re: #78 Anymouse 🌹🏡😷

And once explorers launched across the ocean, there was no way to protect them either.

Columbus only is famous because he ran into North America and was able to resupply (and enslave the natives).

Had the continent been just a little farther away, or not there at all, or his ships hit by a hurricane, they’d likely have spent a long time talking about the unknown dangers of the Atlantic and how it’s dangerous to explore it.

But Columbus thought he was traveling to the fabulously wealthy Asian continent, and he actually arrived at the fabulously wealthy western hemisphere. We would be sending people to a poisonous planet to be bombarded with deadly radiation so that they can analyze rocks already being analyzed by robots. Would it be cool to see people walking on Mars on my tv? Of course. But is it worth it. Look at what happened to the folks in the bio-dome experiment, and they could be helped when things went wrong.