We know less about our oceans than we do about space. Should do more to explore our own planet?

I think we know less about our minds than any thing else..maybe time to turn inwards and have a long hard look before we go stuffing up the external world any more!

I dispute this statement. Who says we know more about space than we do about our oceans? Sounds like one of those generalizations made by someone who hasn't really studied either.

Absolutely! If we could take time to explore the creatures and plants deep within our ocean then maybe we could find breakthroughs. Who knows, maybe even great medical discoveries!

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Mystery of our earth lies somewhere in space. The knowledge of universe is vital in understanding earth better.

I personally feel that we need to have a space program, and it is a shame that the United States has no shuttle that can do things like fix the Hubble telescope. That being said, I think that most research should be done by private companies and foundations. If they want to explore the oceans, more power to them.

If they want to explore space, that's fine too.

Yes indeed. There's some weird stuff down there (according to the few documentaries that have gone down to the bottom of the oceans), and at least we know there's definitely life! All the interesting space stories of late have come from long range telescopes, which seems a much more cost effective way to explore outer space.

I guess it depends on why you want to explore it. If it's to find more oil and gas and wreck the habitats then maybe not. If it's to increase our knowledge and learn more about the amazing creatures down there then maybe we should.

The reality is that we'll end up exploring whichever is most likely to give the government the best financial return.

Yes we should. It is not just the ocean floor but the amazon basin too.

I support exploring our planet thoroughly. There is plenty of information to learn and not enough people working on it. These are the kinds of things that will help humanity (and this planet)out in the long run.

Besides, if we wait too long, we will miss out on some things completely.

I'm going to say no. The less we explore, the less chance it will be exploited and ruined. Sorry for the negative comment, but there's some truth to it, isn't there!

:).

The oceans has been explored so well, man has known a whole lot about oceans, remember space is endless, so it will be very wrong to compare the study of space and that of ocean, because they are not in the same league.

Most of the depths of the sea are understood. It's fish, types and corrals that are why the argument "we know nothing of our oceans comes up" - this is due to new fish being born everyday, new species being born and new environments formed from pollution and fishing. I think there is more wonders out in space then in the sea.

I would much rather go to the moon then the bottom of the ocean, put it that way.

Yes you are right. And the worst thing is that many people are interested in knowing the aliens from space than the people on our earth.

Both space and ocean are always giving more and more lessons to humans. What we can do is to keep on studying these. Both needs to be studied.

People in general have a notorious habit of messing up life whenever they venture too close. I think it's best to leave the ocean alone and focus on space. There might be beneficial resources and scientific discoveries on the ocean floor, but space holds so much more potential for discoveries of all kinds.Is there life out there?

How can we harvest the vast mineral resources of the universe? How can zero gravity help patients with physical disabilities? The list goes on.

Plus the fact that space is never ending should inspire us all to be adventurers into the last great frontier.

I don't truly believe that we know much about either, but perhaps there is a link between the two. For instance, certain extremophiles found in the ocean exist on sulfur, not oxygen. Seeing that such an entity is capable of surviving in the absence of elements that support human life might better prepare us when assessing a new planet for ideal living conditions.

Basically, it might allow us to have more of an open mind when it comes to searching for foreign life forms throughout space.

I have always been a proponent of exploring the uncharted regions of the oceans of the world. It only makes sense to have a full awareness of our own surroundings before we go off and poke around somewhere else..

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I wonder what would have happened if Queen Isabella told Christopher Columbus, "No I will not fund your travels on the ocean because we haven't figured out all there is to know about Europe. "Besides, why can't we do both?

Goodness knows we need more jobs these days.

I think we should stop exploring further, whether it is sea or sky, and try to conserve as much as we can for the future generation. We are being really rude to our mother nature and let her not become impatient and strike back.

I think that we actually explore both equally. Based on your statement, I think that one reason that people want to explore space more is because of the fact that the Earth is dying. Space exploration might be focused more because of the hunt for new habitable 'Earth-like' planet.

I believe so.. The oceans are so vast and deep, that millions of potential new species have yet to be discovered. As our technology improves, we are going to see some major discoveries in the deeper parts of the world's oceans..

I think our scientists know equally about oceans and space. If you care to read various books that deal on these topics, you can find there are loads of them.

I would think that we know a lot more about our oceans then space. Our oceans are mapped out. Space can never be mapped because it keeps expanding.

Absolutely, I personally believe that there are "monsters" in the depths that no humans have laid eyes on. Simply waiting to be found..now had you asked if I would want to be the one going down there and doing the searching, well then that answer turns into a heck no!

Yes, I think we need to do more exploration beneath our ocean's surfaces. There are probably hundreds or even thousands of new aquatic species to be discovered. It will give us a pretty good idea of what creatures may look like on other worlds especially worlds that are predominantly covered with water.

I believe if we find any life forms on another world; water will probably be the first and best place to find it.

It's completely logical that we KNOW more about space than our own oceans because look how undeniably vast space is! Our ocean is only a molecule in the vastness of space, all-the-while space research and exploration continuously advances so knowledge is soaring in almost faster than we can obtain it. I remember reading something about the Mariana Trench explorations.

The Mariana Trench is the deepest part of any ocean in the world, at the very bottom you would have something like 16,000 pounds of pressure on every square inch of your body! There has only been 3 separate instances, I believe, that we've explored this area... the most recent being 1995. I believe if we are capable of doing this, exploring to such depths, it won't take long before we know most of what we can about the ocean.

I do believe that ocean exploration and studies should possibly increase, if we Have to take some of the funding going towards space and supply ocean exploration I believe that should happen, but not entirely divert funding from the space program to ocean research.

Indeed..there are more a lot to find under the ocean than outside the world..i think the recent discovery of the Atlantis would help to let the professionals to focus on the ocean...

I would not say divert the funding from space to the oceans ...but to create a better balance in funding between both. Not sure if you watch Nat-Geo ... but they do have a program out called known universe ... talks about both space and the oceans ... available on their website and on youtube ... watch it if you haven't already .. very interesting.

Actually, we know less about space. We haven't even come close to exploring 1% of our own solar system. There are billions of solar systems that are all different in our own galaxy - and billions of galaxies.

We have mostly theories - not much more. We at least have a good working knowledge of our oceans. And we will visit all parts of our oceans far sooner than our own solar system.

Space is infinite, our ocean is not.

I don't think we should divert money from the space program, but yes, we definitely should study the oceans more.

Maybe this was inferred because of the fact that a man had actually set foot on as far as the moon, but nobody was ever heard being able to set foot to the deepest point of the ocean floor. But I really don't know weather we know more about the outer space or the earth. For the question concerned, I opt to have significant time and resources be dedicated for the exploration of our own planet earth.

There's more to learn about the earth, maybe more discoveries can lead us into making the world a much better place to live in rather than actually looking for an alternative planet somewhere in the universe. There's no place like home.

Good question. Yes we should. It is hard telling what we haven't found yet.

Water covers 70% of our world. The future may be under that water and we need to begin exploring it.

I believe we should know every sq inch of this world, before we move onto deep space. The world we live on can teach us so much more, answer so many unanswered questions....

I think we most definitely should! I think there is a lot we can learn and discover still in the ocean. HOWEVER, we must do it carefully, so we don't do more harm to the oceans than we already are.

The ocean is one of the last frontiers on earth which is already very polluted from our garbage and fishing. We must take care when exploring it not to damage it further.

First of all, the space program is a joke. We landed a man on the moon in 1969. What have we done since?

Not much...while we continue to destroy the splendor around us. The space program should go on...but it should be privatized. I'll just bet that a corporation with a bottom line would do alot more to make progress than an inefficient, overfunded government entity like NASA.At the same time, the ocean affords us a huge area to be populated, with natural food and energy sources that could support mankind for centuries to come.

This is, of course, assuming that we wouldn't neglect its care like we have the land portion of earth.

There are less opposition in exploiting space than in our oceans.

Its not rue I think. We still couldn't solved how big is space. There are only some theories about it.

Its good to don't know oceans because when a human go to any place than other population gets die.

I am ratteling on, but this question is very versatile and just adresses a huge amount of "opinion leaders" with all their own agenda ...but in principle I find this a very good question, worth the debate ... but involving just too many interest groups to put, let's say, any concrete findings into practice ...

Further exploration of our oceans could only result in further exploitation of our own natural resources. I suppose I'd rather see the mining of asteroids and comets than further degradation of our own planet. This sounds doomsday and paranoid, I know.

I just think that if you give us the chance, as a race, we'll destroy anything beautiful for our own temporal gain.

Exploration is an infinite process. We have been exploring our planet since her inception and continue to do so. I am not too sure as to whether our knowledge of space overrides our knowledge of the planet, but I am do sure about the reasoning that if it wasn't for the constant exploration by our ancestors and for that matter even the present generation of the humanity in general, we wouldn't be where we are today.

Have we ever wondered as to why space exploration is always fascinating for us humans? That's because of the supposition and to a certain extent the certainty of discovering life form in other planets! It's with this sole motto that all the space explorations are motivated and inspired for!

As far as funding goes, let's not look at the budgetary allocation on an annual basis! There are millions of organizations, apart from the government, which sponsor and fund land explorations on our planet and if you combine them all, the total funding devoted for land exploration far overrides those of Space programs. Since space programs are a domain strictly controlled by the government with no encouragement or opportunities to the private sector, the funds allotted does seem more to a common man, but in reality it is not!

We do know a lot about our oceans and new species are being discovered on a daily basis. Since such discoveries appear late to the common public, we come to the erroneous conclusion of not much being done on exploring our own planet!

If what you say is accurate - which I might dispute - I would say we should definitely set our sights to the ocean, what with the last shuttle ever being sent up from NASA (They're setting up a new system) (Hmm maybe I should create a hub about this! :) ).

I think its safe to say that what we don't know about our oceans is typically extremely far below the surface at the sea floor. The amount of force that far down is beyond what anyone can imagine, which makes creating machines to go that far down tough and probably VERY costly.

I think we should continue exploring space, but we should also perform far more research about what lives in the oceans. We humans often leave a mess behind or destroy what we discover. So it is vital that our under water research not injure anything that lives there, and we should leave nothing behind.It is very likely that discoveries will be made both in space and in our oceans that will benefit us, but we must remember that we will not be the last to be living here.

Other people, plants and animals will be around long after we are gone. Let's leave them a better world, not worse.

I guess that most people know less about the life of the person standing in front of them and this is something we miss exploring in this world.

With as much ocean travel as we have on this planet it's amazing how poor our oceanographic maps are. There was even a submarine that collided with an undersea mountain because the area of the ocean they were in had not been updated since a voyage by Captain Cook in the 1700s! But at the same time, we need to have the right attitude about earthly exploration.It should be for discovery and learning, not for conquest or corporate interests.

I can agree with you in so many ways, that the oceans in such large areas are still undiscovered, and I'm sure there's still so much we can learn from them. But at the same time I'm pulled to the beauties that we can learn from space, from the birth of stars, the roles of blackholes in the creation and possible destruction of systems to the birth of the universe! After all, some of the theories that have been learnt from studying space have helped build technologies on earth, used in everyday life.

I find both subjects fascinating and would like to see both investigated and studied as thoroughly as possible, neither should be missed, both we could learn from and use to our benefit, after all, from the oceans to space, everything is quite incredible from the massive to the minuscule.

We are already diverting funding from the shuttle program and that is a good thing because the problem has been our insistence on manned flights. Deep probing spacecraft is a much better use of funds. Putting a man (or woman) in a spacecraft creates too many burdens in providing life support that can be much better accomplished by robots.

Unmanned spacecraft can travel farther, longer. The space shuttle has outlived it's usefulness. We don't need to study the effect of space on cockroaches or whatever.

The only limit we have now is how far a craft can travel and still provide information to earth. We should divert the money from the space shuttle program to increasing our reach into deep space for answers. If we were to divert any money from the space program to earth sciences, it should be spent toward creating an international NATO type of organization that creates and enforces international laws against practices that destroy earth's natural resources.

Really I think we need to stop spending so much money exploring and start using it to fix problems we have at home. We are at a point where the exploring we need to do to make real progress is wayyy to much in the future that spending a lot of money on it now isn't worth while. We should wait for technology to progress and then start back up again.

Exploring for answers beyond our planet may just unlock hidden answers that we would never know existed.

I think we hardly know anything about space. I mean nobody knows exactly how big it is. But, I do belive we should be investigating our oceans.

Land changes gernerously over time and I think our history and new species are waiting to be added to by unexplored waters.

Yes, definitely! I mean there are new stories all the time about unique marine animals that can survive extreme temperatures. How did we not know about a lot of that until now?

Deep sea exploration just doesn't have the same ring to it as space exploration!

I am not particularly interested in space exploration, but NASA has developed a lot of technologies that are useful on Earth while they developed technologies for space exploration. I do agree that our focus should be on our own planet.

Well I believe that we think we know more about space but I doubt we do there are parts of space we can't even see and even if we could that would only scratch the surface of what could be there. We can't even see planets several times the size of jupiter. Scientists simply deduce they are there because of flickers of light from the stars they revolve around.

In the way you have put it, we can all easily agree as there is no trade off. We all still wonder what lies in the deepest depths of our oceans. However, who can tell us what will deliver us more value (in knowledge): investigate space, or research our own planet?

I believe both are equally important.

We know a little and we thrive to know more. Science is a good thing, when corporations get involved, that's where it gets a bit scary. I fear, the more that is explored, the more that is exploited.

We should absolutely do more exploration here on our own planet. That's not to say that we should give up on space, but the longer we're around and able to use our brains, the weirder things seem to get here on earth. For example, I've heard it theorized that tiny black holes could be the answer to anomalous happenings in places such as the Bermuda Triangle.

Probably not the case as theories bounce around until something concrete is found, but in order to do it, calls for more explanation right here where we are, instead of where we can't yet reach.

I would say regardless of what we know more we should explore both. I think the oceans hold a lot of opportunity in terms of alternative power. I also think that if we could colonize a ocean OR space that would be really cool.Do Both!

I think both realms should be explored and studied. As for space exploration, you would be surprised at the number of innovations that aeronautics and cosmology has created. When it comes to the Earth's oceans, we still don't have adequate technology that would allow us to inexpensively explore the deepest points.

Water pressure is lot more daunting the "zero gravity. "Still, it's a great question!

Definitely. I think there is so much to learn about our planet and specially the oceans as you say. However, we still should do some investigations in space.

We are also over fishing the oceans and polluting it with plastic bag etc. We seriously need a rethink.

I always use to think we humans have still not aware of million and millions of mysteries inside our mother earth so the question finding extraterrestrial is at large. I think the arab countries are all the countries put together should make abody to unravel the eart mysteris . The fuel for that should be given free by the oil producing countries and ship by china and other thing by other country so it will not cost you much also rather than individual bodies trying to do.

I1000000000000000000000000000000000000% we should explore our ocean. A recent study confirkms that ther is abacteria at deep down in the ocean bopdy which converts carbondioxide to food with out sunlight. Isn't amazing for further understanding of how to survive in some other planets if we want to go?

All the best.

Who else is it going to affect if we take this plant or animal from the ocean, jungle, forest, etc. I don't think it's smart to diving into the ocean and taking stuff away from the ocean, if there's one thing in this world that shouldn't be messed with, it's by far the oceans. As for space, it is a very interesting/crazy place.It's kind of so interesting and so vast that it's scary. I don't know it's like those sci fi movies where aliens are coming to the planet to take over resources... except we are kind of like the aliens.

We have a lot to learn from understanding our wonderful home planet - not only scientifically, but experienctially. Let us approach Mother Earth with humility, and learn from her. What can we learn?

How to heal ourselves and create sustainable a sustainable society.

I don't think we should divert funding to know more about our ocean..i mean both are very important, as none is less important than the other.

All researches tend to have economic background these days.. if exploration of the deepest oceans is economically efficient we probably should.. on the other hand you never know what you see there.

There has been a lot of research on our oceans over the last two decades plus. Science has discovered new species. A lot more knowledge and new discoveries will happen over time.

Seeing as we have made such a mess of the parts of the planet that we do know, perhaps we should be gratefull that the oceans are less explored!

Irony is, we do more harm to our Earth than to the ocean and the space.

Investigate yourself first before investigating others. Earth and other planets are created in a way that I think is almost the same. We have not been able to cope with disasters that occur in our earth as well.

We can not keep the earth from damage caused by human activities. Though we've lived on this earth for centuries. Explore and save the earth first.

We live to explore! Like you have a question they answer, and I too.

Yes absolutly in fact on tv it said that at the botem of your ocians ALIENS might just but scouting there.

Not all the fundings but atleast 1/3 of the money we shall use cause we don't know much about our planet but we know everything about outer space.

Hahaha good point I agree with you that first we have to explore our own planet than to have a peak to other's planet. We have many places on our planet that are not even discovered. First we should explore that then to go further.

For sure, it spins me out that we know so little, its not like we are going to be living in space anytime soon. So logic is to explore where we are actually living first.

That's right. Cause the amount of water available too is scarce. Learning about our oceans is very important.

Scientists and geologists must stress on everything natural like oceans, seas, etc.

Comparing the size of space to our oceans, we will most likely always know more about our ocean than space. There are depths of the ocean man has not explored, but there are distances of space man doesn't even know exist. Justin Kresty.

On the lighter sense, I think we should not. This might just cause conspiracies.

That is so interesting, we know so much about the galaxy, but we don't know that much about our own home. Interesting, ha I suddenly got a funny idea. We are constantly looking for intelligent alient life form/civilization, what if there really is another intelligent civilization life form other then human right on our planet, maybe deep in the ocean.Hmm... I wonder what would happen when human and that species meet.

Would we be allies or will we declare war on each other?

I think we shouldn't explore no more about our planet because once we start then effects take place on the planet. Then we have an issue that we have to find solutions and that creates more problems. The greenhouse effect for example.

If we took time to closely study progress and consequences and try to limit the consequences we would be in better shape right now...

No, the ocean is a vast expanse,let the creatures live in their own habitat. To go in and stir them up it only upsets nature. Our planet incliuding jungles will not change.

Space travel should be kept. WE should try to focus on global warming.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.