Was the Wright brothers’ first flight useless, or did it teach us lessons that lead to the Concorde and 777?
Was the first automobile so slow and clunky it was useless, or did it lead to the F1 cars of today?
Was Alan Touring’s computer so slow it was useless, or did it lead to this comment being typed on a device that is many orders of magnitude faster and smaller?
Going to Mars will teach us a lot. In the future when we go further it will be useful in ways we can’t imagine today.
> In the future when we go further it will be useful in ways we can’t imagine today.
There. Is. No. Further.
That's my issue with all that. It's pretty basic: check how far the next solar system is (I know you don't: it's 4+ light-years). Check the speeds we get when we send something out of the solar system (e.g. Voyager).
Sending something to the next solar system at speeds orders of magnitudes faster than we reach today (which we can't reach because... orbital mechanics) would take us tens of thousands of years (hundreds of thousands actually, I can't remember and at this point it does not matter).
Unless someone discovers wormholes or a similar revolution in physics, we are not going to another solar system, period. Contaminating Mars is not even helping doing that. It's like hoping that the Wright brothers' work would help discover vaccination.
That is exactly the point.
You simply can’t know what the future holds.
After the Wright brother’s flight do you think people thought we would cross the Atlantic faster than the speed of sound sipping champagne, or go to the moon?
“Impossible”
And so on.
You have no idea what will be possible on the future, but I hope we can get there by learning, not sticking our heads in the sand.
Was the first automobile so slow and clunky it was useless, or did it lead to the F1 cars of today?
Was Alan Touring’s computer so slow it was useless, or did it lead to this comment being typed on a device that is many orders of magnitude faster and smaller?
Going to Mars will teach us a lot. In the future when we go further it will be useful in ways we can’t imagine today.