Yes, let's get back on topic... Re: Dr Brandenburg.
WANTED: ASTRONAUTS to prepare for intergalactic war! Earth vs the Klingons, Xneu The Terrible, The Sith and the Romulans.
It's a sad day when our only motivation to get off our space faring asses is to build up a military space fleet.
OK, so here are my issues with this guest; first, Dr. Brandenburg is correct when he says that there is an urgency to get out into Deep Space but, The emergency isn't because somebody nuked Mars Half a billion years ago. The emergency is because of the astroid 99948 Apophis that was discovered in 2004. This astroid is going to pass less than 20,000 miles from earth in 2029. That's closer than a communication satellites orbit. But the big concern is how that will affect that astroids orbit. There is the possibility that ,that astroids flightpath could be perturbed. And the real question is what will that change do to it. Will it come back around much closer seven years later? If you look at what's going on with the NASA and the Orion spacecraft everything is geared towards studying and possibly redirecting astroids. Including, going out to study the moons of Mars. All you have to do is look at the NASA website and you'll see what I'm talking about. There's nothing new about this astroid bit or going to Martian Moons.
Secondly; I don't believe that you can travel faster than the speed of light. I know a lot of people will disagree with me on that and some won't. Because of that, I think it means blowing Mars up to set an example to the rest of the galaxy is nonsense. It seems like one of the big problems with the UFO world in general is, too much science fiction pollution. Dr. Brandenburg is right, we Earthlings are a bunch of savages even though we have made technological advances. But, consider this. Even if some society in another star system were able to develop something as exotic as traveling faster than the speed of light or warping space. I simply can't believe that they would not shed their savage tendencies. I don't think you could make it to that advanced a stage and be Savage and still survive. Let's face it if we don't get our act together on this planet, we're not going to get to the interstellar space travel phase. I realize that science-fiction has all kinds of dramatic characters like Star Wars and Star Trek but that is just earths history and it's drama set and a futuristic space framework which which I love but it is what it is, fiction. Another words I'm not afraid of intergalactic A-holes coming to get us.
In closing I do agree that exciting discoveries on Mars will get us out there quicker because we just don't seem to have enough motivation to go there however, my guess is that Elon Musk will probably get there before NASA does.
oh by the way another great show!