[ Post a Response | EVEN DeepER Blurting! ]
Posted by DexterBG on 6/29/2008, 1:53 am, in reply to "I don't know, Dex..."
--Previous Message--
: From what I've heard from most accounts,
: "WALL-E" looks like a winner.
Yes, naturally the entertainment media is going to say that. They're all being paid to. They're very positive about their own stuff these days.
: Yes, we could learn the same things from automated
: probes for less cost. But man is still an
: adventurous species.
Well the so-called adventurers of the past that are usually named (Columbus, Magellan), were really all looking for treasure so they could retire wealthy and never have to do a decent day's work for the rest of their lives. Exploiting the wealth of the "new world". Basically stealing it. We've been romanitizing their actions, thru a fictional haze of hyped up history. Even most of today's modern earth explorers are filming their adventures for today's treasure. The syndication rights or motion picture royalities.
: As a character in a "Star Trek" novel I've read put
: it, it's one thing to know what conditions
: are like on another planet. But what does
: it feel like to be there? What does the air
: taste like? Could a man live there and
: actually call it home?
Once again, another bunch of corporate script writers, hyping the impractical and improbable as some romanticized goal. And probably doing it in the pay of some corporation's interests. "We want a positive spin on man's existence in space, so we'll get more tax dollars for sending them there." Star Trek TOS got a lot of help from NASA back in the day. Wonder why?
: Besides, an early episode of "B5"
: had it right when Sinclair says, basically,
: that one day we'll have to leave Earth.
Right! How many of us? A dozen, a hundred, a thousand, a million? What's the right number to assure survival of the species? And how likely is that to work out in space, when the earth bound examples of this (Zoos, parks, reservations) are evidence that it rarely does? What do we tell the other billions who can't go? "Thanks for your sacrifice. The healthiest and wealthiest of us really appreciate it."
If the movies show us anything that's true, it will be that they aren't going to be too pleased to remain. But obviously they can't ALL go on to some new world. And even surviving the trip would be a long shot for those that did. Living things down transplanet easily from earth, thru space. We're a very long way from ever perfecting anything like artifical life support. But the fictional shows and movies always gloss over these problems.
: Thus, we have no choice but to learn to live
: in space and on other worlds.
Actually, nothing lives in space. Deep space is more barren than any desert on earth. It has absolutely no life supporting properties or resources to sustain anything living. So by living in space, you mean only temporarily between worlds, that happen to have all the right stuff. And those are extremely rare indeed. Stored and regenerated living resources are likely to give out long before reaching any of them.
Realistic physical laws prevents traveling faster than light. And even traveling very close to it, slows down the travelers' time frame to a crawl. So commutes between worlds would still be centuries long, for those waiting at each end. How would any commerce we understand, survive that?
Living in spaceships, would just be a temporary condition, on the way to one of these worlds, we would hopefully find. But again, it's a very big hope, and a long shot. More than likely we'd never find such a world. Or be able to terraform one in any practical time frame. So perhaps we should consider assuring that our home world last as long as possible, before we sacifice it for some pie-in-the-sky world that will never materialize. Sorry if this bursts the bubble of the scifi believer.
: Pixar was once a Lucasfilm subsidiary and the companies still
: have ties.
That's one of the reasons why I suspect the agenda of this movie. Is this the next Star Wars, via Pixar?
-Dex-
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