As thousands live in cardboard boxes etc on the footpaths of American streets NASA (still) sucks billions of dollars out of the US budget for their great "outward dream".
How much is this great "outward dream" costing us each year here in Australia as we get drawn deeper into the grand vision as a small elite group of men and women desperately seek the work it gives?
Is this dream of a glorious planet-hopping future even possible? Would the earths resources even support a first colony on Mars.
With so much of the green forest already lost to greed and apathy wouldnt it be wiser to turn back to the planet and reafforest?

Gibo, NASA and similar programs in other countries are an expense that sometimes it seems difficult to bear.

Just as once someone working at tying reeds together to make a raft must have seemed an expense the tribe could ill afford untill they learned to make rafts that let them travel safetly to the other side of the lake or river.

Just as someone carving a dugout canoe would have been an expense that the tribe could ill afford until ships were built that let the tribe trade with other tribes and explore new lands.

Just as someone building a primitive flying machine that could barely get off the ground must have been an expense that the builders could barely afford but which lead to modern air travel.

NASA and others are still working with primitive rafts, the most complex rafts ever built but primitive. Unless we persist with this step we will never build the great ships that will take our explorers beyond well our gravity well.

The technology needed for the moon missions of the late 60's and early 70's have been catalysts for much of the technology of the modern era. There is good reason to believe that finding the technology to carry man further will reap even greater rewards.

If we let the cardboard boxes stop us in this what else should go as well? There are many things which cost us when the money and effort might appear to be of more immediate use, art being a worthy example. When we surrender the dream we loose something important.

R0bert

Great reply.

Just watch as the soft left squal about the idea of cutting the arts. Pure science has benefits of its own, but the technology that is invented by NASA in prepartion for their explorations has been of benefit to everyone.

Amen, great reply Robert!

Its interesting ROBert what you said.
Very well composed though I will have to disagree with the statement "if we let the cardboard boxes stop us in this, what else should go as well".
I really feel if we dont care about putting people in need first, we are not really human beings at all.
Isnt lifes truthful way, "give water to a thirsty man"? Jesus is also saying to His apostles "Give to those who ask, give to those who are in need". In need. This is where NASA goes wrong and the US government lets them. They uplift the great outward dream and forget about all else. I see it as a cowardly deserting of earth and its problems, for a fantasy that wont happen.
NB: an average young person with good computer skills could create a computer program that would show without doubt that NASAs fantasy is already lost...also proving along the way that NASA already knows of the loss of the great outward dream but continues on anyway quielty covering this knowledge to continue sucking the US economy of its wealth. Conspiracy I believe.
All the computer geek has to do, is to collect all of the data on all of the "natural breakdown" caused by pollution, global warning, the tearing up of the forests, the pumping out of all of the underground water, all of the information on the spread of wars...and... BINGO...he has a computer program that SHOWS! that time is simply not there before the world collapses... that there is no time to planet-hop to a glorious escape who we are. NASA isnt so stupid as not to know this. They just keep it quiet, continue to neglect the poor and continue to plunder global coffers by encouraing other nations to jump onto the dead dream. Im sure glad God's in Charge and will soon bring things to an end. John's Revelation is a good read.

Gibo, very few of us devote everything that could be devoted to causes such as hunger, disease, homelessness etc. Despite the short term difference it could make we give those issues priorities just as other choices get priorities.

Even Jesus found a time to say that there is a time and place for other things. I'm stuggling to remember the exact detail at the moment but my recollection is of a woman being chided for wasting expensive perfumed oil by anointing Jesus with it rather than selling it and giving the money to the poor.

I go to the movies from time to time, occasionally out for dinner, next week a few nights away. All things that could make a significant difference in someone elses life. I also give money to help causes I thing will help. What changes when someone sends people into space, commissions a public art work or builds a church is not the principle but the scale.

I get the impression that you are christian, can you see that the priorities of the christian church might seem to a massive waste when we see people starving. I don't know your denominational preferences but an eye opener for me was walking into St Peters basilica.

I have an evangelical background and had heard enough of the cost to the world of building that structure to have formed some fairly strong views on the issue. Walking into it was enough to make me realise that I only saw part of the picture, that despite the harm done by it's construction and my own views at the time on catholic theology it is one of the wonders of the world.

Mankind may be in for a rough ride with the risk of environmental collapse facing us, my guess is that we will need both the technological spin offs from pushing frontiers and the dream of a future to get us through that stuff.

Much more to my taste than the stuff in Revelation.

R0bert