I see your point, but that is a dangerous method. What would protect the people inside? What would that kind of discharge of energy do to the stratosphere? What kind of havoc might it wreak as the radiotion slowly goes down onto the populous below?

And that comic is quite disturbing, sure the U.N. is corrupt, but not more than anyother government.

agh, sorry the forum double posted for me.

sure the U.N. is corrupt, but not more than anyother government

I think the idea is that the UN is super-liberal, enough even to shame even Hillary. I just think the point is that extreme leftists like to really kiss their European asses.

seriously. the UN is way too dominated by Euro countries. the only reason the EU doesnt formally allign into a real government is because then they will lose their stranglehold on the UN (and us, their lapdogs)

I hate how we went from space back to the UN and Euro. We should start a thread just about those tho things   

We arent, the UN was poorly defined and constructed. Sure a small, less powerful country wont dare to violate its rules lest it be banned from world economy and trade. But, no one (besides Venezuela and the East) seems to chalange us when we defy the rules. Sure when we started war the UN was unhappy, did they embargo us as the rules state, nope they just set back and watched and then they sent in troops to keep us happy. But, how long will that really last, soon enough they will stop giving us what we want and then what? War? Nuclear War? The end of the World?(okay fine thats a bit dramatic)

As for space expansion as soon as the governments lossen the laws restricting it and as soon as they hand it over to corporations(no matter how much i will regret them doing so), we will see faster expansioin and better organized expansion. But thats open to debate, its just corporations sometimes have more free rule than governments.

We really do need to find a new way to get things INTO space. The ways now are just too inneficient (and loud...)
Nukes wouldn't work that well to get it up in the first place, and we don't have quite enough nanotechnology for a space elevator yet.

The UN wont collapse from space exploration or expandedures, it pays for nothing. Its a very lose confederation its main goal right now is to keep tensions down and let people still have a voice so that the world economy could remain stable. I mean instead of going to war now you can just tell the country you hate how much you really hate them. But, i dont know there are many "radical" bills going in there now, some giving it power to take soldiers from each member country and form it into a Protection Agency. There also was bill a while ago that proposed that some of the wealthier nations begin paying X% of their yearly income to the UN so that it may fund more international research. But, none have passed either of the two "sectors" of the UN. And im sure that even if it gets through the lower house, the Security Council will vote it down. Something about a millitarized union just scares people.

The UN has lost its usefulness already, all its doing now is prolonging the wait between either war or peace. All they do is debate and use underhanded tactics to overpower each other. And in the end they end up in the same place they began, in my opinion it just didnt have strict enough rules and regulations. I mean when it was first founded there was one really major law about nuclear power stating only the "Nine" or the "Victors" of World War II could have it, but at this point almost every major member does and no one cares anymore. This mindset has let other countries get away with a lot of stuff *cough US cough*.

Well hope for the best, if that country gets enough economic and political control it might just decide to screw its allies and take the world without union. I mean a lot of things can be done if you have space supperiority(orbital bombardment anyone?)

O not just the president i see Republicans greatly favoring this kind of idea.

Uniting the world forcefully is a bad idea. The government of the United States would not be able to handle that much land area, or that many people. Plus, i dont think anyone would go quitely, and because we understand very little about other cultures there is sure to be many rebellions. In the end it will just be pointless lifes lost and the collapse of world economy.

This got us nowhere, what tangent did we go off to end up here again.... *sigh*.

Lol, its time to turn the Guide for the answers it seems... *goes off to find my extensive collection of Douglas Adams' books*.

Well, moving back to the original point of this thread (lets see if we can't save it eh?)

Yes, I would go into space...

If there are aliens out there we should definitely throw out all the games like "Space Invaders" where we massacre a bunch of aliens or risk them finding them.

How we should proceed is a tough one, it is unanimously agreed that weapons should be kept down here and not taken into space (so no Sins type future for us).

I think colonisation of the Solar System and extrasolar planets is a must, since we've screwed Earth up so badly. Plus if a major catastrophe were to happen on Earth (Supervolcano, asteroid etc etc) we wouldn't all be...to put it lightly...dead.

The real question is how? The knotty little problem of FTL travel is very nasty indeed. Many scientists reckon that if we could generate a localised singularity ( a titchy black hole) we would be able to warp space time and travel at the speed of light in a little bubble, while travelling at translight speeds in the normal universe...oh would you look at that, my nose has started to bleed. Its fair to say that that is waaaaaaay off. At the end of the day hauling our collective backsides off this rock is going to be the biggest challenge we've ever faced. Arthur C Clarke said that since he wrote 2001 to the present day, there has been far less space travel than he would have expected, because it relies on budgets, we must drop that philosophy if we are gonna get anywhere.

There, hopefully that got this thread back on track.

It matters, i think some weapons should be taken. Some of the worlds we land on might have primitive life forms that would try to kill us. Hopefully, we will be one of the first races in space so that we wont have to compete with the galactic community. But, as said that is far off and we still have a long way to go. Lets see how Mars goes, then we can truly get involved in space colonization.

We probably will be, there are some planets already in the late stage of developement, life might be happening soon enough(in a few thousand years) once again.