Quote:
Originally Posted by u crank
Agreed. Humans have to admit that deep space exploration by humans is not possible. It is a harsh reality but likely true. We did not evolve for that possibility. Getting humans to Mars will be expensive and could end in a tradgedy. Rescue will be impossible.
The most likely way to explore our galaxy will be by artificial intelligence combined with robotics. The human being in its present state of evolution is just not adaptable to the space environment.
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I could imagine that man maybe finds a way to migrate his human (his own, not some AI surrogate) self-awareness and conscience and mind into machinery made of more robust kinds than our fragile, biological body. Suchg a mind in the machine then maybe can bridge distances and surive over timeframes that are beyond what we can imagine with our contemporary evolution status of technology. Maybe the form of the biologicaiol human is just a cradle for the evolving of something different.
But then i fear that we one day find that we are indeed the only ones. That life and mind maybe is kind of an anomaly in a dead, mindless universe. A curious exception from the rule that can only be found on one planet, that owes its existence only to the probability saying that it shoukd exist in a universe this big and offerign this many chances for something happening.
Hm, I sometimes got told/got accused that I take short cuts when refusing "religion" and being lazy when refusing to take the "effort to believe". But the truth is its exactly the other way around. Accepting to maybe exist just for no special reason and accepting that we are alone, mwithout tkaing comfort from a storxy about a higher being caring for oneself - I find that much more heavier a burden to bear. But then I may watch something in nature, do a walk in the woods, see the sky and the clouds moving on it, the colours, and the greass in the wind - and all these thoughts go away, and something inside the heart is falling silent, is content, and all questions are no more.
Space programs...? They are funny stuff to do, aren't they...!?
P.S.
From one of my favourite novels, Solaris by Stanislav Lem:
“
We take off into the cosmos, ready for anything: for solitude, for hardship, for exhaustion, death. Modesty forbids us to say so, but there are times when we think pretty well of ourselves. And yet, if we examine it more closely, our enthusiasm turns out to be all a sham. We don't want to conquer the cosmos, we simply want to extend the boundaries of Earth to the frontiers of the cosmos. For us, such and such a planet is as arid as the Sahara, another as frozen as the North Pole, yet another as lush as the Amazon basin. We are humanitarian and chivalrous; we don't want to enslave other races, we simply want to bequeath them our values and take over their heritage in exchange. We think of ourselves as the Knights of the Holy Contact. This is another lie. We are only seeking Man. We have no need of other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us; but we can't accept it for what it is. We are searching for an ideal image of our own world: we go in quest of a planet, a civilization superior to our own but developed on the basis of a prototype of our primeval past. At the same time, there is something inside us which we don't like to face up to, from which we try to protect ourselves, but which nevertheless remains, since we don't leave Earth in a state of primal innocence. We arrive here as we are in reality, and when the page is turned and that reality is revealed to us - that part of our reality which we would prefer to pass over in silence - then we don't like it anymore.”