Obama/McCain and space exploration

[cheerfulgreek]

Originally Posted by PhiGam

There is no intelligent life in our solar system. The nearest star is 4.3 light years away. The fastest that we could get there with our current technology and no snags in the mission is 19,000 years. Even with nuclear pulse propulsion, a technology that is nothing more than a dream, we're talking 85 years (if the human body could even handle it). If we're not exploring space to find intelligent life, then what are we looking for? And before you start talking about iron and minerals being on other planets I'm going to say this again: it doesn't matter what kind of minerals are on another planet, it is simply not economical to mine and transport the material.

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.