Good thoughts. One reason they never put the two together was they had a crap load of cheap manpower. Why invent a steam engine when you can have a whole city to push you around town?
Also, look at the full moon when it is overhead and not near the horizon to avoid an optical illusion of the moon being much larger than it actually is. I find that looking at the moon during the day and considering the previously mentioned ratio the most humbling thing I have ever considered.
When it comes to Extraterrestrial Life I'm pretty iffy over a lot of the theory's but a lot of these are interesting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_astronaut http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_rain_in_Kerala which points to Panspermia ^
Life, as we define it with our extremely limited knowledge, may not matter a lot when it comes to the nature of the universe but it's all we've got. Only about 4% of the entire universe is recognized by our limited senses and the rest we can never see/feel or interact with meaningfully. Even within the visible realm, we have only considered carbon-based lifeforms. We've got a long way to go.
