Russia Plans to Colonize Moon by 2030, Newspaper Reports

originally posted by: Teye22
I cant say with certainty who would win this race....but I can say this! We (humans) should not be colonizing ANY other planets/moons until we can figure out a way to respect our surroundings (nature) without destroying it and stop thinking that everything is there for profit, we are destroying our beautiful Earth and when we start running low on resources, we'll just go onto the next planet utill we destroy it too?!?

We are savages and we would kill to take it over and get the precious resources. Once a valuable metal/gas/ whatever is discovered, this si when the real conflicts will start, as countries have done well....forever, would start wars for the $$$.

It's wrong imo.

Still amazing that we can actually plan this type of mission now though as it shows how our technology is advancing.

Just my 2 cents

And I completely disagree.

As a cultural geographer, I have long studied the development of the human species of the last few hundred years. Geographical expansionism, while imperialist in nature, is the only alternative to war in terms of social and technological progression. War is the result of an epoch where human geographical expansion has already reached its limits, thus empires divide and conquer already populated territory and resources.

The technological capability of further expansion means that empires will focus more on expanding into unexplored territory. If you want an example, look at the Arctic. Only now is there a push to populate and develop it, because it is becoming more habitable and economically viable due to new technologies and climate change.

And the most obvious advantage to colonizing the moon is that the world will focus on developing new generations of spacecraft, instead of commercial activity that proves to be too ecologically damaging to the Earth (ie, oil tanker ships).

Edit:

My point is that we are over-consuming pretty much every resources we have on this planet and instead of finding a REAL solution (and before you ask no I don't have one) we are willing to just move the problem elsewhere. When our planet can no longer sustain our 7 + billion people, you really think we could all survive on the moon, mars? Not even remotely!

This IS a real solution!

What solution do you suggest? We sit on Earth and further degenerate ourselves into stagnation and self-destruction in search of some utopian solution to our social problems?

You have to look at the problems, AND THEN identify the causes. Finding some super source of energy will solve nothing for us on Earth because under the capitalist mode of production, there will be those who own this source of energy and those who have to work to pay to use it.

It has to be accepted that the most fundamental social barriers that we face today, are in fact inherent social problems of the human species. We are the result of the world that we created, but our problems are the result of our natural instincts conflicting with our unnatural environment.

This is why space colonization works; we will be building human constructs in barren wastelands. In essence, the space colonies will foster generations of humans that will be more human than the human that we are now.

We are destined to become a space faring people.

It is written in our history and our astronomically rapid evolution.

We will become the gods ourselves, and sooner than we think.

I have since I was a young boy felt that my generation (born post 1990) will be the ones who expand the definition of what it means to be a human, we will be the first to leave the planet and genuinely try to stay on other worlds.

It fills me with tremendous excitement, the possibilities of the future are truly tantalizing and are very close now. We are about to become a space faring species, gods ourselves.