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Posted: 03.20.2002
It's not just for Captain Kirk anymore
Here's an interesting MSNBC article on "how starships will change sex and society".

Humans will begin a voyage to the nearest star this century, a NASA researcher says. And the crew might more resemble a tribal society than the chain of command of traditional space missions. Procreation would be required. The crew that arrived would be descendents of those that left.

Sending humans out into deep space over a period of generations probably means a one-way trip for those aboard, researchers say, and would require the development of reliable power sources and closed-loop life support systems. [Geoffery A. Landis of NASA’s Glenn Research Center] has even suggested sending out crews consisting only of women to save on weight, replacing men with frozen sperm to ensure reproduction later down the line.

I just can't quiet the cynical side of me that's thinking, "Just great... We've screwed everything up on our own planet. Parts of Antarctica are breaking off and melting. But oh yeah, let's go screw the cosmos up as well!" One thing's for certain. Our children, and our children's children, face an interesting road ahead.



Hey boy take a look at me...let me dirty up your mind...



Can't agree more. We keep messing up the planet we live on. It's scary to think what we could do on other planets. I wonder if we will ever learn from past mistakes, or just keep pretending that those problems don't exist.

¤ ¤ credit: munin | 03.20.02 at 03:35 AM | link--this ¤ ¤

But let me ask you this, would YOU go?

¤ ¤ credit: jesse | 03.20.02 at 07:48 AM | link--this ¤ ¤

But oh yeah, let's go screw the cosmos up as well!


On the subject of procreation in space, I think perhaps that should read, "Let's go screw out in the cosmos!"


More seriously, you have a good point; we have no eminent domain over the universe, and we can't expect that our future lies out there. If human-prompted environmental destruction isn't real, but we proactively seek to curtail it, chances are we still benefit. If it is real, and we do nothing, we're ... well, screwed.


-Alan

¤ ¤ credit: alan | 03.20.02 at 11:39 AM | link--this ¤ ¤

Dammit. I don't want kids but I desperately want to travel through space. I might just have to dust off my ovaries and try out.

¤ ¤ credit: jamese | 03.20.02 at 11:56 AM | link--this ¤ ¤

Jesse, absolutely not! But then again, I don't fly if at all possible either... I think Todd would spend 50 years on rickety Mir just to get into space, but I prefer to waste my days away right here on Earth at the beach instead...

¤ ¤ credit: robyn | 03.20.02 at 01:04 PM | link--this ¤ ¤

The reason we humans are screwing up the Earth so effectively is that we have reached the point where our need for resources meets or exceeds the capacity of the planet to produce and replenish them. You can't stop people from having babies, so the only other option is to find some way of relieving the pressure we place on our environment.

Either we reduce the resources consumed per person by such methods as recycling and abstinence, or we find new sources to supplement our current supply. No matter how well we manage to control ourselves, we will eventually return to the point of destroying our ecology by our very existence. Only with two or three times as many lives at stake.

The *only* way we can sustain ourselves indefinitely is to keep finding new places to live, new sources of minerals, new farmland. We are essentially a migratory species, and we are quickly picking this pasture clean. We must move on to greener fields to survive.

As for screwing up the rest of the cosmos, as far as we know, no one else is doing anything with it. Every new inhabitable planet we might colonize is also a new chance to get it right. Every colony would teach us something. Hell, designing the ships to get them there would teach us mountains about reducing, reusing, and recycling, which would be invaluable on this good old overcrowded big blue marble.

Not only should we go, we have no alternative. Survival demands it.

Then again, I may be biased.

¤ ¤ credit: David | 03.20.02 at 02:50 PM | link--this ¤ ¤

That had paragraphs when I wrote it.

¤ ¤ credit: David | 03.20.02 at 02:51 PM | link--this ¤ ¤

rob, how could you NOT want to go in space? at least for a little while? two words for you: weightless sex

¤ ¤ credit: mikey | 03.20.02 at 03:00 PM | link--this ¤ ¤

It has paragraphs now David -- that's why there's a little blurb under the comment box that reads:

"please feel free to use HTML in comments: <BR>, <P>, <U> and <I>"

I try to catch and fix them when people forget though.

¤ ¤ credit: robyn | 03.20.02 at 03:36 PM | link--this ¤ ¤

Mikey, from the female "gotta clean up afterwards" perspective, I'm not so sure that would be a good thing... I am curious as to whether or not men still tend to pass out afterwards in space though! ;-p

¤ ¤ credit: robyn | 03.20.02 at 03:39 PM | link--this ¤ ¤

What do we have to do with parts of Antartica breaking off? The planet went through many stages of warming and cooling way before we humans figured out how to make fire, let along use hairspray.

¤ ¤ credit: Geoff | 03.20.02 at 08:43 PM | link--this ¤ ¤

The problem is that there is a large amount of evidence that suggests that humans are accelerating the temperature increases worldwide. Now quite frankly, the world will survive. It's humanity's sorry ass that's going to have it rough if we don't take a little responsibility for the crap we're releasing.

¤ ¤ credit: todd | 03.20.02 at 10:22 PM | link--this ¤ ¤

Of course if it took them fifty years to reach their destination by that time we'd have invented a craft that travelled the distance in a fraction of the time making them arrive after everyone else. Like a time capsule...

¤ ¤ credit: D | 03.21.02 at 08:54 AM | link--this ¤ ¤




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