Heads-up, this is a long post with a lot of quotes. Apologies to everyone who's getting this whole thing in their inbox and has to hunt for their post; it was either that, or make a half-dozen different posts, or learn when to keep my mouth shut. This seemed to be the best option.
MovieBob said:
...when we finally make do First Contact, the aliens won't be met by a respectable starship crewed by a cross-section of the very best humanity have to offer, but instead will come upon the U.S.S. Mountain Dew, crewed by a cross-section of human worthlessness picked by some damn reality show.
OK, Bob, I know you were being sarcastic and all, but
that. Sounds. Like. The premise. Of the best. Sci-fi. Comedy. Ever. Seriously. I was toying around with the idea of creating a sci-fi comedy show reminiscent of
Red Dwarf or something, but I was kind of stuck for a premise. Not anymore. I'll be sure to get in touch if it ever goes anywhere, see if we can work something out.
Darth Sea Bass said:
I'm not even american and i'm pissed off that america has canned the shuttle! How as a species are we gonna advance without pushing ourselves to explore and colonize space?
You seem to have missed either the point of the video or the less on how space travel works. Or both. It's not just that they canceled the shuttle program; it's that they canceled the stuff that was set to replace it. We can't very well fly to Mars or colonize planets in other solar systems in the Space Shuttle.
flying_whimsy said:
Arguably, the internet has been ground zero for everything awesome over the last twenty year: nearly instant dissemination of information across class and geopolitical boundaries and what do we do with it? porn, WoW, and facebook.
Humanity epic fail.
Wow... This is probably the most poignant thing I've read in ages. I really don't know what to say.
Orcboyphil said:
I'm with Bob here but not just for the ohh wow where finally here reason (Though it is a frikkin large part of it). The choice isan't really feed the starving or go to Mars; its go to Mars and the technology that will be necessary to create a viable colony will also be the technology that improves the lot for the poor people of Earth.
I'm not so sure anymore. It seems to me that all the technology we'd need in order to go to Mars already exists, because technology has been improving on its own since it was created for the original space program. Feel free to prove me wrong though.
Falseprophet said:
There's one very important reason to keep funding space research. If a couple of decades from now, we find a Near Earth Object [http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/] in real danger of impacting with the Earth, wouldn't you rather have something in place to address it? Or would you rather put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye?
You know all them nukes we've still got stored up? The ones that the U.S. supply of alone could blow up a whole Earth-sized planet and then some? Yeah, I think we've got a pretty good fighting chance. Now, making sure we still have enough people on watch that we'll see it coming, that's another matter, but if things ever get so bad that NASA loses
that much funding, there's a good chance we'll have bigger things to worry about.
JUMBO PALACE said:
I feel like this show is just giving Bob an outlet to yell about things.
I think he more or less said that was the point in the first episode.
Squarez said:
If the EU united as one single country, we could probably easily get a decent space program running, maybe one that could surpass NASA. But alas, people are too proud to admit that united we stand, divided we fall and the British would want to stay British and the French would want to stay French etc instead of just being European.
And you would all speak, what, Esperanto? Also keep in mind that so far, nobody's proven that a country that big and that densely populated can work. Including the U.S., which from the looks of things is on its way to proving that it
can't.
