Re: Asians to dominate space too?

Stephen Astro wrote:
So, what OTHER reason IS there to explore space?

[About 23 question marks snipped.]

To the extent that exploration must be useful in order to be considered
worthwhile (as opposed to, say, art), its benefit is unpredictable. As
Isaac Asimov once said, the one phrase that most often presaged a
momentous scientific discovery was not, "Eureka!" but "Hey, that's
funny." Scientific history is rife with serendipity. Radioactivity
was discovered by Becquerel while he was studying a completely different
property--fluorescence. It's just that one of his fluorescent materials
happened to contain uranium.

Science and technology do go hand in hand, but it's hopeless to try to
predict with any degree of accuracy what technology will come out of
what science. I'm quite sure that Becquerel had no idea that his work
on fluorescence would one day lead, however indirectly, to the atomic
bomb.

--
Brian Tung <brian@xxxxxxx>
The Astronomy Corner at http://astro.isi.edu/
Unofficial C5+ Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/c5plus/
The PleiadAtlas Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/pleiadatlas/
My Own Personal FAQ (SAA) at http://astro.isi.edu/reference/faq.html
.

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