Sir, – Rod McAlpine (August 8th) proposes we hold off spending billions on space exploration until we get Mother Earth in order.
I applaud the sensibility of his priorities; indeed our world is troubled. Still today, as much as ever, people suffer from disease and starvation, war and bad leadership. Our very existence is under threat from a combination of messianic ideology and apocalyptic machinery. Our culture is at the mercy of boy bands, rom-coms, chick-lit, mommy-porn, Damian Hirst, Antony Gormley, fake tan, fast food, tabloid media . . .
Thank heavens some of us are looking toward the stars.
Nobody knows if Nasa’s Curiosity will find evidence of life on Mars, however it is a certainty that whatever findings it does make will assist in some day landing people on the planet. While we must endeavour to get our house in order, as a contingency the Red Planet is looking good. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – Rod McAlpine (August 8th) expresses a grievance oft repeated when a space programme achievement makes the front page. Namely that the money, in this case $2.5 billion over 10 years, could have been spent better elsewhere. The implication seems to be that either space exploration is an outright waste of money or that it should have less priority than other investments.
Since Nasa was founded in in 1968 the American space programme alone has developed countless technologies that have changed, improved and saved lives. The benefits of modern weather and communication satellites, smaller and lighter electronic devices, more efficient fuel cells, great advances in avionics and the obvious spin-offs such as Velcro and Teflon can not be accurately counted, but I suspect that just one of these spin-offs, our global communication satellite network, has generated a far greater return than all the capital ever invested in the space programme.
The long-term benefits of space exploration cannot be measured now but could prove invaluable to future generations. As our population grows and our finite resources dwindle, an ability to leave our planet and inhabit other worlds, a notion currently in the realm of science fiction, may well be the saving of our species.
While I do not expect to see successful manned flights to Mars within my lifetime, I do not wish to deprive my children and their children’s generations of the as yet unknown benefits of further space exploration. As a final aside, we could have had an Irish space programme and a viable base on the moon with all the associated financial, technological and investment spin-offs for the money that, with a stroke of a minister’s pen, we “invested” in bailing out our failed banks. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – In response to Rod McAlpine (August 8th), I would like to point out that if we are to wait until Earth’s “house is in order”, before we contemplate spending billions on further scientific exploration, I’m afraid our very sun will have expired by then.
Earth’s house will never be fully in order. But we must plough ahead regardless. At least these blue-shirted scientists have not squandered the money they have been given for this mission. – Yours, etc,