Earthsky Interviews
Private: Space exploration, or focus on Earth?
04-26-2008 - Earth
(Credit: Hubble Space Telescope/NASA)
Frank Wentz: _NASA is our best government agency when it comes to building space hardware and if they are, shall we say, distracted from the Earth climate mission by going to Mars then it just means less resources – dollars, man-power, talent are going to be directed toward Mars, and less is going to be directed toward studying our climate._
That’s Frank Wentz of Remote Sensing Systems in Santa Rosa, California. Wentz’ company processes the satellite data that helps humans measure Earth’s changes.
Frank Wentz: _So I would think that, if you had to choose between the two in this limited budget environment that we live in, that the choice would be to better study our Earth with satellites than to send a man to Mars._
He said some of NASA’s 10 climate-studying satellites are near the end of their life-cycles.
Frank Wentz: _I certainly support space exploration with the caveat: if there’s enough money to do both. It seems to me that it’s just, well, ‘Given your budget, go to Mars,’ and that means they have to take money from other programs._
And if we lose even some satellite coverage, Wentz said, we risk not getting the best science for understanding Earth’s changes. Which would you choose – human space travel to Mars, or satellite measurements of Earth? Tell us in the Comments section below.
Our thanks today to NASA: explore, discover, understand.
“Astronaut’s-eye view of space tourism, space travel”:http://earthsky.org/clear-voices/51893/an-astronauts-eye-view
Listen to the 15-minute *Clear Voices for Science* podcast.
Earth monitoring or mars mission: let’s see – rush the car accident victim to the hospital emergency or, send them to the amusement park? Hmm…
Presenting this issue as zero-sum, us-versus-them is misleading and unfair.
NASA has a multi-billion dollar budget. And so does NSF, NOAA and other sci-tech agencies.
They should jointly fund climate satellites. If they don’t, then Congress should create a new agency that will.
But blaming human space travel, something NASA has always participated in, is unfair.
You might as well blame NIH for getting all the science funding that should go to the physical sciences.
How about focusing more of our attention on what the human species is doing here on Earth?
Thanks for this opportunity to communicate openly about what to me looks like the proverbial “mother” of all global challenges: the human overpopulation of Earth in our time.
It looks like humankind inhabits a tiny celestial orb that is miraculously set among of sea of stars. As far as we know, life as we know it exists nowhere else in the Universe. In the light of these one-of-a-kind circumstances, perhaps we of the human family have the responsibility of assuring the security for the future of life in our planetary home.
I am trying to focus attention on the pressing need for human beings to protect and preserve the finite resources of Earth and its frangible ecosystems. If we fail to achieve this goal, then an unimaginably bleak future could await our children. In all the seriousness of what could be somehow true, I mean the children of my generation.
If 6+ billion human beings live on Earth now and 9+ billion are expected to populate our small planet by 2050, then the human species simply cannot keep engaging in certain unbridled activities that we can see overspreading the Earth because the Earth has limited resources upon which all forms of life and human constructions like national economies utterly depend for existence. Without adequate resources and ecosystem system services of Earth, life as we know it and human institutions could collapse, I suppose.
Now, some portion of the world’s human population conspicuously over-consumes the resources of our planetary home. Other people, working in huge multinational conglomerations, are operating businesses in a way that recklessly scours the oceans’ floor, decapitates mountains, turns biomass into human mass and, in these and many other ways, end up dissipating natural resources at such an alarming rate that the Earth has insufficient time to restore the resources for human benefit. Still other people in the family of humanity are overpopulating the planet. The leviathan-like scale and rapid growth of global human consumption, production and propagation activities are putting the Earth, life as we know it, and the human community in grave, clear and present danger.
Elder human beings of the overdeveloped world, of whom I am one, are among the people in our planetary home who are ravenously over-consuming Earth’s resources. We could choose to consume less. People in the developing could choose to limit overproduction of unnecessary things, to stop ravaging the planet, and to contain industrial pollution. People in the underdeveloped world could limit their number of offspring. Perhaps these are some ways the family of humanity begins to respond ably to the human-induced global challenges that loom so ominously before humanity in our time.
While I certainly agree that action should have been taken by my generation of old folks when we were young in the 60s and 70s, when we became aware of the “population bomb,” still we have responsibilities to assume and duties to perform, here and now, for the sake of our children, grandchildren and coming generations.
The idea of making a conscious choice to do nothing in the face of the recognizably daunting global challenges that are visible before humanity on the far horizon is anathema to me.
At a minimum, do we not have a “duty to warn” others of the potential for some kind of ecological catastrophe if the human community adamantly chooses to continue relentlessly down the current “primrose path” marked by soon to become unsustainable consumption, production and propagation activities now threatening to overwhelm the surface of Earth?
Always with thanks,
Steve
Dear Members of the Earth & Sky community,
Do you think the time will ever come when government officials stop employing every ruse under the sun to protect the selfish interests of over-consumers and hoarders, and start by choosing to do the right thing?
Life and human institutions like national economies are utterly dependent upon the Earth for existence; but too many of our leaders view the Earth as some kind of thing to be manipulated, dissipated, and ravaged secondary to their adamant practice of a religion called endless economic growth. The clear and obvious object of their idolatry is the soon to become unsustainable expansion of the leviathan-like, global political economy. What a colossal sham. What a shame. What a shambles for our children to confront.
Always, with thanks for this community,
Steve
When it’s a choice between more space travel or enhancing the study of earth to better deal with global warming, I choose the latter. Thanks for the opportunity to speak up.
It seems like the respondents to this article take one side or another. I feel that we can go with both sides in a balanced manner and take history into account to justify the efforts. Concentrating on Earth and applying our talents and efforts to improve our life is very honorable and indeed very necessary. I brought up in a former post an account of Australian scientists developing a new strain of cotton that can withstand less water yet give a greater yield than current plants.
When Copernicus and Galileo looked skyward, they were exploring space, and their legacy lives on today in the space programs which are allowing us greater knowledge and higher living standards, just as happened when Columbus was inspired to sail to the New World.
Higher living standards??!! Yes! When I visited the Space Center in Huntsville Alabama, one exhibit stood out. It was comprised of a number of items we include as everyday indispensable things, such as cordless tools and WD-40 that were developed for the space program. Could you imagine if an iPod would be possible without the advances made in the size and durability of batteries through the space program? Likewise computers and the memory size?
We can use both sides of this topic and work together, with a mutual benefit. It would be wrong to stifle the talents and resources God has given us. We just need to identify our talents and apply them to the best benefit of each other.
There are thousands of large rocks or mountains in space. One of them has Earth as its target. The odds are 1:10^9 but if it hits, it will take out 10^9 people. With a death toll like that space travel is well worth the risks and money.