More Musings about Mars

Waldmark, 22 August 2008

The last rocket to leave planet Earth should be named Bitter Irony: by the time it finally succeeds in finding a trace of life on a far away planet, there's no-one left alive on homebase to report it to.

To Everybody:

Great and Glorious News! After years of hard work to ironing out long standing differences of opinion, scientists have now succeeded in agreeing on the ultimate goal for mankind! Astonishingly and, quite frankly, unexpectedly as well, scientists from all parts of the globe have signed a declaration that puts an end to all discussion about the ultimate definition for the meaning of life! Everybody, this is the meaning of life: to find the origin of the universe.

Scientists and politians are now fully convinced that they can, by means of human reasoning, gain a complete understanding with respect to the origin of the universe and thus answer mankind’s last remaining questions. That’s why these rockets to Mars and to the Moon and transmitters and explorers to Venus. it is to search for possible traces of life in order to determine if the meaning of the universe is to produce life or not.

However, the project will fail miserably. Looking for traces of life on a far away planet will cause nothing other than the surreptitious transfer of billion of dollars from taxpayers’ wallets into the bank accounts of a few industrialists; lobbyists; and politicians.

Shooting a rocket to Mars will divert much needed funds away from the sheltering the precious life which does exist on our planet. I switched on my television set and I saw countless people alive. Suffering, hungry, hurt, being driven from their homes by tyrants and ruthless capitalists, but alive. What do they need to fly to Mars to, I wondered, to find life? See, there’s plenty of life everywhere around us. Right here on our own globe. There is life on planet earth but it needs a bit of nurturing, like saplings in a nursery.

So the question is not if there is life on another planet; the real question is how long will it last, this life on planet earth, when humanity keeps shooting its precious recources into outer space?

My guess is that life on earth will last as long as there is still money not yet spent on looking for it on another planet. Then, when the last rich man dies, life on planet earth will die with him. The millions of poor hungry people in the African Savannahs, South American Rainforests, North American Inner Cities, Cold Russian Plains, European Countryside, Chinese Ricefields, Australian Outback and Indian River Delta’s all having silently died well before the last rocket finally succeeded lift off.

All that money and all those resources devoted to developing ever more advanced technology to help find traces of water on Mars. Imagine not shooting that technology into space, but using it to dig wells in the deserts of Africa and to properly fund schools in our own cities.