Robert Duane Ballard (born June 30, 1942 in Wichita, Kansas) is a former commander in the United States Navy and an oceanographer who is most noted for his work in underwater archaeology. He is most famous for the discoveries of the wrecks of the RMS Titanic in 1985, the battleship Bismarck in 1989, and the wreck of the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown in 1998. Most recently he discovered the wreck of John F. Kennedy's PT-109 in 2003 and visited the Solomon Islander natives who saved its crew.
He was saying that the spending figures for space exploration compared to studying the oceans was perhaps out of balance. And since the oceans represent 72 percent of the planet WHERE WE ACTUALLY LIVE, then maybe there's an argument to be made for his position.
. . .Whenever I read "mining the Moon or asteroids" I always think: Why not start here on earth at places (deep sea) we don't even know yet, which are a few miles away and don't require massive delta v?
Quote from: Analyst on 02/11/2009 05:47 pm. . .Whenever I read "mining the Moon or asteroids" I always think: Why not start here on earth at places (deep sea) we don't even know yet, which are a few miles away and don't require massive delta v?Why don't we go change luna and mars into earths in stead of changing earth into a lunar/martian landscape ?Why don't we fly now the seed outposts to luna and to mars, before we run out of resources here on earth, while we can still launch a rocket without killing a square mile of life for it ?
I hope I am not hearing you say "let's stop crapping our planet and go start crapping another planet instead". Why not let Luna and Mars STAY Luna and Mars, but still use their resources in a responsible manner? After all, when we have mined them to death, where else do we go next? Venus is awfully hot most times of the year.
I'll cut the guy some slack. He's frustrated as are many NASA and other government people.The only thing being fully funded is the debt payments.The debt in the US, federal, state, city and personal is beyond all reason.
Isn't the Colbert Report supposed to be a comedy-satire send up of news interview shows? Not my preferred brand of humor (I'm more of a Lewis Black type), but whenever I happen to watch, it seems like he deliberately asks assinine questions in order to provoke his guests into making fools of themselves.
I used to have allot of respect for him, however he seems to be extremely bitter about the amount of funding and attention that space exploration gets versus that of oceanic exploration.
Quote from: Ronsmytheiii on 02/11/2009 02:29 pmI used to have allot of respect for him, however he seems to be extremely bitter about the amount of funding and attention that space exploration gets versus that of oceanic exploration.Where do you get "extremely bitter" from? Can you cite a specific quote? Is his tone angry? Does he throw things? I'd like to know how you arrived at "extremely bitter" based upon that clip.