Image credit: NASA, ESA
- When I was young, I remember people arguing against going out to space because we'll just drag our human problems out there. They were either saying we shouldn't go; or, we shouldn't allow people to out to space till we solve our human problems here on Earth first. I don't hear people saying that anymore. Of course, if these types of thoughts were to be brought up again, you know what I'd throw at them!
The problem of getting religious people, if you want to call them that, to be honest about it all suggests that we won't get these people to admit to truths anytime soon. If we had to solve our problems here on Earth first, we'd never get out to space!
One of the main reasons people have thought for establishing a permanent human presence in space is to overcome extinction due to 1) asteroid impacts, and 2) nuclear holocaust. I would say, 3) one should establish mankind out in space, so that no ideological faction can prevent new correct ideas from changing old, wrong ideas. Colonizing space frees the human mind like what the great European voyages did back in the ~ 1500s. It would have a Renaissance affect.
- Here's a pretty good documentary on ESO(European Southern Observatory)'s MUSE instrument. A kind of 3d spectrograph. It takes pictures and spectrographs, in 3d, of astronomical objects at the same time.
