William Safire has a brilliant column on why the space program is worth it. There are too many who argue that the money we put into NASA would be better spent here on Earth. There are a couple of responses to this. The first is that the budget for NASA is a miniscule fraction of the budget for social services in this country, and we’ve not yet been able to eliminate poverty – nor will throwing a few billion more to much other than end up greasing the machinery of government.
Furthermore, we’ve always been a species that has an instinctive need for exploration. How can one quantify the costs and the benefits of inspiration. I can easily see some child living in the inner city or in the hills of West Virginia who sees images of Mars taken by Spirit on TV and decides that someday he or she would like to be an astronaut. The moon shots, brief as they were, inspired millions of people to become scientists and engineers. The advances made and the lives saved by those contributions are beyond any measure.
Finally, there’s one last reason, perhaps the most important of all. The best explanation I have ever heard for why space is important comes, appropriately enough, from science fiction. Writer J. Michael Straczynski wrote this line from Babylon 5 that truly puts space exploration in perspective in only a few brilliantly crafted sentences:
Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics and you’ll get ten different answers, but there’s one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on. Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won’t just take us. It’ll take Marilyn Monroe and Lao-Tzu, Einstein, Morobuto, Buddy Holly, Aristophanes .. and all of this .. all of this was for nothing unless we go to the stars.
Furthermore, we’ve always been a species that has an instinctive need for exploration.
You might also add that mankind apparantly has a need for exploitation and colonization. Hey, Mars, we are coming. I just hope that by the time we get there we are a little wiser than we are now – for whatever that means…
And yes, our sun will go out, and before that, it will go nova (but not supernova, or at least so my Astronomy teachers claimed), but I doubt that we will actually be around by then, anymore.
I doubt humans will be around then- but I sincerely hope that whatever we’ve evolved into still is… (after all, I’d be willing to bet that Homo Sapiens will be extinct by the end of the millenium… but that’s probably JUST the extropian in me talking. 🙂 )
As for Mars, I’d really like to see a terraforming project begin there sometime within my natural life. But given the economic shitter that the US is headed into in that same period, I’m guessing that the colonists will probably be mostly Mandarin and Hindi speakers. After all, they’re more in need of the breathing room than we are.
Last time I checked, there’s absolutely nothing on Mars other than sand and rocks – and even if there is life, it’s microscopic in size. Somehow I don’t think the whole idea of “colonization” applies here.
Last time I checked, there’s absolutely nothing on Mars other than sand and rocks – and even if there is life, it’s microscopic in size. Somehow I don’t think the whole idea of “colonization” applies here.
Well, we are in the process of “checking,” aren’t we? The European expedition to Mars was to look for something of value (water, if I am not mistaken), but of course that landing unit reported missing, or rather, did not report at all. And now I hear that the American landing unit, while making it to the planet’s surface alright, is stuck and can’t get going, either.
The way things are going right now, I would certainly not volunteer to be the first person to fly to Mars.
Eventually, though, we will try to get people there, and yes, there will be attempts at colonization – if we have not managed to kill each other off first.
(Being somewhat pessimistic today…)