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| How do we intend to colonize another planet if we can't even transition away from fossil fuels here at home? |
The most common argument I've heard as to the reason we are pushing for a Mars colony is to preserve the human race in the event that life becomes impossible here on Earth. Are you kidding me? Is that even a remote possibility? And, if that possibility exists, WHY AREN'T WE PUTTING EVERY POSSIBLE EFFORT INTO PREVENTING IT FROM OCCURRING?
From my way of looking at it, as goes the Earth, so goes the human race. We are inextricably linked to our home planet, as we should be. I consider notions of moving the human race to another planet to be fundamentally heretical and insulting to a world that has provided us so with much.
There are still parts of the NASA program that are valuable and necessary, in particular the program to track objects in Space that might be on a collision course with us, and the program to monitor the Sun. The programs to sent orbiters to other planets to explore their composition are clearly fascinating, but of limited utility to us at home. The programs that have enabled us to look back billions of years and time and see some of the first clouds of gas condensing and forming stars is amazing stuff that helps us better comprehend our place in the Universe, but is, in practical terms, of limited use to us at home.
Casting a shadow over all of this is one difficult to refute fact: we are altering our climate in ways that could cause global temperature and weather to spin out of control. It's like we are standing in the middle of the road, peering upwards into the stars, while a tractor trailer is bearing down on us.
I would like to see the vast majority of NASA's budget repurposed to focus on climate change and renewable energy source development. We need to train those powerful telescopes back on Earth and work to get us weaned off of fossil fuels. Let's make that the new "moon shot".
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