Originally posted by timebombted
Your logic is senseless.
So you truely believe that brain power hasn't resulted in anything to increase the survival of the human race?
Surely there are hundreds (if not more) medical discoveries?
How about engineering achievements which help us live in inhabitable places?
The problem is we have to get off the planet if we want true longevity. We cannot be tied to one planet for our existance. That much is clear from the impacts of asteroids on earth, moon, mars and most recently on Jupiter, if you remember the 'string of pearls' collisions.
So we have to overcome our own reluctance to long term programs and get on the ball or the weather, climate, ecodisasters, disasterous energy crises, whatever, all these things have to be overcome or we will reach a peak soon where its downhill enough that we lose our ability to do spaceflight, all that effort will be for nothing if we can't grow crops for instance. How long would the space program last if all the developed counties were fighting every day to keep farms going enough to feed an ever diminishing population from some climate crunch? Its not even close to inevitable that we become a spacefaring species, by that I mean establishing self-supporting colonies on Mars, Europa, or even on some planet around Alpha Centauri if we play our cards right. All that can be gone in a trice and no way to get it back. In that case, as a race we are doomed, at least driven back to 1000 years in the past but the climb back up if our present civilization takes a dive, we will have used up so much of the earth's resources there won't be much left for another one to flourish, say, 10,000 years later or whatever. We basically have this one chance, this one century to get it right and get the hell of the planet if we are to have any hopes of surviving our natural racial lifespan.