Obama/McCain and space exploration

[PhiGam]

Originally Posted by cheerfulgreek

Who said I was talking about intelligent life, and who's saying that life on Earth is intelligent? To us, yes, but maybe to something else, somewhere else, no.

PhiGam, yes it does matter what kind of elements there are on other planets. Carbon is probably the most important element there is, but I won't get into that or why I think it is. What about water? When it comes to fostering life, water has the highly useful property of staying liquid across what most biologists regard as a fairly wide range of temperatures. The trouble is, most biologist look to Earth, where water stays liquid across 100 degrees of celcius scale. Another planet doesn't necesarily have to resemble Earth to support life. Like on some parts of Mars, atmospheric pressure is so low that water is never liquid. A cup of H2O boils and freezes at the same time. Yet in spite of Mars' current state, it's atmosphere once supported liquid water. If Mars ever harbored life on its surface, it would have been then. Where there once was life, there are fossils. And who said anything about intelligent life? Like I was saying earlier, extremophiles are everywhere. As far as I know, extremophiles were the earliest life forms here. And to declare that Earth must be the only planet with life in the universe is pretty big headed. I say this, because planets cannot be all that rare in the universe if the Sun, an ordinary star, has at least 8 of them. So there is a lot to look for.

You're saying the same stuff over and over again.
Tell me why its worth our resources to send manned missions to mars/ other planets. Prove to me that the billions of dollars that NASA receives in funding every year wouldn't be better suited for medical research or alternative energy research. Only then can I not feel that NASA is anything more than an example of government waste.