Originally posted by ladyteeny
for one thing that 900 gazillion could be better used on THIS planet, helping people here.
Spinoffs of space technology do help people here.
we don't have the right to go and just systematically try and land on every planet in the system,
Yes, we do.
what if other inhabitants of other planets thought they could do the same thing and sent probes to this planet,
That would be cool.
how would tptb feel then?
Who cares?
more and more i can't stand the stupid decisions made by people on this planet. they have the power to change lives, improve them, house people,
build water systems where there were none...
And many charities do just that.
and what do they do? spend it on pointless useless endeavours.
Sorry you feel that way.
it makes no difference if there was life there or not.
Sure it does. Studying life, especially life adapted to thrive in extreme environments, can lead to many advances for our own lives. In 1971, a
technique was developed to artificially replicate a short sequence of DNA many times over, which today is called the polymerase chain reaction.
www.sciencedirect.com...
The original technique required a great deal of time and constant hand-holding; the high heat required to break apart the two DNA strands degraded the
DNA polymerase enzyme, which required constant replenishment by the experimenter. In 1976, however, a new form of DNA polymerase known as Taq
polymerase was discovered in the bacteria
Thermus
aquaticus that thrives in hot water springs.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...
This paved the way for rapid DNA amplification and the modern PCR technique. Much of modern biotechnology hinges on our ability to rapidly amplify
DNA and even monitor the rate of amplification in real-time. And it was all made possible by the discovery of a bacteria that lives in boiling hot
water. Who knows what kind of wonderful biological adaptations can only be found in the extreme environments of alien worlds, or how we might put
those adaptations to use for our own advancement? We can't predict what we'll find out there, but that's precisely why we MUST explore it. We could
not have invented taq polymerase on our own, but it already existed in nature. Countless other adaptations probably exist out there as well, just
waiting for us to discover them and put them to use.
we need to concentrate on the life HERE before doing anything else.
Your short-sightedness would prevent us from solving problems here. I fundamentally disagree with you, and in fact I will continue to actively work
to support the continued exploration of space.
edit on 4-5-2012 by ngchunter because: (no reason given)
