Scientists find a diamond in the skies

And somewhere out there, a giant green lizard protects a particular point in space, knowing the world is not yet ready for unlimited SoBe.

I want to say something on topic here now, but after reading Yama's post he knocked me into lolies.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

So, I will reveal my potential ignorance now. Why should we waste money on Space Programs when we should be investing on what we have here? Is it because, deep down, we know Earth can't handle us much longer and we need to colonize someplace new for the future? Is it to improve our own planet? Or is it really just about curiosity?

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Aardark

"And we went to the moon. Do we really have to go to Mars?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because it's next. Because we came out of the cave, and we looked over the hill and we saw fire; and we crossed the ocean and we pioneered the west, and we took to the sky. The history of man is on a timeline of explorations and this is What's next."

What, does Mallory's husband Jimmy work for NASA? =O Sure, there has been forward progress since the caveman days but that sure as hell doesn't mean the next forward step is space. We have a lot of shit to worry about from this planet, namely ourselves, before we should focus on a GAMMA RAY BURST.

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I dunno, I think if you want to talk about wasting money, you should be looking at the army instead. The budget of NASA is less than 5% of what the US military budget is. I don't think money spent on science is ever ''wasted'', be it space exploration or anything else.

Five percent or not; millions (or probably billions) of dollars are still the same. And you and I both know there's no sense in hoping that military (WAR) dollars are ever gonnna go anywhere else. America's past time is baseball while humanities is destroying one another. We need money for such recreation.

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It's not that Earth can't handle us for much longer -- I'm sure it can, unless we nuke it ourselves -- but sooner or later humanity will have to move on, or become extinct. Well, the Sun becoming a red giant is pretty far off, but there are more real concerns like impact events (asteroids, meteroids, comets) or a gamma ray burst, or other shit. The probability of such events is statistically very small, but sooner or later something like that will happen, and if our only concern until that will have been ''what's here'', it will already be much too late.

You really think we can do a damned thing about those things? You know better than I do, so tell me. Shonos says humanity has the tendency of not doing anything until it's far too late, which is damned true. What's also true is that humanity thinks it can, with enough time and money, fix/solve/prevent anything; squandering God knows what in the process.

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There's also the thing about astronomy being insanely interesting.

True.

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You can say that it's ''just'' curiosity, but curiousity is what got us out of the caves.

Let's see what else it'll get us out of.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.