18 replies to this topic

[CRYSiiSx2]

Waspie_Dwarf, on 08 March 2013 - 01:22 PM, said:

What will drilling a few feet achieve? What will you be able to measure 2 foot down that you can't measure at the surface?

I would like to see some sort of wire able to be coiled up, with a bit at the end that could drill.  This way maybe someway we could get to the ocean itself.

[Sundew]

Silver Surfer, on 09 March 2013 - 09:31 AM, said:

Its full of europeans.

Jovial Europeans, no doubt.

[Esoteric Toad]

See if all the ET believers here would focus on things like this then it could be a bit more believable. Imagine a race living on Europa, advanced as us but not caring about the stars since they do not see them, or need them. They have a 3D world to live in grow in. Maybe they didn't develop a need for radio or transmission powerful enough to be heard here on earth. Silly, sure. Possible I haven't a clue. Fun to think about, perhaps.

[Sundew]

highdesert50, on 09 March 2013 - 12:56 PM, said:

This article is a nice find as it also brings about some interesting debate as to intent. Do we seek for the intent of discovery, find parallelisms in life, and/or, perhaps, to re-establish a civilization's boundaries? While establishing human presence in distant lands is perhaps in our genetic makeup, the economics seems to make this more and more prohibitive. And, I can envision a time when we are so overwhelmed with the economics of sustaining our burgeoning Earthly population the opportunity for manned exploration and colonization will be forever extinguished. Will we be ultimately limited to perhaps establishing elaborate sensors at a lagrangian L2 orbit and remotely scanning our universe with perhaps a smattering of trekking galatic nanobots?

If we get to the point where we can send groups of various nanobots, or microbots to other worlds the rewards would be great in terms of exploration. First they could be cheap, massed produced, weigh relatively little and they could be sent aboard rockets then launched from earth orbit at their targets like so many bullets, with little or no fuel. I don't know how many years down the road before the technology becomes a reality, there has to be a power source and some form of atmospheric breaking, but you could literally send out thousand per year. They might not be able to do more than simple tasks given their size but if each type could do a simple scientific function they could be sent to all the solid planets, moons, asteroids, comets and so forth, and even on suicide missions to the gas giants. You could "flood" the surfaces with them so that if some are inevitably lost, the others would keep on transmitting data. Imagine data coming in pole to pole on Mars! The data collected could fill in many gaps in our knowledge of the solar system, and with it you could best decide where to spend the resources of large vehicles and/or manned missions.