There is no material value in going to Mars. It possesses no resources we can extract, and even it if did it wouldnât be economical.
Oh! But itâs so darn inspiring! If only we give âour best and brightestâ this triumphal challenge of getting us to Mars, theyâll invent all sorts of new space-age technologies!
Bullshit. If all it takes to produce new technologies is a nationally embraced engineering challenge, why not pick one that will actually benefit people? There are countless areas of worthy endeavor we could put that same engineering effort into in our own backyards. How about renewable energy? How about civic reconstruction? How about pollution reduction and environmental rectification?
There are a thousand and one massive engineering problems we could be collectively fascinated by the concept of solving. Why arenât we?
Because theyâre not glamorous. Because they donât make for good movies and exciting sci-fi nonsense. Because people donât want clean, affordable energy, they want to have a flying car and a personal jetpack and laser guns. Because people donât want to improve our biggest cities to make them better places to live, they want to build different cities on giant rotating space stations. Because people donât want to preserve the environment and stop destroying the planet, they want to find new planets to fuck up with their garbage and their stupidity and their laziness.
Nevermind that we canât reach anywhere that can support life. It has been estimated that to get to our nearest neighboring star system, Alpha Centauri, using strictly hypothetical (but fervently hoped for!) technology that might someday exist would take FIFTY YEARS EACH WAY. Hell, it would take over four years just to transmit communications traveling at the speed of light - again, one way!
And Alpha Centauri doesnât even have planets capable of supporting life!
But letâs do it anyway! Congratulations! After trillions of dollars and billions of manhours and a great big firework display of rocket fuel that we all Ooohed and Aaahed over, we somehow managed to stick a handful of people in a tin can with enough provisions to feed them for half a century; they most likely had to conceive, give birth to, and raise children mid-journey simply to have anyone capable of doing anything useful when they arrived; they somehow didnât go insane or suffer any of countless possible catastrophes both natural and man-made for that entire time; and now fifty years later theyâve landed on a barren rock with no life and can set up a base, I guess?
Even if they succeed, what is the POINT? Weâve now got a dozen or so people stranded a half century away on an empty planet, who we canât even effectively communicate with because of the half decade transmission delay! What good does that do anyone? What value is there in that, aside from blind vainglory?
âBehold! The first humans to step foot on a planet in another star system!â sounds great, until you realize it means absolutely nothing. You could be the first human to live your entire natural life inside a tiny metal box full of bees if you really wanted to be - but it would still be entirely pointless to do so, record or not.
But I guess the bee box thing would be entirely worthwhile so long as we invented the next big âspace-age technologyâ - like Tang and Velcro and Teflon! Oh wait. NASA actually didnât invent those. Common misconception.
Of course, they claim to have had a part in countless other inventions. Some they genuinely are responsible for, like freeze-dried food, certain firefighting tools, spaceblankets, memory foam, et cetera. But most of the actually impressive or useful stuff that they claim involvement with? Yeah, invented well after the end of the Apollo program, and technically invented by outside teams âin cooperation withâ NASA - which if you look into it, ends up meaning NASA simply let these third parties make use of their reputation to obtain funding and to promote and market the devices once developed.
To attribute these technologies to âthe inspiring power of space travel!â is simplistic hogwash. These technologies were developed externally without any specific demand for them from NASA. Where applicable theyâve been adapted for use in NASAâs missions, but their inventions were not directly caused by or intended for the space program.
Iâm all for championing the power of the human spirit and motivation, but there have to be sane limits. A glorious future in space isnât a dream - itâs a delusion. It is an impossible fabrication. It is a comforting lie we tell ourselves out of a desperate need to cling to something bigger than ourselves when weâre no longer comforted by stories of a magic man in the sky who made and rules over everything.
Itâs religion for atheists, alongside transhumanism and a handful of others, equally misguided, equally deluded, equally convinced that these things are even remotely possible, to say nothing of likely or reasonable. It is blind faith in the trappings of empirical science.
