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http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38985425
A newly unearthed essay by Winston Churchill reveals he was open to the possibility of life on other planets.
In 1939, the year World War Two broke out, Churchill penned a popular science article in which he mused about the likelihood of extra-terrestrial life.
The 11-page typed draft, probably intended for a newspaper, was updated in the 1950s but never published.
[...] More than 50 years before the discovery of exoplanets, he considered the likelihood that other stars would host planets, concluding that a large fraction of these distant worlds "will be the right size to keep on their surface water and possibly an atmosphere of some sort". He also surmised that some would be "at the proper distance from their parent sun to maintain a suitable temperature".
Churchill also outlined what scientists now describe as the "habitable" or "Goldilocks" zone - the narrow region around a star where it is neither too hot nor too cold for life.
[...] In an apparent reference to the troubling events unfolding in Europe, Churchill wrote: "I for one, am not so immensely impressed by the success we are making of our civilisation here that I am prepared to think we are the only spot in this immense universe which contains living, thinking creatures, or that we are the highest type of mental and physical development which has ever appeared in the vast compass of space and time."
Also at Nature: http://www.nature.com/news/winston-churchill-s-essay-on-alien-life-found-1.21467
(Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Thursday February 16 2017, @08:40PM
You do not need a manned or lifeformed mission to communicate with intelligent life. Robotic probes could be sent instead.
We may have been blasted by signals that we weren't capable of listening for, for millions of years, or that were too full of noise by the time they reached us. There may be small alien probes in our solar system right now. If they aren't attempting radio communication with us and they communicate with their creators using a different or highly directional technology, then we wouldn't notice them. There are millions of undiscovered asteroids in our solar system that could be larger than any probe.
6 months two-way travel time will be possible soon enough.
What is the point of that? Not much unless you intend to build permanent human settlements. Science goals may be accomplished faster by having humans on the ground, but more advanced robots have better capabilities than predecessors.
As long as we don't destroy ourselves, we have plenty of time. Insurance against destroying ourselves completely should be available within a few decades.
Or we could develop cheap preventative regenerative medicine so we can eventually decrease spending on health care/Medicare, and allocate that to space agencies.
The concept of military spending isn't even the problem. It's wasteful military spending which has everything to do with human greed, government failures, and the military-industrial complex rather than inherent human aggression. See the F-35 program. The U.S. could easily quadruple NASA's annual budget and still have over $500 billion in military spending. And more of that mil spending can be made dual-use like you mentioned. Even if we increased NASA's annual budget to about $200 billion from the current $18-20 billion, we could still spend $400 billion per year on the military.
With space suits and contained space habitats, since even "habitable zone" objects like Mars are deadly without them?
If it's terraforming of other worlds that you want, do you also want geoengineering of Earth to counteract climate change?
It's a nice opinion, but unfounded until we actually meet some advanced aliens that knew of us first.
"Society" has actually made tremendous strides in solving issues of hunger, disease, and war. And we will continue to do so while at the same time pursuing scientific endeavors like space travel.
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