h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

One thought that occurs to me is that the Americans (the current indiginous population of the USA) can justify the space programme in this way: if Columbus (or someone in his place) had never set sail across an uncharted sea in search of an unknown land (or at least an unknown route to a known land), the said Americans would not exist per se.

But the same story applies many modern nations. Many years ago the Angles (the English) embarked on a sea crossing -- an absolutely desperate one, I am given to understand, since they had never built boats nor sailed on the sea before, and could not navigate -- in flight from the invading Vandals. They set sail from what is now Denmark, and sailed blindly across the North Sea, probably not expecting to live. They fetched up alive upon our shores (near Deal, apparently), and the rest, as they say, is history. Obviously lots of other (more seaworthy) people, over time, also sailed here.

Some scientists now say openly that since it is becoming apparent (or at least now it is being officially recognised) that a 'planet killer' impact of a large (or fast) object upon Earth could occur, and we cannot know when -- and probably could not prevent it even if we had prior warning -- we /must/ attempt to establish ourselves elsewhere, if we (humanity) are to survive in the long term. That's a powerful argument; I suppose one might say that it's a powerful argument if you're not one of the people who are starving.

Personally, I would say that it would be silly to spend absolutely nothing on space research, but that the amount spent should not become ... disproportionate ... compared to what is diverted to dealing with the current exigencies of the world.

the problem with the planet killer is not that we could not do anything about it. it is that to do anything, you need sufficient warning, which means finding it years in advance, which means looking for it properly.

at the moment we just are not spending enough looking.

a couple of years ago, we found an asteroid which had a course through earth's atmosphere. the problem was we spotted it 4 days after it passed.

of course once you find the dinosaur killer (or even tunguska) asteroid, you need to spend properly on space to do anything about it, which again we are not doing.

most of the problems with asteroids come down to time and money. we are not spending enough money at the right time.

If there is a Planet Killer asteriod out there how come we have survived millions of years since the Dino killer hit the Earth without being hit?
The chance that we would be hit by a Killer asteroid is very low and even if there was a Killer asteroid flying towards us right now what could we do?
Anything we could do would have to be within out own Solar System because it takes decades to get a probe\space craft anywere far away from Earth.
And by that time it would probably be too late to do anything.

There are so many dangerouse aspects of space that we are not looking for, and if we do detect a Killer asteroid we would worry about not being able to do anything before it hit.

Some things are better not known.

I don’t think ignorance is such I feasible action especially when concerning something as huge as the continued existence of humanity. I have heard out all the people in favour of chaos theory yet still think that humanity is worth saving (just). Hence forth expanding to other planets can only be a good thing. You say we are wasting billions yet what else would the money be spent on, more corrupt wars more weapons of mass destruction another nice new sofa for the white house NO science is the only pure thing left uncorrupted be politicians and space travel is, in my opinion, at the pinnacle of science.
Any way that was my two pence (cents)
orion