the difference though andy is that douglas mawson, william bligh or captain cook weren't able to set off a magical rescue beacon and sit back and wait for an airbus to arrive. They set out on vayages knowing that if things go pear shaped they are on thier own and death is a very real possibility.

I can say from first hand experience that you don't simply expect to sit back and wait for help to arrive. We were in a 90m vessel sailing from South Georgia to the Antarctic Peninsula when the general alarm went off at 2am in the morning. Thankfully it was only a false alarm. This was in seas that were eclipsing 11 metres. Help was going to be at least 48 hours away and that was after you successfully made it up onto deck to get inside an orange life boat... chuck bucket was the affectionate term I used to describe them. There is no certainty when you are on the Southern Ocean and with that comes an expectation that rescuers are going to do what they can to save you but at the end of the day, they could be hampered by the realities of the situation.

I think you should have also included Sir Ernest Shackleton your list of explorers. Whilst his men sat back and waited on Elephant Island he used three borrowed boats and crew to try and rescue his men before finally appealing to the Chilean government for the use of one of their naval vessels that finally allowed him to get through. At the end of the day though, he still relied on the help and generosity of others to effect a rescue of his own party that had set out on his expedition.

I'm sorry, but our society fritters so much money and resources away on needless crap that to object to spending money on a rescue 'on principal' seems very hypocritical to me.

yes the story of shackleton and his men is quite an amazing one andy, if you haven't read the book with the details of the expedition i can thoroughly recommend it. there were many black and white accompanying photographs of the scenery and wildlife as well as the icy conditions endured. i certainly wouldn't want to have the life expectancy of the sled dogs on that trip!

it is kind of a shame really that in this day and age there are not many places in the world that are truly left to "explore" or challenges yet to be accomplished. it has got to the stage where the summit of everest is crowded on a day of fair weather during the climbing season, at any given time there would be numerous solo round the world sailors and mapping of any remote corner of the earth can be done via sattelite. To a large extent this must reduce the satisfaction one gets from completing such a venture, as there are very few things left that one can be the first to do.


we have got to the stage where the biggest discoveries of the 21st century will undoubtedly be made in a laboratory, not on an ocean or at the top of a mountain.

Nope!
You are merely talking about the 29% of this planet that sticks up above all that water being mostly explored.

Mankind's real exploration of this planet has only just begun and so far he has only done the easy bits.
The really hard bits are going to be exploring that enormous area under the oceans and tracking down the still only just glimpsed extraordinary and immense biology of the deep oceans as well as the completely different strata and biology of the continental shelves and shallow seas.

Reference; WorldAtlas.com

Global Land area; 148,647,000 sq kilometres
Total water area; 361,419,000 sq Kilometres

This is what is left to explore on this planet!

Oceans

Global Ocean area; 335,258,000 sq. kilometres.

Cubic volume of Oceans; 1.3 billion cubic kilometres of water

Over half the world's ocean area is deeper than 3000 metres.

More than half of the world's population lives within 100 kilometres of the ocean.

More is known about the Moon's surface than is known about the deep oceans as some scientists will tell you.
A senior british oceanographer a couple of years ago stated it would be fifty years before they would even begin to understand the flows and currents and the complexity of the North Atlantic basin, one of the most intensively researched oceans on Earth.
It is just that mankind's focus has not really come around to fully exploring the Earth's oceans as yet but it will!

would it be more cost effective for Science to totally concentrate on the developing of technology that focuses on living on or in the ocean than trying to go to mars and beyond?????

i mean the ocean is right there but we spend billions on just trying to escape the earth's gravity