result being that poor folks in the dead of winter in any given city in the northern hemisphere can feast on oranges, mangos, avocados …

Is this what is so offensive to you? Cheap abundant goods? Goods cheap enough for even the poorest of the working poor?

Bereft of the benefits brought by corporately developed inoculations, modern sanitation systems, and antibiotics – the death toll wrought from simple infection and contagion would eliminate entire populations – is this what you object to, an era when men free from such horror?

Because of abundant cheap energy from fossil fuels developed by corporate exploration even the poorest of the working poor live in homes warm in winter and cool in summer – and enjoy electrical illumination whenever they so desire, along with the entertainment provided from media available via cable and satellite television and of course, the internet – is this what is so offensive to you?

Of course I am speaking of conditions of men living in free industrialized nations – for freedom is a requirement of cooperation and prosperity, a nation under law is a requirement of freedom, that those who labor and produce be free from the criminal predations of thugs, dictators, and thieves. Those peoples who have taken it upon themselves the foster such conditions thrive – those who do not suffer the consequence of their failure.

Capitalism has created the highest standard of living ever known on earth. The evidence is incontrovertible.

You promote your long outdated myth of industrial elites, no doubt with visions of industrial robber-barons dancing in your head, without apparent knowledge that the displacements of the poor during the early years of the industrial revolution was a hold-over of previous conditions, apparently in full ignorance of the fact that when compared to the centuries of pre-capitalist starvation, the living conditions of the poor in the early years of capitalism were the first chance the poor had ever had to survive.

Consider the consequence of the world without capitalism, without corporations: Consider the squalor, the misery, the helplessness, the fear, the unspeakably hard labor, the festering diseases, the plagues, and the starvation in that world.

Can you visualize an infant mortality rate of 45 to 50 percent?

Try to convince a mother, whose child is dying of cholera in middle-ages Europe of your morality; try to convince a peasant woman before the dawn of the industrial revolution whose teeth are green with decay and rotting in her mouth of your morality; try to convince a man clothed in rags who faces nothing but mind numbing physical labor from dawn to dusk of your morality.

You sit and post your thoughtless trash on a computer – which is the result of technologies corporately developed, you create your videos on software corporately developed, using the internet, which is corporately developed – you have an abundant wealth of factual information at your fingertips, and yet you close your eyes and your mind to the truth, and pretend, in your arrogance, that you post wisdom. You are ignorant of the facts. You whine and cry that something is being withheld by some imaginary “elites” without a shred of understanding of the dire toll mere survival extracted from less fortunate men of earlier eras.

In Western Europe, in the preindustrial Middle Ages, man’s life expectancy was 20 years.

The average life expectancy in Colonial America was under 25 years in the Virginia colony and in New England about 40% of children failed to reach adulthood.

During the Industrial Revolution, the life expectancy of children increased dramatically. The percentage of children born in London who died before the age of five decreased from 74.5% in 1730-1749 to 31.8% in 1810-1829.

Humans by Era Average Lifespan at Birth:

Upper Paleolithic 20 years
Neolithic 20 years
Bronze Age-Iron Age 25 years
Classical Greece 28 years
Classical Rome 28 years
Pre-Columbian North America 25-30 years
Medieval Islamic Caliphate 20-30 years
Medieval Britain 20-30 years
Early Modern Britain 40+ years
Early 20th Century 30-45 years
Current world average 67.2 years

Try to convince the legions of the dead of your morality.

[Zathras]

I think that Mr. Faith And Physics just got his ass kicked by a species who doesn't find his anti-capitalism so amusing. A long standing curiosity of my own: How does it come to be that so many devoted to science detest the business of living? Is being told, by their inferiors, what to do and how to live preferable to freedom? Is the freedom to choose for themselves so horrifying a prospect that they think it best to leave the fate of their own life to the whims of the collective? How can someone so thoughtful and respectful in one field of study, be so thoughtless and despising of another? Makes me suspicious of the former. Are they really thoughtful in study? Are they truly respectful of science? Do they value anything?

SpaceX, Sierra Nevada Corporation, Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic and Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites, XCOR Aerospace, Bigelow Aerospace, Orbital Sciences Corporation, et al, add Planetary Resources; all private organizations, all incorporated with private money, private money willingly invested by those having interests in the successes of these ventures. No money forced from those who don't care. I, for one, would gladly sweep their floors with a toothbrush if I thought it could bring them closer to their goal: expanding the reach and prosperity of Man.

Tom Mazanec,

NASA's achievements, as great and numerous as they are, were achieved with stolen money, money usurped by bureaucrats claiming to know best for us all, money used for the dubious goal of besting the now defunct Soviets. I guess it worked. Perhaps, the money would have been better, by those bureaucrats, given to the billions of poor, leaving, still, that little problem of stolen money. It wasn't (and isn't) their money to begin with, not without the consent of the governed.