I MUST BE THE CRAZY ONE…

Because I cannot understand why we are all so gaga over all the billions being spent on journeys to nowhere.

Yes, Elon Musk and a bunch of equity fund guys may be funding SpaceX and some other rich guys’ road trips to space but, the American taxpayer has contributed $1.17 trillion to NASA for space exploration since 1950. An average of $19 billion per year over its entire history. That is our money which could be put to far better use.

Right now here, on this planet, we are experiencing a world-wide pandemic which will necessitate us using all our resources, when it is all over, to treat, cure, provide and subsidize practically the entire planet earth. Our only home. Why on this once green earth are we spending these untold billions to take a trip to Mars?Or to any planet?

This money could be put towards what we really need. We do not need to watch rockets shooting off into space. Not now anyway. And maybe not ever. Yeah, we get all these marvelous inventions in the process, but why do we need to shoot off rockets to do this? Why not just invest the money directly towards developing all these “advances.”? Can’t we just skip the expensive middle-man? 

I am appalled by all the fawning and raving on TV about this insane folly. Do they not know what trouble we are in? Do they not care? Sure, I can understand why any billionaire with a few measly million in loose change to spare would want to escape this planet with what we have done to it. With what their own rapacious greed has done to it. However, here is a news flash for you – and you can look up this fact; a spaceship travelling at a million miles per hour would take four thousand years to reach the nearest star system that might – might – be hospitable. Get it?

General Dwight D. Eisenhower, one of our truly great presidents said; “every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” What is this stupid obsession with flying off into nowhere when we can’t get across town in a cab to get to a hospital that may soon close for lack of funds?

We seem to be suffering from some bullshit phony nationalistic pride thing that we’ve been fed by all these “patriotic” poseurs wearing flag pins. Sold on the ridiculous notion that shooting rockets with a few people in them into space somehow makes us “great.” No, it makes us stupid. Everything is relative, as the man said, and relatively, now is not the time for such insanity!

And anyway, who says we have to colonize other planets to ensure mankind’s survival? Why? Are we so great? We’re destroying our Rain Forest – our planet’s lungs – we’ve destroyed our air, our water, we’ve destroyed 10% of our wilderness in just 25 Years, the land, the sea, the air, the animals, the trees. The glaciers are melting, the fjords are dead. Humans have literally poisoned earth. So yeah, let’s go fuck up space too. I am here to tell you; as of now, we do not deserve to continue on as a species.

THEIR SHRINKING HABITAT – AND OURS

Not unless we begin to realize what our priorities must be. And they are not shooting rockets into uninhabitable space.

© tony powers and Barking in the Dark, 2020. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to tony powers and Barking in the Dark with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.