The frontier to other species....

» TedyBear - The Frontiers of the future

I know this might sound ridicolous, but it's a thing I've comed to think about lately.

One day in the far future mankind will make contact to another species. I've been thinking about what the contact would be like, what I've seen of mankind behaviour during my short (17 years) life, I can't say straight out that the contact would be a friendly one.

During the entire history of mankind there has been many conflicts, too many to count them all.
And when there's a conflict there are those who suffer, always have been, always will be.

If mankind wouldn't change all that much till the day the alien species and humans make contact, who will suffer more?

Humans have many times crossed the border to raise a wide array of weapons against each other, how easy could it be to raise weapons against another species?

If we still haven't been noticed by other species I wonder if they are looking for life on another planet just like we do?
If they would by mistake stumble across our solarsystem and find us, what would their reactions be?

I hope that there would be peace, but when there's peace, there's tensions beneath the calm surface preparing for the storm.

But one thing is for sure, when that day comes I hope mankind would for a change grab the small thing called common sense and turn it all for the better...

-- posted by TedyBear

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» LarryW_4 - Tedybear writes:

About first contact with ET, Tedybear writes: I can't say straight out that the contact would be a friendly one.

Nor can I. In fact, given the economic requirements of exploration, one should expect any visit to this planet by extraterrestrials to be traumatic for us. You would much rather be cast in the role of a European explorer than an American Indian, to employ an analogy from recent western history.

We should not wait around to be contacted. It's very bad planning to hope for an active space program "someday" because it's "inevitable", to paraphrase typical Washington rhetoric.

Look for a future article on the benefits of space exploration, its costs, and how we can use these facts to predict the nature of first contact with a spacefaring race of aliens. October would be a good time.

See also "The Economics of Discovery".

-- posted by LarryW_4

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» TedyBear - Regarding european explorers and the indians

I couldn't agree more about not to invite the ET:s to our homeworld at the first opportunity, it would be us against them. Who knows what kind of an armada they would bring to our doorstep (unless we're lucky and they're the peace loving pacifists of the universe).

Nor do I hope that we would discover their homeworld, that would just turn things around, but with one exception: The technology.
If we would have a crappy day when we discover their homeworld, their technology would be enough advanced to provide a formidable defence.

If the probe or whatever is sent out to explore would make it in to their space it would surely be detected and captured/destroyed.

If it would be captured, it's flight-logs would provide all the data to send out an task-force to our doorstep, in which case we're the indians.

But another factor is not a new one:
How is mankind spread out.
We know that our planets resources are running out, at the rate of consuming today, we will be out of oil in 50 - 75 years, about 20 years later will we've exploited all the natural gas on earth.

This means that in 100 years we've better develop another major fuel to our vehicles (spaceshuttles, cars, airplanes and ships) or they will stand still.
One might think that humanity will spread out to the planets we're exploring today, for example Mars. If there wouldn't be human settlers on Mars, there would surely be a mining facility, automatic and close to 100% independent.

I have also thought about the spacestations (like we've seen in many sci-fi movies & series, eg. Babylon5 & Earth2)

In the sci-fi world are spacestations home for miljons of people, but it's a bit foolish to think that stations would be civilian homes when their defences would be close to zero.

Of course the military would lead the way to the Space Age' 2nd chapter, but how far ahead would the military go?

But before any of this could even be imagined to be true, we would first have to forget about small questions like nations and look at the big picture: The Mankind.

But in the end about the european explorers and the indians (good news):
Less than 1000 years later they coexist, although both have modified their appearances.

-- posted by TedyBear

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