From Now or Never:
The other day one of my students asked me what I thought about our spending billions to explore space when we
have so many problems here on earth that need our attention. It’s a good question. The USA’s scoping out another moon shot as we speak. China’s orbiting the globe now and should soon be as dizzy as other super-duper powers. Mars is on the horizon. Before you know it there’ll be MacMansions on MacQuasars, yet bad news falls from terra firma’s firmament without let-up. Sadly the human record seems to tell us our’s is a conflict without resolution, a condition without a cure.
It’s deja vu cloned and cubed.
What we’re caught up in is the eternal call of the moment wrestling with our obsession with the unknown. Instant gratification chronically usurping future returns. In modern 1st world parlance, it’s like being strapped to a table in a fast food joint wolfing juicy supersizes with fries until we’re bigger than Jupiter, instead of getting out there and exploring Jupiter. It’s an endless state of affairs. We might as well be Sysiphus, and this dilemma our rolling stone. God knows we need the exercise.
More here.