I think it is some kind of biological imperative. If you assume that life is more interesting or valuable than non-life, then it would be an overall improvement of the universe to bring life where it can currently not survive.
Humans are the only species that have a chance to thrive and establish a foothold for life in an environment as hostile as space. So that is what all this technology and intelligence is good for. In a working ecosystem a species that adapts its environment to its own needs always has to destroy something of value in order to thrive. In space there is nothing except dead matter, so every change would be an improvement.
Besides, there is also the issue of really building something out of nothing. For all our technology, humans are really freeloading on preexisting resources on earth. We consume resources like air, water, fossil fuels etc. that were provided for us by nature. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but it would be extremely rewarding to create a thriving colony out of nothing but energy and raw matter. Something you can point to and say "I did that!".
In addition to these reasons, frankly I find it frightening that all the marvelous achievements in science and art of mankind are confined to a sphere with a diameter of 0.042 lightseconds, which is really not that much.
To inspire creativity/imagination and to unite humanity.
The progress of a civilization is a function of its collective state of mind. What we accomplish, what we create, and what we discover are products of where our attention is directed.
Human spaceflight directs our attention to the endless possibilities afforded to humanity on the basis of our unique ability to use our intelligence to create and adapt. It gets us thinking about how we could create and adapt to change.
That state of mind generates value and improves our standard of living.
Human spaceflight has a way of transcending the distinctions that divide humanity. Even an overtly nationalist endeavor such as Apollo was seen as a milestone accomplishment of our entire species. It was man on the moon, not American on the moon.
Today, the ISS is one of the most powerful symbols of international cooperation, up there with UN. Space is a global front in the pursuit of world peace, and our responsible use of space for peaceful purposes lessens our will to fight. It blurs the distinctions we use to rationalize violent conflict.
In short, the purpose of human spaceflight is to promote peace and prosperity by changing the way we think about ourselves, each other, and our future together in this universe.
anything beyond mars is just a joke, though
until you discover ftl its pointless to even try..
how many people you gonna fly up in LEO before it gets old
just like it was pointless to try and sail across the pacific ocean before they invented offboard motors?
you have zero sense of scale. space isn't a fucking ocean.
I just did some quick calculations.
At earth Vesc, it would take ~106k years to reach the NEAREST star.
Humanity would die out long before then.
Face it, we're stuck here.
fuck it right? might as well not try to advance our understanding of physics or anything else for that matter; we're stuck here.
you have zero sense of scale. space isn't a fucking ocean.
I just did some quick calculations.
At earth Vesc, it would take ~106k years to reach the NEAREST star.
Humanity would die out long before then.
Face it, we're stuck here.
you have zero sense of scale. space isn't a fucking ocean.
I just did some quick calculations.
At earth Vesc, it would take ~106k years to reach the NEAREST star.
Humanity would die out long before then.
Face it, we're stuck here.
fuck it right? might as well not try to advance our understanding of physics or anything else for that matter; we're stuck here.
Understanding physics doesn't make the impossible any more possible.
Understanding physics doesn't make the impossible any more possible.
Well you should really take into account relativistic effects since a trip at close to the speed of light wouldnt take very much time at all for the traveler.Closest star is about 4.5 light years away. Traveling at light speed, that of course takes 4.5 years. If you can travel at 10 times the speed of light, it still takes about 5.4 months. To get there in one month, you'd have to be traveling at 54 times the speed of light, roughly. To get there in a week? 234 times light speed.
(none of those take into account relativistic effects, which would shorten the length of the journey, unless the FTL is something exotic that does not actually accelerate mass, like a "warp" drive)