A moon based telescope, start work on mars with the runaway carbon dioxide greenhouse theory (Experiment), and start retrieving the moons H3 for fuel for space travel. This is just for starters imo.
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What if they are out there.
Recent theoretical work by Barrie Jones, Nick Sleep, and David Underwood at the Open University in Milton Keynes indicates that as many as half of the known systems could be harbouring habitable ?Earths? today.
Dan
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I don't have to lock my doors at night?
Regards, Doug in New Mexico
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Sure, if you and every other votes to have an Osama dictatorship.
One bad apple out of step ruins it for all.
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doesn't have enough horsepower.
Next?
Regards, Doug in New Mexico
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install a smart door that will lock and unlock automatically
http://www.tokai-rika.co.jp/en/news/2002/030214.html
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As many as half. How many could there...?
If this was ID theory, we'ld be bent over laughing about such speculation. How many times do scientists have to be surprised about what is actually found before we stop hyping speculation?
Not that I care, BTW, by how many other habitable earths there are. I very much enjoyed CS Lewis's speculation on this subject.
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I accept the idea that there are other habitable planets. either at the edge of our universe or in those beyond. Any closer, IMO, might support life, but not as we know it.
What I wonder about is how many of those planets now "dead" could have once been supporters of life. Photos show them pockmarked by meteors. If we did not have the oceans, mountains and greenery, would our planet look the same as they. And if they did once support life, what happened.
Our location in our solar system is right for our life. Yet our planet has changed through natural occurrences-ice, fire, wind, water, volcanic eruptions, and movement of the plates. The unnatural occurrences are what bother me.
Anyway, it's fun to speculate, and wanting to know.. Without those who sought and are seeking answers, we would not have been to the moon.
Angeline
click here to email semods4@yahoo.com
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I came across it years ago, maybe in Scientific American.
Earth is "just right" in so many ways- distance from sun, location in galaxy, temp, O2/N2/CO2, everything. Reminds us of Goldilocks' story. It's a "problem" because science can't account for it. ("You can't handle serendipity!" -Dr. Jack Nicholson.)
Not up on the very very latest, but I know the suspected planets so far proved to have fatal flaws. More to it than just orbiting a star.
When we read Goldilocks, BTW, do we doubt the house belonged to someone, even though we can't see them?
Regards, Doug in New Mexico
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There are a lot of things about this solar system that allows the earth to create life. There are large planets out past earth that collect a lot of the flotsum and jetsum running around. The large moon allows a lot of stability on the planet. This allows the 4 billion years to create multicellur life.
Most of the planets that have been discovered elsewhere are very large and very close to the sun.
click here to email semods4@yahoo.com
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The way we detect them are effects on the star, and that puts a premium on size and nearness to the star. We couldn't currently detect the earth if it were in this location relative to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star.
-- Dave K.
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as this article suggests, for more than one reason:
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-01x1.html
and...
New computer models developed by a team at the Open University in Milton Keynes, England, suggests up to half of the 130-or-so known solar systems could be harboring habitable, Earth-like planets.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/extrasolar-05r.html
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Our position in the galaxy! It means that 90% of the stars in our galaxy could not support life.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-01o.html
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Great advert for Our Sponsor!
"Our Sun is unusually metal-rich for a star of its age and type. Scientists aren't sure why."
If you hear chuckling from above, it means God links to spacedaily.com. 
"Solar systems near the center would experience increased exposure to gamma rays, X-rays, and cosmic rays, which would destroy any life trying to evolve on a planet."
Too true. In my simple way, I've always been glad for the shielding from visible light only; we would have had to evolve sightless eyes, like irradiated fruit flies. (I'm told there's a sizeable blanket of dust between us and Galactic Center, else even the visible Milky Way would be a hazard.)
Did you see the link at the bottom?
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-01m.html
It's about the neverending quest for the Primordial Recipe. One quote:
"My idea," Kasting said, "is that this atmosphere did contain some methane: just enough to allow for the formation of hydrogen-cyanide molecules, one of the key starting materials for making both amino and nucleic acids. Ten to 100 parts per million would be enough."
Or- "And when Goldilocks sniffed the third beaker, it was Just Right!"
And finally, folks, this bit of tragicomedy, from adjacent links in the 2005 section of the spacedaily pages:
# Thousands Flee In Panic As Indonesian Volcano Spews Into Life
# Indonesian President Told To Slaughter 1,000 Sheep To Ward Off Quakes
Regards, Doug in volcanic New Mexico
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BTW, when the preacher, following the choir, say "Now a word from our Sponsor..." when he opens the bible?
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Sometimes at our meetings I'll say "Let me put in a plug for Our Sponsor" when I comment on something especially neat from the bible. It's hard to capitalize verbally, BTW. Don't try it at home.
Regards, Doug in New Mexico
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Many also survive without oxygen. "While life requires liquid water and energy, it doesn't always require oxygen," said Hoover. In fact, strictly anaerobic microorganisms like Spirochaeta americana cannot live in the presence of oxygen, offering encouragement to scientists who study biology with an eye trained beyond our home planet.
So, life on some planets can be somewhat extreme, to put it mildly, and still have life.
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That no matter what conditions, some form of life will develop to fit and exist.
Afterall, there are amazing extremes on just our little world.
There are bacteria living at hot vents in the ocean that are killed by cooling down to boiling temperatures.
If you believe there is a creator, surely he can create to fit the need.
If you believe in happenstance and evolution, why could it only happen in our form.
Of course, if star travel was ever truly possible (necessitating a FTL, faster than light, means of travel), there would be the problem of almost no simular concepts to understand each other with life based on an entirely different pattern.
JMO
Roger
click here to email semods4@yahoo.com
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I don't think many expect to find life now, but the hope is finding fossil microbes or whatever.
BTW the bible doesn't rule out such, but the Book- fact or myth- is consistent only when the Genesis story is the only one with beings capable of moral judgment. (Animals are "perfect;" they'll always do dog stuff or cow stuff or slug stuff.)
Anyway, the life forms here still mandate my locking my door at night. Any solutions, O Great Evolved Ones of SE?
Regards, Doug in New Mexico
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in a novel is that the largest bodies of churches on Earth, while not against explaining their beliefs, decide that the Creator would have taken care of establishing a means of salvation on each planet with his 'children' rather than make all the souls before contact with other worlds in a limbo state.
The common thread is that studing other worlds religions would be interesting to a religious scholar, perhaps even invoking patterns of thought that then could be applied to the mysteries of his own faith/religion. But not to expect to convert others.
Then again, there are a few that the very conflict of Earth's (by then consolidated basically into one) religion trying to overrule all others, or vice versa.
Of course, that is for the authors that invoke universes filled with multiple intelligent species that find some ground for interaction. Many ignore other species, either having none, or only very peripheal to the the book. A few hide "the answer" in another race's history and faith.
JMO
Roger
click here to email semods4@yahoo.com
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who was supernumerary on a space flight. The "star of Bethlehem" had been located by computer; it was a supernova. His faith was destroyed when he got there, because of evidence that the blown star had had at least one planet with sentient beings- all gone. 'How could God have murdered all those innocents just to signal his son's birth?!'
I was moved at the time (and the tale was well told), but of course now I know the truth about the "star." Funny thing: If the fictional priest had read and understood his own bible, his faith would have been strengthened!
Regards, Doug in New Mexico
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are "seeded" from earth to other planets? I remember one where some aquatic life forms evolved onto land with a mysterious culture they themselves didn't understand. (Their "scriptures" were on ancient, partly corroded tablets. They lost the tablets in the transition, I think, so they were now 'free' of ancient taboos and such. A popular theme in sci-fi, I've noticed. )
Anyway, I remember he tells a good story; better than most 'star trek' types.
I used to read a lot of sci-fi. Just don't have time for it now. My reading these days is about what I believe is reality- a return to Edenic conditions- and most others think of it as fiction, so everyone's happy.
Regards, Doug in New Mexico
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in fact, he novelized the Star Trek cartoon series into The Star Trek Reader I, II, III, IV if I remember correctly.
I was thinking of two of his I read, A Case of Conscious and The Devil's Day.
JMO
Roger
click here to email semods4@yahoo.com
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underground. Probably there are many others 'out there' somewhere. But Ive no idea how many would have life similar to ours.
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rather egotistical of us Earthlings to think we are the only ones.
Maybe we were the first "experiment" in the Intelligent Design plan, and the Designer figured that surely a better job could be done, and made another - or several others.
OR - maybe there were others made first, and we were the culmination....(Either "Aha! I finally got it right!" or "This just isn't working; I give up!) 
OR - maybe there were several Designers, they each had their own solar system to work with, and they had a contest. Kind of like Orion's Science Expo, only on a MASSIVE scale! LOL
I agree with Angeline - it's fun to speculate and ask questions as to what could be.
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