If only we had pockets to warm our hands (or coats
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(No red shirts were harmed in the making of this post.)
What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?
- Thread starter Amasov
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(No red shirts were harmed in the making of this post.)
Yeah, even 24th century crews rarely beam down to a planetary surface with more than just their basic duty uniform. Coats? Pockets? Who needs that hassle. We're trying to tell dramatic stories here. 
ENT showed that United Earth Starfleet officers often wore field jackets with padding and pockets but after that the practice seems to have largely disappeared by TOS. TMP and TWOK revived the concept of field jackets but that was pretty much it in the Trek chronology.
SULU: D-d-d-did someone s-s-s-say "c-c-c-coats?"
Did someone say ' send a shuttle down?'
There were those nifty jackets in "The Cage", but yeah.
When Worf explained that Starfleet uniforms were designed to be adaptable for a variety of different climates I thought in my head "gotta save the costume budget huh".
ADMIRAL MORROW: "Kirk... I see what you did there."
The way i see it, if Mars and/or Venus had an environment that was even somewhat habitable then we would be much further along with space travel than we are. We'd might even already have colonies there.
To me the biggest hindrance of humanity expanding into space is that, from what we know right now, there's simply nothing out there for us that would justify the costs and danger it would bring.
I know I was highly disappointed, having grown up reading Space Cadet by Robert Heinlein and really hoping Venus was a viable colonization place. A friend of mine and I in high school drafted plans for a Mars colony as well, situated near Valles Marineras. And, of course, I wrote numerous stories centered on that idea.
So, yeah, it's very disappointing to keep reading news regarding space travel and much of the indications are it will probably kill a lot of people in the effort.
it was also quite disappointing for me as a young child. It was already known that those planets were uninhabitable at that point, but still I had to learn it at some point.
A interesting question I once asked on another forum: Imagine Mars and Venus were *technically* inhabitable (atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, all the spheres you need), but had very hostile environments, like if Venus was a scorching hot desert planet and Mars resembled Siberia. Would that still be enough to justify colonization? And how many people would want to go?
Since people are still justifying colonization I would say that would be enough. And I think people would go just like they would want to go to Antarctica.
I think it's also the Dark Ages' fault that we are not further along. Daniel Jackson once said that we'd be colonizing space now if not for that period of anti-science. (I think it was in season 1's "ENIGMA".)
That's not entirely accurate to what is known of history. The Church in Europe supported various universities, translations of Aristotle and Euclid's works, and technological inventions like the mechanical clock and spectacles. And increase use of inventions from the East like the compass, gunpowder and printing.
It's not as straight a line as Jackson's quote makes it out to be.
I know I often wonder what would have happened had our distant fishy ancestors evolved intelligence while still in the oceans. Just think, we could have long rambling arguments about the foolishness of abandoning the warm, safe, comfortable, resource-rich oceans for the terribly inhospitable, unknown, and dangerous DRY LAND.
Personally I could picture myself moving to Venus in that scenario, since I like deserts, but not Siberian Mars brrrrr!
That is a very dated view of history. Yes there was a time of unrest in Europe after the Migration Period.
But, not only did the Byzantine Empire weather the (so called) "Dark Ages" without any problems and continued to innovate, but the view Middle Ages as a time of "anti-science" has also been refuted and they are now generally known as the "Dynamic Middle Ages" due to their advancements.
The medieval Church being anti-science is also largely a myth. Anti-Science in Christianity is largely a newer trend, starting in the 19th century (same with Islam btw where it largely started after the fall of the Ottoman Empire)
Plus...even ignoring the Byzantine Empire...the so-called European "Dark Ages" were not global. The Islamic World went through a golden age of art and learning at around the same time. And there's also China, Persia, India...
Again, we are not colonizing space because there's nothing of worth to Colonize, no matter how much Elon Musk babbles about his Mars colony.
But event he land at least has life on it. Mars and Venus don't.
We more and more seem creatures of our environment. But, we still have Heinlein, and Star Trek.
And that's all well and good. I love good stories from these worlds. My biggest thing is simply that humanity is far more risk adverse. We don't want people to die for anything and if they do it's a tragedy that should never have happened. And, while I am saddened when people die it also makes me painfully aware that a push in to space is too costly at this point for most of humanity.
Which, hopefully has a positive outcome of people becoming more compassionate and aware of how to treat each other.
Based on how we treat the planet we live on, I am not a fan of humans living in space.
Wherever you go, you take yourself with you.
Wherever you go, you take yourself with you.
But that’s the great thing ABOUT space. Being wasteful and slovenly there is way more likely to kill you, once that crap gets into the extremely limited livable environment you will have.
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