This was prompted by something my sister-in-law said after the loss of Columbia and her crew. I posted it to my online journal, but I hope it may provide ammunition for some of y'all.
Before anybody gets on me for being anti-military, please believe me when I say I'm not. I do think that our spending is out of line with current threat assessments; we're spending too much and (in many cases) buying the wrong things. And for what it's worth, the Joint Chiefs seem to agree.
And yes, I realize I'm preaching to the choir, here...
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Why explore space?
I get this question from time to time. Why go? Why spend the money for rockets to space when there are problems here on Earth?
You might as well ask why the British government financed Captain Cook's circumnavigation of the world, or why Queen Isabella financed Columbus, or why our ancestors bothered to leave their nice, dry caves in the first place.
Without exploration, without frontiers, the Human species will turn in on itself like rats in a cage. It's already begun. With the closing of frontiers, the twentieth century was the most violent in world history.
Without frontiers, the hope for a better life elsewhere will die. Even the United States, the frontier hope of immigrants from three continents seeking freedom and fortune for two hundred years, is closing its borders.
Fact is, we aren't spending nearly enough. According to
the Office of Management and Budget, for fiscal 2003 the US spent $6.131 billion on Human spaceflight. It sounds like a lot, but against the (on-budget) Defense Department budget of $364.847 billion, it's practically a rounding error. Hell, the US Air Force spent $18.451 billion on research, three billion dollars more than NASA's
entire budget.
The
B-2 Spirit "stealth" bombers cost $1.157 billion each in 1998 dollars. The USAF has 21 of these planes.
The most recent Space Shuttle,
Endeavour, (named after Captain Cook's ship) cost about
$2.0 billion. A total of
six Space Shuttles were constructed, of which one (Enterprise) was an atmospheric test vehicle now in the Smithsonian. Two (Challenger and Columbia) have been lost. Three (Atlantis, Discovery, Endeavour) remain. Three.
And the
benefits to those on Earth are tremendous. Forget Tang, the space program is responsible for the development of microcomputers, MRI scanners, wireless communications, improved baby foods, shock-absorbing helmets, home security systems, smoke detectors, flat panel televisions, high-density batteries, trash compactors, radiation insulation, digital imaging, laser angioplasty, teflon, programmable pacemakers, ultrasound scanners, automatic insulin pump, portable x-ray device, invisible braces, dental arch wire, palate surgery technology, clean room apparel, Doppler radar, firefighters' radios, lead poison detectors, fire detectors, flame detectors, and literally
hundreds of other technologies.
And then there's the whole "all our eggs in one baskets" thing.
"Is it worth it? Should we just pull back, forget the whole thing as a bad idea and take care of our own problems at home?"
"No. We have to stay here and there's a simple reason why. 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 and Einstein and ... Buddy Holly and Aristophanes ... and all of this ... all of this was for nothing. Unless we go to the stars." (J. Michael Straczynski)
So I don't wanna hear it anymore. Any one who thinks that one planet is more important than the exploration (and dare I say it, settlement) of space is just not paying attention.
"The earth is the cradle of humanity, but mankind will not stay in the cradle forever." (Konstantin Tsiolkvosky)
