Thank you, NASA, for a load of self-serving, egotistical, sentimental, nonsensical tosh.
We can't even agree what to do about a bankrupt third-world country that lied on its CV to get into the club in the first place, never mind what we're going to do with another habitable planet if we happen to come across one (and if it also happens to be unoccupied -- heaven forbid that it should be occupied, we've all seen what happens then).
We've already destroyed thirty percent of the fish in the seas and it will take us about another fifty years to destroy the rest. The scientific communities have been telling governments what's going to happen for decades, and governments have ignored them. Coastal fishing is finished. There haven't been any cod on the Grand Banks since 1992 (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Atlantic-Cod-Stocks.jpg). North Sea catches are in terminal decline. Human activity has already destroyed ten percent of the world's coral, sixty percent is endangered world-wide and in Asia the figure is nearer eighty percent. We're now consuming resources 30% faster than the planet can sustain and we're PLANNING -- I say again we are PLANNING -- not only for an INCREASE in the world's population of more than the number that was on the planet when I was born, but in addition to that, we're PLANNING for each and every one of those people to consume a great deal more than we do already.
It's madness on a colossal scale.
Our collective governments tell us it's a disaster if there's no growth. I'm saying it will be a disaster if we don't stop it.
Where's the world going? At this rate, to Hell in a handcart.
Incidentally even at the fastest speed to which we have ever managed to accelerate any spacecraft (and that was cheating, but never mind that for now), it would take something like twenty thousand years to reach the nearest star. We don't even know if that star has any planets, so it would be taking a bit of a leap of faith with an investment that would make the Greek bailout look like Sunday morning collection at a Methodist chapel.
