Good Planets Are Hard to Find
I hear that NASA is now getting ready to mount an expedition to Mars. Its going to cost trillions, take a small group of people away from the only place that we know of in the universe that not only has life, but may in fact, harbour all the life in the universe. And it’s going to take years and has a good probability that they may never return.
Meanwhile, back here on Earth, wars, pestilence, climate change, over population and a host of apocalyptic problems plague and beg for solution.
Why are we going, I ask? Why are we going to put a handful of people in a glorified tin can, risk cosmic radiation, solar flares, insanity, loneliness to voyage to a planet that may once have had oceans and water and atmosphere resembling ours, but has done without for perhaps three billion years? The answer I hear is this. We need a second planet to live on. Now, in my mind, this answer is so absurd, that I really do need to ask, “What planet are you from?!”
Here we have a perfectly good planet, one that has harboured and kept safely and continuously all the life we know of for some four billion years. Its much worse for wear and tear than it used to be, because of us, but its still a home where we can, if we want, make into a Garden of Eden.
And does anyone really believe that we would make a destitute rock, cold and distant, a livable home, while at the same time we trash and slash and burn the only home we have ever known. All in the name of survivabilty.
Really folks, if we really were searching for information and understanding wouldn’t it be easier and cheaper by far to send robotic spaceships and rovers, rather than trying to take human habitat with us across the frozen abyss between us and the planets? I mean, we have learned so much in the past 50 years from Voyageur et al without risking life and limb. And how much science have we really learned from all the Shuttle missions. Let’s refocus and haul our planetary egos back to Earth. Let the machines and computers do the travelling and let’s spend our money fixing the massive damage we have already done to what truly is a unique planet and the only home we have.
September 27th, 2007 at 12:54 pm
I’m not much more than a student as far as these things go.. but aren’t we going to be continually eroding our environment as long as we’re aggressively “progressive”? We’ve been fighting amongst ourselves since we’ve been around and in the workings of “progress” we’ve had to break some eggs. As long as we keep our eye on this fact, it seems obvious to me that as long as we’re trying to move forward, we’re going to make something else move backward. Finding the balance between our environment and our nature is all we can really do as long as our civilization continues as it has since the beginning of our history.
I agree that we don’t have much of a balance, and that we aught to be working to get that back in line. As our needs change, so changes our impact on our surroundings, though. Even after we acheive that balance, our own goals will change and the impact with it, so we have to be sure not to settle into a routine.
I definitely agree that we’d do better to send out automations. Perhaps NASA is watching too much Star Trek?
October 1st, 2007 at 7:29 pm
Hi Mark:
Thanks for the thoughtful and reasoned response to my article. Yes, we will always have an impact on our surrounding and yes we will take from the environment in the name of progress. It is the nature of life to be competitive and all that. But of late we have been acting first and thinking later. We believe in generalizations that we then carve into human law and then bend Heaven and Earth to make it seem that these human laws (read economies and right to capitalism) are universally ordained. In the process we jeapordize oursleves and much of the life we share the planet with.
Just because we can do something and make a dollar or two doesn’t mean we should. Nor is there a price tag in everything. Some things, to my way of thinking, are priceless