In the middle of the worst pandemic humanity has experienced since the Spanish flu and an unprecedented deterioration of the climate three probes were sent to Mars. My question is why is it that the sense and the vast expenditure involved in Mars and other space missions are never seriously questioned by the media or the scientific community. Is the almost complete lack of critical response to these 'Missions to Mars and other planets in our solar system due to an outmoded view of progress by which we neglect to prioritize more urgent matters on the earth, like climate change, the lack of clean water for large sections of the population of the world, the ravages of mass tourism and so on.
Hi, it is clear that the "close space", i.e. the satellites orbiting the Earth, is present in our lives: GPS, TV, meteo, etc.. and in addition the space activity creates employments. For interplanetary missions, the problem is different. The goal of these missions is scientific first but it is more and more political as many new countries (China, UAE, India, ..) have already sent probes to Mars for example.
Hello, Richard thank you for replying to this unpopular question. Hasn't it always been political? I recall witnessing the reaction of an American to Russia putting the first man in space. He threw his coke at the TV screen. You say it is scientific first but what is it we what to know--if there is, or was, water on Mars? Somehow the entire space travel thing smacks of hubris. Admittedly it is more political now than ever. What do we hope to achieve? The colonization of these arid, dead planets. As someone rightly said there is no planet B for us. Is the aim to create some kind of hothouse space stations in the midst of aridity?
Hello, I agree with you in the sense that human missions are not realistic. There is not sense to colonize Mars that is a dead planet. From the scientific point of view, analysing the soil of Mars can help understand why water disappeared for example or if primitive forms of life have existed in the past. This could improve our knowledge of our own planet and its evolution.
Thank you for your response. I can see your point concerning Mars and planet earth. One way and another we seem to be headed for a similar fate as some sources say that it is too late to even stabilize climate change.
The human race has always been made up of explorers. In fact, our explorations were responsible for our mainly technological development.
If we can use our electronics with communication through electromagnetic signals and using this means of communication over internet, it is because fortunately someone with a vision of the future has invested a lot of money so that it was possible to explore.
Space is the final frontier, with space exploration we can finally leave the planet on which we were created and from which it would apparently be impossible to leave, but here we are, on the way to other even more daring explorations.
It is these developments arising from exploration that we have so many types of clinical examinations, sophisticated machines that save lives and significant advances in science.
We are fortunate to have people who have a vision of the future.
It is a pity that not everyone can understand this.
I hope Mars is just the first jump!
Wiltgen
Hi, I think we all agree that space missions are very important scientifically and that we have a lot of things to learn by sending probes to other planets, but also to comets and asteroids. The question is more focused on "human missions". Such missions are much more expensive and their "scientific return" is not "proportional to their cost".
Based on news reports I've read, the expense is constantly being questioned, the reasons for doing it are often dismissed as irrelevant to the world at large, and the fact that the cost of space exploration is an infinitesimal percentage of the cost required to solve the problems that such questioners think the money should be spent on is ignored. On the other side of the argument, the "need" for humans to explore, to look for evidence of life elsewhere, and the possible technological advances driven by space exploration are touted as justifying any cost, without any proof that any of those claimed "good results" are of any value (e.g., does it really make any difference if we find out whether there is any chance of life elsewhere? That's really more of a religious question than a scientific one.). So I'd say there is plenty of questioning and answering, but the result is an exercise in futility on both sides of the argument.
Dear Courtney, thank you for your very sensible response to this question. The question of exploration is an interesting one. I think it is difficult to conceive of exploration as being in the nature of some innate human propensity. I think it was Schopenhauer who said most of the problems of this world are caused by people not being contented to stay at home, but I may be wrong( interestingly the spread of the pandemic is largely the result of mass tourism). With one or two notable exceptions, exploration only really took off in the period we call the Renaissance. The exploration of Africa was the overture to colonization and the exploration of both North and South America was followed by colonization, exploitation, and acts of extermination on an unprecedented scale. As Richard Epinoy suggests the 'Space Missions' seem to be political with an increasing number of players. Is this also driven by the prospect of eventual colonization and the exploitation of natural resources, or is it simply a question of a ridiculous game of technological and political one-upmanship?
When various large expenses humans do, that may seem superfluous to some, are quantitatively compared, space exploration is by far not the largest.
Are say the entertainment industry, cosmetics, pet cares, agriculture subsidies, oil industry subsidies, nuclear weapon industry, etc. on the long run more important than space exploration?
There is no simple recipe to decide the priorities, it is why we have governments in charge of fixing priorities and budgets. In general it is a wise bet for a civilization to invest a small fraction of the annual budget in long term, difficult endeavours like basic research and space exploration. Historically basic research has returned a multiple of the cost over time scales like several decades. For space exploration services like the GPS, satellite communications or weather forecasting largely return the overall space budgets.
I agree that the nuclear weapons industry and space exploration are comparable because both are intensely political and have been from their inception. Most of the responses to this question including the most recent one, although very interesting, have skirted around this issue and concentrated on the spin-off benefits from space exploration and comparable expenditure in other areas. What we are seeing at present is an expansion of the political dimension of space exploration. While I accept that scientists may have an intrinsic interest in aspects of space exploration what are the political interests, what are the motivation and long-term aims at work? Is it all about communications and forecasting the weather or is it simply part of technological phantasmagoria. Let us hear some views on this.
Yesterday it was announced in the news that the lift-off of a small helicopter-like contraption on Mars was, I quote, a 'historical moment'. This announcement brought home to me more than before that, while we continue to live in the thrall of technological phantasmagoria, we have created conditions for the spread of a more deadly pandemic than the present one. Are there not more pressing uses for human ingenuity than to explore the surface of a dead planet?
Wise people don't stop buying insurance. Besides having all our eggs in one basket there is the population saturation issue. Fear of one threat or set of threats should be an automatic stimulus to consider them all. The Mars thing is also a large project that will take years to pull off. The typical Mars enthusiast is also concerned about climate change. NASA has a large participation.
Space programs also inspire succeeding generations to delve into science and engineering as careers. All of these problems need such people.
Whoever thought up the idea that ours is the 'space- age'. Ours is the age of the proliferation of nuclear weapons, greed, and continuous and destructive economic growth. The concept that we live in the space -age is frankly an absurdity created by progressivist rhetoric, rhetoric that somehow persuades us that we can explore 'space'. I may be wrong, but believe the nearest star is two light-years away. This means that its light takes two years to reach us travelling at the speed of light. So much for the 'space-age' and the idea that we can ever do more than grope towards the nearest planets in our solar system. Why do we bother? I suppose because of an inflated idea of our own capacity or the cliche of human beings as inveterate seekers after the unattainable. As far as threats go if we succeed one way or another in destroying the planet earth then why would anyone even entertain the idea of living in a greenhouse on the dead planet Mars or the Moon. But I see by most of the replies to my question that somehow we, and in particular scientists, are caught in the web of our own rhetoric.
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