Originally Posted by
AdamDZ
But since distances are measured in tens and hundreds of light years it's very hard to knock on the neighbor's door. We might eventually receive radio signals from a civilization only to find out that it's long gone since it took a few hundred years for the signal to reach us.
And seriously, we waste too much resources on wars to have any real chance to break away from our solar system. Until the planet unifies and ends wars the progress of individual nations will remain too slow to enable space exploration on a large scale.
Well it's yes and no about space exploration and warfare. The original impetus for the space programs was warfare. The German V2 was the granddaddy of both the American and Russian big rockets, and both space programs were cold-war programs. But it was Johnson who de-emphasized space, to help pay for the Vietnam war, allowing the Apollo program to wind down during Nixon's term.
Searching for life is a stupid reason to go into space. And I agree with Stephen Hawking, that we don't really want to go advertising ourselves because anyone who comes looking is likely to be more advanced than ourselves, but probably not so advanced that they have evolved beyond war. (Of course we have been broadcasting radio and TV for over a century and the cat is out of the bag) So as musikguy notes, it's wise for us cockroaches to avoid looking for trouble.
Though I think that by the time we do meet other intelligent life, we will be ready. Michael Alcubierre has already come up with an idea that should make
faster than light travel possible. That's kind of like Da Vinci's drawings of a bicycle. On the right path, but still far from feasible. If we don't kill ourselves, an amazing future awaits.
It's demand for resources that will propel us into space. Right now the only ones we can tap are communication, looking at the Earth to understand it better, looking at the Sun to understand why it does what it does and giving Billionaires something new to spend their Billions on and play one upsmanship. All good causes.
The trick is to get the few people we send up, to have a substantial ROI, send goodies back to Earth and have babies so we don't have to send more people into space. Once people are in space, delivering goods back to Earth is easy.
I think that inhabiting the Moon will be the next phase of the space race. Again, China, India, Japan, Europe and hopefully the U.S. will be there. As Robert Heinlein demonstrated, militarily, the Moon is the most powerful place on Earth.
But I suspect the winner in this race will not be any particular country, but rather a current underdog; the corporations. They are already winning really. They own the communications satellites and the tourist buses. They are going after the low hanging fruit. It is much like the U.S. whaling industry which quickly went from rescuing carcasses on New England beaches to spanning the globe in the search for whale oil. I don't think we've found the "gold" yet that will spark the rush. But I have faith that we will.