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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."
Except a largish cometary impact.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
I really dont see what the big fuss from some politicians about going to Mars. 500 years ago sailors went to the New World (risking their lives) with really no garunteed return on investments.
It ended up working out ok for some countries but not for 50-75 years after the initial voyages. There wasnt really a need or reason to go, but some naval officers and private sailors convinced the people with cash otherwise.
Although these "discoveries" didnt work out to well for Indians I suppose.
You have to start somewhere. We will do it eventually, why not now?
Are you intolerant of intolerant people?
Or our own shortsightedness and stupidity.
yes poets, management consultants, hairdressers, telephone sanitisers. Send the lot of em.
This is a manual signature virus. Copy to your signiture file and help me spread.
I, for one do not want to see this fascist, totalitarian state score a propoganda win by landing humans on Mars first.
This really doesn't sit well with me. Why does patriotism always seem to require hatred for everyone else? Isn't it enough to be proud of your country without considering a different culture fascist and totalitarian? Or, is 'pride' just a nice way of saying 'hate', as in "I'm black and I'm proud of it" = "I hate whites"? I don't think so. I think that you can be proud without being hateful.
Have you considered this option: Become friends with the Chinese and work together to get to Mars using the best minds and resources of each country.
The previous comment is purposely vague and generalized, but all of the facts are completely true.
He's a popular author. He knows how to tell a story, a story that can include some fairly complex ideas, to the general population. If a scientist stood up there and tried the same thing, half the audience would be asleep within five minutes while most of the rest wouldn't understand how anything he said had any real importance.
You need someone who can put some fire behind the ideas. non-scientists just can't see any reason to do things just for the science, you need someone who can appeal to their sense of adventure, excitement and mystery.
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
I put that in quotes because it brings the question to mind: "What is fixed?" Most of the things we are talking about are social ills. So what is "fixed"? I mean, how do you define it? No crime? No poverty? I doubt that's possible, ever. There will always be those willing to exploit weaker individuals (crime, at all levels), and there will always be the myriad of reasons for poverty (from purely lazy to the exploited).
Saying we need to fix Earth before going elsewhere hamstrings us. Why not set up an experiment in a new place, with no history to tie you back?
Think about the Americas in the late 1700s. The Great Experiment was the government of the US. Granted, it's far from perfect, but it was a helluva lot better than anything else around at the time (emphesis to prevent misunderstandings). Moving to a new place was the catalyst that allowed the experiment to occur. Personally, I think the relative stagnation and degredation of most of society (globally) since then is the result of the lack of new places to try things like this out. When the disenfranchised have no place to go and do things their own way, they fight the system, and the system fights them back out of reflex, without regard to the merit of the ideas.
If, however, the disenfranchised have a new place to go and do things their own way, they can demonstrate to the system that they have a better or improved system. It's like evolution: you need a niche to grow. If a new species fights an entrenched one for a niche, it will lose unless it is vastly superior. Normally, the improvement is too small to be considered an overwhelming advantage. If, however, the new species (or system) is capable of exploiting a new niche, it will thrive and eventually be able to demonstrate its superiority by thriving, or its inferiority by its demise.
There is a reason for everything. Sometimes that reason just sucks.
Space travel will not allievate overcrowding on earth.
I don't think anyone believes that we'll be ferrying billions of people off the planet anytime soon, but that's not the only way to control population. Citizens of first world countries have much lower birthrates, including some, like Italy, which essentially have negative birthrates. When human beings live in a rich environment with the resources to pursue their own happiness, most people delay having children or don't have them at all.
So providing a first world standard of living for third world countries isn't just a moral imperative but the most practical way of controlling population growth.
The problem is that bringing the entire planet up to first world standards of living requires more energy and natural resources than we have available on Earth.
Orbital or lunar solar power is one way we could provide the energy this sort of economy would need. Farther out, robotic mining of asteroids would be another way of bringing needed resources home. But we're going to have to look beyond our planet if we want to meet the challenge of bringing prosperity to everyone, and not just an elite group of nations. Population reduction is just an added benefit.
Select quotes from Is Space Exploration Worth the Cost?"
"For instance, this year, total pet-related sales in the United States are projected to be $31 billion - the double, almost to the cent, of the $15.47 billion NASA budget. An estimated $5 billion worth of holiday season gifts were offered - not to the poor - but to the roving family pets - six times more than NASA spent on its own roving Martian explorers, Spirit and Opportunity, who cost the American taxpayer $820 million both."
"Instead of betting on the future, Americans spend $586.5 billion a year on gambling. It is perhaps immoral to criticize one's personal choice, so instead of kicking the habit and feeding the poor with this money, one should stop instead the enormous waste in space who stands at a scandalous amount of 40 times less than gaming tokens."
"Speaking about personal choice, $31 billion go annually in the US on tobacco products - twice the NASA budget -, and $58 billion is spent on alcohol consumption -almost four times the NASA budget. Forget space spin-offs - here are genuine tangible benefits: $250 billion are spent annually in the US on the medical treatment of tobacco- and alcohol-related diseases - only sixteen times more than on space exploration."
These figures represent how, as a society, how lowly we value space exploration. If we spent 50% as much on space exploration as we spent on Hollywood entertainment, Orbitz would selling weekend passes to the most popular lunar resorts.