And lo on Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:26:08 +0100, somebody <x### [at] ycom> did spake,  
saying:

> "Brendan" <Bry### [at] comcastcom> wrote in message
> news:pan### [at] comcastcom...
>> On Wed, 24 Sep 2008 12:36:31 -0600, somebody wrote:
>
>> > Going to the moon was bad science (well, not even science, just a
>> > technological tour de force).
>>
>> Now we have estimates of the ages of cratered worlds
>> much further away than the Moon without having sent sample collection
>> mission to all of those worlds yet.
>
> And the benefit to mankind of  "having the estimates of the ages of  
> cratered worlds much futher away from the Moon" is what exactly? :) In  
> your eagerness to counter my point, you are emphasizing it.

I think ticking off creationists who think the universe is only 5000 years  
old can be classed as a benefit.

>> We also shouldn't be shortsighted and not worry about how things will be
>> 300 years from now because it'll be our descendants who will be around  
>> by then. I won't want them to figure out stuff that we could've easily
>> figured out and then stereotype us as lazy bums who wasted those
>> centuries by not doing that research to give them the results sooner,  
>> like how people today see Dark Ages Eurpoe.
>
> They will have better technology than us.

Um no they won't because they'd have spent the previous 100 years just  
developing the stuff we could have. Think of how much time was spent  
playing catch-up during the Dark Ages and think where'd we be now if we'd  
been able to continue building on those principles during that time.

>> We'd have to expand into space eventually if our kind or our descendants
>> are around long enough because the Sun is heating up slowly during its
>> main sequence lifetime, which has been predicted to make Earth
>> inhospitable to modern types of ecosystems within a billion years, long
>> before its red giant phrase. It'd be difficult through.
>
> You hopless romantics are completely missing the trees for the forest.  
> While thinking about a future billion years from now (!??), you miss  
> what we could be doing for ourselves and for our fellow people. Africa  
> is at most 10 hours away, not a billion years. And I am sure there's  
> suffering right at your
> doorstep too.

On this point I do agree with you. I will however be laughing my arse off  
if an LHC spin-off develops a super-cheap energy source which allows the  
nations of the world to stop fighting over oil and get on with raising the  
standard of living for the poorer nations.

The difficulty is you seem to be suggesting that we only do projects when  
we know exactly what the return is going to be and sadly the universe  
scoffs at such plans - have the government encourage banks to give  
mortgages to the poor, grow crops for biofuels, encourage capatialism in  
China. In each of these cases we thought we knew exactly what the return  
would be. Do you need me to list the results we got?

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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