Japan's 'Spaceguard' CentTo Track Celestial Clutter

> We have a lot more to learn about that and it is useful to
>study planets other than Earth. Had science not been done in the past,
>humans would still believe Earth was the center of the universe, inside a
>crystal sphere filled with air.

Yeah, sure. What if all the knowledge we have now was shared by a single
city on the African continent.
Science does no good if it is allowed to take priority over application,
especially if this priority is due to
ignorance. I say put mars as far back on the back burner as possible and
focus on near earth space.
Science, in my opinion, does not lead to discoveries no matter how much
force is put behind it.
Rather, expansion and the errors inherent to it lead to discoveries. That
is how real science happens.
Someday mars may or may not become relevant, and if and when it does (or it
is at least convenient to do so),
red planet science will commence.

Is Mars relevant to Earth now? Yes, it is. However, all science is
theoretically relevant to everything anyway. The
real test of 'relevance' comes only after the knowledge is gained. Man's
only way around this is to test his fate. The original men
(I am being unrealistically hypothetical here, forgive me, the point is
still relevant) decided that although they could not be sure,
as there was no way to be, whether the gods would approve of them leaving
their ancestral home that they should or would anyway. It
is this expansion that created modern knowledge and living. I can't think
of a single dominant society in today's world that isn't a
somewhat recent offshoot (one of many) of a former dominant society (When I
say dominant society I mean the U.K. or U.S. vs. Afghanistan and
Somalia) except for Japan (which ironically seems to have the most intense
desire in the world to expand further,
seemingly to make up for this ?=).

If every ancient society sent out scouts to review new land, as opposed to
just going out and settling, no advances would be made.
If the Egyptians had (or could have) decided to settle in an abundant forest
environment as opposed to a limited desert environment with a single river
supporting it, they would never have developed irrigation techniques and
eventual sciences to achieve what they did. The advent
of sailing for coastal societies arguably led to the development of modern
Western science (sort of).

Basically, science can not be made to advance society. Society's needs
advance science. A perfect example of this is in
NASA's attempt to advance space science for the sole purpose of advancing
space science (no comment on the success of this venture). Most
of these technologies have found their uses in completely unrelated fields,
proving that science cannot be manipulated to achieve a
result.

-Zack Sorenson

note: I am in high favor of the technologies that NASA has produced, but do
wish they would shift their focus.