Philosophical question about Space...(long read)?

Since we're just playing with imaginary possibilities here, imagine what type of creature human beings would evolve into if life "IN SPACE" actually lasted for thousands of years. Our bones would become unnecessary and so would evolve into cartilage. We wouldn't need feet, but another set of hands to manipulate controls, so opposable great toes would return to our feet. We wouldn't need upright stature, so we would evolve into more squat round shapes which make it easier for the heart to pump blood in weightlessness. We wouldn't need any pigment, so everyone, including those who started this journey as blacks, would become whiter and whiter until all such human space voyagers looked like albinos. Hair would become useless and so we'd become even more hairless than we now are.

So, we'd have fat round squishy bodies that were very white, hairless, and smooth. Our arms and legs would be of equal length and both would have hands on their ends. Our male genitalia would become smaller but female genitalia would become larger due to the increasing girth of fat round babies. Well....you can carry this forward yourselves.....

But there is another problem: "mission creep." We know from vast experience that colonies of humans which lose contact and control from a home base develop their own internal dominance hierarchies over time. A ship's crew will become a microcosm of society and its leader will become the representative of all earthly and possibly "divine" power. Changes to the original mission are inevitable at this point and become increasingly unpredictable with time. Sooo...while short missions, such as to the moon or mars are still controllable, long missions taking thousands of years will not be controllable from Earth.

Knowing of this tendency toward "mission creep," our Earthly leaders will only be able to send out human colonists into space as a tree drops its seeds...with no foreknowledge where they will fall or what the conditions of their survival will be. Therefore, any truly intelligent approach to space colonization will simply recruit, train, and equip human teams to leave the Earth, never to return and to make the best they can of their future. Many of these teams will be lost in space, but maybe, one or two will find habitable planets somewhere. That's the best we can hope for, I suspect.

- The Power of Six: Recommended. Not a reread. It was a very good, light read. I was actually kind of surprised because I didn't like I Am Number Four as much as I like this sequel. 5 out of 5 - City of Bones: RECOMMENDED. Not a reread. I absolutely loved it! So much that it's now my second favorite series after Harry Potter. The writing is brilliant and the characters even more. 5 out of 5 - Starters: Recommended. Not a reread. The blurb didn't make me excited to delve into this book but when I took hold of it I couldn't halt. It just made me want to know what will happen next. The characters ruined it for me, though. As much as I grew to love the MC the others were just blugh. 1 rounded and not enough unique personality. They were just there. But the antagonist gave me chills, I got to say. 3.5 out of 5 - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Recommended (if you read all the other books). Not a reread. Epic, need I say more? And just a pin-point, do not read this if you haven't read the others. There are 6 other books before this one for a reason. Believe me, some of my friends did exactly that and were like "It sucks. I didn't get anything from the first chapter." Well, duh! 5 out of 5 - Trapped: Not recommended. Not a reread. Okay, so here is what I liked about this novel: The cover and the pages where the snow keeps filling up, the realistic way the characters spoke, the promising synopsis. Unfortunately the book didn't live up to it's synopsis. There wasn't an ending. The plot just kept building up, and right when you think something will happen all you get is the same thing. 2.5 out of 5

Astronomy has always fascinated me. I agree with you that possibly human kind will never venture into space past our own 'neighborhood,' in other words, the moon and Mars, but I disagree with your reasons why.

The real threat that space poses doesn't lie in the dangers that you listed, but instead in the absolute vastness of the universe. The closest star, without even thinking about the closest star that also has an earth-like planet, is 4.2421 light years away, Proxima Centauri. To put that into perspective, the moon is about a quarter million miles away. Translate 4.2421 into miles, and it's about 100 million times the distance to the moon. We're talking bigger than enormous numbers.

Actually, two of the things you said about space help our cause, no atmosphere and no gravity. Well, to be honest, there's always gravity, but it's close enough to zero that it doesn't count. Gravity is why we need so much fuel to get a rocket off of this planet. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to break free from the chains of gravity, but once in orbit, energy is incredibly efficient. Think of how much energy it takes to go Mach 1 on earth, about 760 mph, and then compare that to the fact that the space station whips around its orbit at about 17,000 miles an hour. With an atmosphere to contend with, friction would tear it to shreds in an instant.

No, the real trouble is that the speed of light is about 2/3 of a billion miles per hour. In comparison, the space station would have to go about 40,000 times faster to catch up. And, even traveling at such ridiculous speeds it would take years to get there. Add that to the fact that we still have no idea whatsoever about how to speed up an actual object with mass to such breakneck speeds. At this point, it's not about having enough fuel, it's about having the right fuel.

Although space is cold and dark, I disagree that it's anti-life. I think that when you get to specific locations in the universe such as earth - and I think it's arrogant to think we're the only planet inhabited by life - life tends to thrive wherever it can. It's the vast amounts of in between nothingness that prove difficult if not impossible to traverse.

Then again, maybe one day science will pull something out of its butt cheeks that'll put an end to all of this nay-saying going on right here. You never know. The way I see it, though, odds are we're never making it too far off this rock.

The statement "god didn't want", has been tossed around alot over the years. example: if god would have wanted men to fly he would have given him wings". But you know that it is possible and people do it.

Your question is relative (limited) towards your era. Current space exploration is at a low. High cost and little results. Currently a light year is a far distance, but so was the circumference of the earth a while ago. In time a light year will become relatively shorten.

Any person who says "god didn't want", is indirectly stating that they know better than god. That statement has been hindering science, ever since it's discovery. Your deductions aren't rash, you like space exploration, yet you fabricate excuses not to explore it (not even valid excesses just ignorant conceptions).

stop watching movies and read the true facts

I don't think it was set up this way on purpose, but we were certainly made for our own planet, and can't survive easily anywhere else. The real question maybe is what we think we will discover out there. Maybe what we have here is all we really can hope for, and the stuff out there is never going to be worth the effort to go out in person to visit it. It's still cool, though. Probes that send back images and data are a lot safer and cheaper than trying to send a person just so she can come back and tell us about it.

I think, for all the limitations we have as humans, that God gave us brains large enough to be able to travel into space and so, we should. Lots of people died before coming to the New World, but that didn't stop us. Basically, just because something is difficult does not mean that it isn't worth pursuing.

The same could be said about crossing the ocean in the early days.

Yes there was an atmosphere but unless you could walk on water you could Still get in a lot of trouble.

Love and blessings Don