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Ray Bradbury's Reasons to Go to Mars
An anonymous reader writes "Ray Bradbury's testimony to the Presidential blue-ribbon Commission, 'Moon to Mars and Beyond', covers a range of rather optimistic space-related topics, including why three Italians should be the first on Mars. But at age 83, Bradbury's next book, entitled 'Too Soon From the Cave, Too Far From the Stars' seems to set an overall vision that this is an in-between generation caught between the brutal and primitive and the advanced."
Or our own shortsightedness and stupidity.
It's an odd document. You can imagine the commission members looking at each other and asking: "what's Ray on?" He sells the Outreach as a romantic, almost religious experience. But I have trouble imagining how romance in and of itself is enough to power man to Mars.
The parallels with American colonization do not stand up. Once America had been discovered and the seas charted, it was a matter of affordable logistics and courage, not technology, to get people to the US. But the logistics of a Mars mission require the exchequer of a major nation state and the technology is far from perfected. Courage is not enough. And unlike America the lure, the promise of a commercial harvest is so much slimmer. This is not 1482 any more. Those rules no longer apply.
My heart agrees with Bradbury. But my head... it says no.
I agree, we have to go. I hate to sound so cliche, but it is the "final frontier". It is ridiculous when put in perspective the amount of money that is spent for other things, and not see the money go into future development.
Others have pointed out and I agree, It is HIGHLY short sighted and extremely selfish to NOT continue pushing further into space.
Are we Selfish? Yes. We tend to only think about ourselves, or maybe one generation, we must adopt and ideology that extends beyond our own lifetimes and taking the money (taxes) we have now and applying them to the future.
Space travel IS necessary, we must reach beyond the local boundries, I agree with Bradbury, we never should have left the moon. Why did we go to the moon? was it merely a political statement?
It is all about seeing the BIG picture, instead of 50 years, just start thinking 100 years, thinking beyond our own lifetimes and start thinking about making multi-generation advancements.
"Is it worth it? Should we just pull back, forget the whole thing as a bad idea and take care of our own problems at home?"
.. and all of this .. all of this was for nothing unless we go to the stars."
"No. We have to stay here and there's a simple reason why. Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics and you'll get ten different answers, but there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on. Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us. It'll take Marilyn Monroe and Lao-Tzu and Einstein and Morobuto and Buddy Holly and Aristophenes
Technoli