A picture is worth a thousand words…
…and a few hundred million bucks. Here it is, a 3-D panoramic view of Mars :
For a guy who’s spent most of his life as a big dork, I’ve always been unmoved with the space program. There’s a romantic notion about space exploration that’s been kinda lost on me. I did like the one episode of “From Earth to the Moon” that I saw, but I still have a hard time getting excited about America’s sci-fi manifest destiny.
To me, it’s always seemed like a big waste of money to research other planets when we have so many problems going unsolved down here on Earth. It’s not as big a waste as something like an unprovoked war or a tax giveaway to the super-rich, so it’s not an issue I’ve really lost much sleep worrying about.
As far as Mars is concerned, so far it seems pretty boring. If NASA is going to go through the trouble of releasing a 3D photo, the least they could have done is Photoshopped in some guy playing with a yo-yo or maybe some aliens throwing spears directly at the camera.
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People always say that we should ignore space because we have plenty of unsolved problems on earth to deal with first. I’ve always found that arguement as flawed. There are hungry people on earth, but not because there isn’t enough food. There are poor people on earth, but not because there isn’t enough wealth. It’s all about distribution. You could pump all the money from the space program into other things and the problems would not get much better simply because things are flawed at the source. Fix that at there is more than enough money and food and brains to solve all the problems.
Space exploration is a big deal. I’ll ignore the fact that eventually a big asteroid is going to hit our planet and everyone on the planet is going to die unless we know enough about space to prevent it. I’ll stick with purely practicle applications for right now. Think of all the great things the world has today because of NASA. Because of NASA pioneering rocketry and satalites we have cell phones, live news from anywhere in the world, direct TV, GPS, and tons of other space based industry. If it wasn’t for space exploration we wouldn’t have any of it. NASA is doing research now into nuclear power (how else do you power those space probes?), solar power, robotics, AI, communications, and propolsion. Much of this stuff will have practicle applications sooner rather than later. Much of it also would never have even been thought of without NASA. Space exploration is a great thing, and we should be pumping more money into it not less. I’d much rather see my corporate welfare tax dollars going that way than through new fighter jets and interesting ways to kill people.
Comment by andrew — January 5, 2004 @ 12:14 pm
I’m torn about the space program, too, but at the end of the day I have to say I support it. Scientific exploration in all areas often yields technological breakthroughs later that can’t be seen right away. Finding out more about our solar system, about how planets work, and about our own capacity for space exploration–there will be rich rewards for this knowledge down the road that will far exceed Tang and pens that write upside down. Who knows? Perhaps our discoveries regarding Mars and its geologic history will lead to a reworking of our environmental policies here on Earth.
Comment by dAnimal — January 5, 2004 @ 1:32 pm
andrew, you forgot to mention all of the lovely military applications of our homeland space program.
screw nasa. i would accept more readily these arguments of all the great things we could do through the space program if i knew these things were to go for human betterment and not corporate profit. why did those astronauts die last february? velcro? the pharmaceutical industry?
disgusting.
Comment by josh — January 5, 2004 @ 5:08 pm
Just because an astronaut dies, that doesn’t mean scientific exploration is worthless–it means we need to take more safety precautions. Hey, Marie Curie died due to her experiments too. The fact that life could have existed on Mars, and that we can learn more about our own world through exploring that planet, is a much richer learning experience than war, and will reap far greater discoveries than super glue. And I’ll bet the astronauts who died would have felt that dying in the name of exploration (though perhaps avoidable had there been better safety checks) was a noble death.
I think the radical left is a little too ready to discount space exploration, in large part because it was used in the past for political reasons, not so much for the science as to beat the Russians. To me, that’s a silly reason to be a Luddite. If exploring space is too much of an expense, or doesn’t pay off quick enough, why stop there? Let’s not fund any scientific research unless there’s an immediate practical end that serves the current needs of the populace.
Comment by dAnimal — January 5, 2004 @ 8:06 pm
yeah- fuck scientific exploration! what did it ever do for us?
i say the earth is flat and sending a bunch of sailors off to the edges of the earth would cost too much money and would only lead them to their watery graves.
Comment by tom — January 5, 2004 @ 11:19 pm
i didnt mean it was disgusting that astronauts died in a noble attempt to further mankind. i meant it was disgusting that they probably died in an attempt to further our military’s dominance of space or in an effort to get some free research to a for-profit pharmaceutical company in thier search for the next libido enhancer.
upon further reflection i almost was with you guys on this one. i got to thinking that sooner rather than later we’re gonna need to find a similar ecosystem to live on. especially if bush is reelected.
but then i got to thinking that if we do find another planet to dwell on that it’ll be developed from the ground up as planned community by the disney corporation and halliburton will get all the energy contracts and on and on… and it leads me back to fuck space exploration.
Comment by josh — January 6, 2004 @ 8:18 am