Interesting question--WOULD you explore space?

[hunter]

40. No way in hell.

I'm one of those boring people who thinks the speed of light is absolute. I'd certainly be long dead before that huge spaceship reached anywhere interesting, nor would I ever be willing to selfishly commit my descendants to that sort of journey in some hollowed out asteroid, generation ship, or similar.

My grandfather was one of the many engineers who landed men on the moon. Bits of his metal are there and in the Smithsonian. I inherited a bit of metal that orbited the moon. As a very honorably discharged World War II Army Air officer I'm sure my grandfather would have enthusiastically made the trip to the moon himself, nevertheless I think outer space belongs to our intellectual offspring, engineered beings biological or mechanical or both, who have no trouble living there; the kind of folk who could run around naked on the surface of Mars day or night.

Human biology is just too damned specialized for life on earth, and deep space a very hostile environment for us. Artificially intelligent space explorers can inform us. If we are lucky they'll still like us when they surpass us in intelligence, maybe even take a few of us along as guests in their own explorations

The only reason the International Space Station works is that it orbits within the protection of earth's magnetic field. Beyond that, radiation exposure has significantly unpleasant impacts on human health.

So much as i enjoyed the book and movie The Martian, those sorts of stories only work if we ignore the actual health hazards of a deep space environment.

I have seen a way to make Mars and the Moon habitable for humans, but it involves superconducting unobtanium or a whole lot of nuclear powered heavy lifting.