The Search for Extraterrestrial Life is a Stupid Waste of My Money!

Let me break this down into 2 main sections. The first is about the feasibility of space travel and communications. The second is about whether we even WANT to find life, and why.

The Size of Space

Let me start by saying that I believe there is life elsewhere in the universe. However, I also believe that our chances of discovering another life form that we could actually communicate with are billions to one against. As such, spending vast sums of money on this type of long shot makes lottery tickets look like a great investment. Biologically speaking, the chances of all the variables lining up correctly such that life will form on a planet are very slim indeed. The chances of intelligent life forming are far slimmer. The chances of intelligent life forming anywhere near enough to the Earth that we could ever visit or even communicate with it... are pretty much ZERO.

To illustrate this, let's make the (probably fallacious) assumption that the universe is teeming with intelligent life. Let's  pretend that there are a hundred or so intelligent life forms just in our own galaxy (and there's billions of galaxies out there). Now let's assume out of sheer coincidence that there's an intelligent species that happens to live really close by. Our galaxy is about 100,000 light years across, so let's assume they live right here out on our same little neck of the same spiral arm. We'll pretend they are 1000 light years from earth. In stellar terms, they live right down the street. Being close by, they decide to send us a message. This message we receive would have been sent 1,000 years before. We can debate for a few years to formulate our response and then send it out. We will then have to wait 1,000 years before the signal reaches them, and another 1,000 before we get a response!

Okay, maybe sending radio or laser signals back and forth isn't a great way to communicate. How about visiting them?

Space Travel

Here's a few facts. The closest solar system to our own is Alpha Centauri. It is just over 4 light years away, meaning that the light from this system takes 4 years to reach us. Currently, the fastest man-made space vehicle travels at about 25,000 miles per hour. That equates to about 7 miles per second... sounds pretty fast, and it is. But it's NOTHING compared to the speed of light which zips along at 186,000 miles PER SECOND.

If we do the calculations, at 7 miles per second, it would take us more than 100,000 YEARS to reach our closest neighbor. This means we're not talking about a traditional space crew of brave young men willing to risk it all. We're now talking about hundreds or even thousands of men and women who will form a viable breeding population. These people would have to be willing to live the remainder of their lives in space, knowing they'll never reach their destination. They would be risking their own lives and the lives of their descendants for the next 4,000 or so generations and committing those generations to a life in deep space. All in the hopes of reaching the closest solar system to our own.

With a crew that size, we're talking about a city sized ship complete with artificial gravity, artificial sunlight, livestock, crops, and an entire artificial ecosystem. This must be built to last, and it has to last longer than anything mankind has EVER built. The ship would need to last at least 100,000 years just for a one way trip. In comparison, the pyramids are a mere few thousand years old.

Our ship would need to be HEAVILY armored. At 7 miles per second, if they hit even a small pebble, it would rip right through the hull of any normal spacecraft. The heavier the hull plating, the more weight we add which must be pushed along. This brings us to the most important point... we're going to need a MASSIVE propulsion system capable of accelerating our gigantic space city to these enormous speeds. All of this adds incredible fuel requirements (which also adds weight to the whole).

Do We Really Want to Find Life?

The worst thing we could ever find is a nearby planet suitable for human life, but which contains abundant life of it's own. I know that sounds like a strange statement, but there are VERY real reasons why. I know that there are a lot of scientists who drool at the thought of studying extraterrestrial life, but in my opinion, the best thing we could hope to find is a STERILE planet with conditions favorable for human life.

You might think that finding an Earth-like planet with forests, oceans, grassland, and ample wildlife would be a great place to settle, but this is absolutely false. If we were to find a planet filled with carbon based life forms, we could NEVER settle there. Humans have evolved alongside billions of other life forms here on earth, and we have struck an uneasy balance with our fellow species. This "balance" was won at a HUGE cost. Hundreds of billions of our ancestors had to die over billions of years from all manner of diseases and maladies. All of this death and disease has given us the complex immune systems we enjoy today. This immune system would be HELPLESS on any other life-bearing world.

Were we to find some planet that had a breathable atmosphere, suitable temperatures and gravity, abundant water, but which was teeming with life, that life would KILL every human that tried to settle there. It's also highly likely that we would manage to kill a lot of the indigenous life for the same reasons. Neither we the visitors, nor the indigenous life, would be immune to each other.

Throughout the history of human exploration here on Earth, we have seen repeated problems with this same phenomenon. When man crossed oceans or continents, we carried disease and interspecies rivalries. This cross-contamination produced terrible results, and this was all among earth creatures with common ancestries. Imagine the differences between earth-evolved life and an entirely separate extraterrestrial evolution.

Because of this, the best planet we could discover would be one that had the right atmosphere, the right temperatures, the correct gravity and the presence of liquid water… and NO life.  This is a planet we could settle. We'd simply transfer our own life forms. We'd simply seed the planet with microbes and plants, starting with those that do not require other life in order to survive. After this, we could slowly introduce other species... plants, animals, bugs, microbes, fish, birds, etc.  At which point we were able to feasibly sustain agriculture and livestock, mankind could begin to make a new home. If we were extremely careful in how we populated this new world, it is entirely possible that we could create a sickness-free, disease-free world.

I can see some serious moral questions arising if mankind were able to find that oasis in space with all the right conditions... but which had a species of horribly virulent microbes already living there. Would we be willing to exterminate the first extraterrestrial life we'd ever discovered in order to make a planet habitable to us? Inversely, would we pass up the opportunity to settle another world simply to save some microbes? I know a lot of lunatics who would claim that the microbes "owned" the planet, and that we humans had no "right" to take it from them.