Space, Aliens and Pie

[Skunk_Giant]

Pie. That was just to get you to click on the topic. More appropriately, it would simply be named 'Space and Aliens'. But it's not.
Get over it.
There is no pie.
The pie, in fact, is a lie.

The space, is a truth.
As is the aliens. Or are they?

The purpose of this topic is to discuss space and aliens. No pie.
So, with that in mind, let the discussion begin!

So, the majority of you probably know that America launched the last space shuttle mission thingo. A day earlier, I was reading an article in the Economist about this all.
The writer was basically saying that this was the end of the space age. That after this shuttle launches, America, and much of the Western world, would lose interest in space, and the rest of space progress would be left to China and Russia. The writer also didn't believe they'd go much further either.
Why?
The writer went on to explain the reasoning by their idea. The fact that the moon has already had man's foot on it, that every planet in our soloar system with a solid surface (besides Mercury) has been landed on by man's technology, is their main reasoning. It's the fact that man no longer has the same passion for space.
And that is partly true.

Now, you may be saying, 'but Skunky, why do the big people at NASA have jobs if they don't like it?'
Well, some people have jobs they don't like, but yeah, in NASA, I think the majority of people enjoy their jobs. But the majority of people don't work at NASA, or even work with space.
The problem is, NASA gets their money from us, well, not all of us. Specifically, they get it from Americans.
If the average American doesn't care about space, then the pay for NASA is probably gonna go down.

So, assuming we managed to get that problem behind us, there's still the issue of technology. The writer briefly mentions that the technology may or may not be possible. Assuming it's not possible, the story ends here. Assuming it is possible, which I believe with enough work, it is, then the story continues.

So, let's say we've got the technology to put man on Mars, or anything on that level of achievement. What do we do then?
This isn't my question. This is the question I think a lot of people are asking. We put a man on Mars, we've got another footprint, another moment in history. But where can we go from there. We can explore Mars, but I think the fantasy of stuctures on Mars is still quite far off.

So that's the main issue with space progress. It appears that many people are uninterested, as they don't believe anything will really come out of this.

So, where do aliens come into this?

Well, a lot of us have opinions on aliens. I was discussing the article soon after I read it with someone, and we managed to move onto aliens.
I don't know about you guys, but I'm finding it hard to believe that there are alien species within our solar system.
On the other hand, I find it hard to believe that there are NOT aliens outside of our solar system. The universe is just too big for us to be the only ones.
Will we meet them, and furthermore, will we ever be able to help each other?

First of all, who's to say these aliens are how the movies portray them? Most media portrays alien life, friendly or hostile, as partly humanoid, with some exceptions. Most aliens appear to have two legs and two arms, or at least robotic suits that have limbs. The aliens that speak appear to have similar thoughts as us. They want to conquer, as humanity does. They want to save their own, as humanity does. They're really quite similar, overall, as humanity.

The likeliness of us finding something along the lines of that, to me, seems very slim. I think, if we were to find any form of aliens, it would be a form that has not built any form of civilisation. If we're the only species on earth that has created buildings, society, transport and weapons, what are the odds that the aliens we find would be just like our insects or other animals in intelligence?

Furthermore, who's to say they live like us? Maybe they're on some higher level, or lower, of consciousness.

So, tl;dr - Space and Aliens are cool.

Now, discuss!

Au Revoir

[/intelligence]

[SneakyPie]

I think the best evidence for intelligent life is that they haven't yet made the effort to contact us.

[vallorn]

i find it odd noone has throught of creating a self sufficient Automated minig facility on mars... with the amount of raw Iron Oxide everywhere and the Carbon Dioxide to reduce it you could quite happily build a colony for people from the stuff of mars itself!

[Eddietester1066]

i find it odd noone has throught of creating a self sufficient Automated minig facility on mars... with the amount of raw Iron Oxide everywhere and the Carbon Dioxide to reduce it you could quite happily build a colony for people from the stuff of mars itself!

Actually, the strongest advocate for this, Robert Zubrin, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Zubrinpublished a book in 1996 outlining just that.