A few weeks ago, I was watching an episode of Real Time with Bill Maher. His special guest that night was astrophysicist, bon vivant and man about the town Neil DeGrasse Tyson, a man so charismatic and knowledgeable that I am frankly appalled he hasn't been made Science Czar of the United States. (His weekly radio show Star Talk, can be heard as a pod cast. To say I highly recommend it would be a vile understatement.) Mr. Tyson was there to talk about all things spacey and climate change, and at one point had to defend the need for NASA and the space program to his host. Mr. Maher, apparently, believed that such an extensive and expensive program was unnecessary given the problems on on terra firma, and additionally stated that any sane American ought to oppose a man trip to Mars simple because it was brought to life by former President George W. Bush.
I very nearly put my fist through my computer screen. Which would have been monstrously unfair of me, as my computer has done nothing to deserve such treatment. Mr. Maher on the other hand would have deserved the black eye.
There are times when I find my world turning into something out of Carrol's Wonderland, and those times generally seem to involve whenever Republicans are defending the space programs against Democrats. It is the one instance I can think of, where conservatives defend science against progressives. At close to 30, I still have not been able to silence the cognitive dissonance this creates. It seems to me, that when listed in order of importance the ability to leave this planet, should the environment become toxic for us or a asteroid the size of Mexico City decides to nestle in Pacific Ocean, would far, far outrank the public sector unions right to hold everyone hostage if they don't get their 2.5% raise. While this may seem callous of me, my reasoning is fueled by a very certain and frightening fact.
In the history of our planet: there have been five mass extinction events. Of those, the last one, the Cretaceous-Tertiary event was the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Lesser extinction events have been recorded as well, which means in those instances only less than 50% of animal and plant life died. Going to the Wikipedia page for "Extinction event" is a chilling undertaking. Half way down the page, one of the reasons for a significant die off is listed as "Sustained and significant global warming". Fuck those lousy politicos with their "the science isn't all in" prevarication. Scientists don't need to be sure about the cause of an event to know if it will kill us all.
My point, is that for us as a species to survive, we have to get off this rock. Soon. I would love to see NASA grab a slice of the Defense budget. I am pretty sure that with 100 billion annually at their disposal, those walking Pentium processors would be able to build us one hell of a Mars base by 2025. Question remains then, how will we survive once we get there?
No comments:
Post a Comment