But if we didn’t have the space program, we wouldn’t have velcro for bondage gear. Or telemetry for hospital monitors. Or an image of the planet taken from the moon. What’s with the and/or? It isn’t science that rapes women or starves children, it’s people. Science is merely a set of concepts in the human toolbox; it can be forced to experiment on human beings or it can feed the world. It can support elites and distort our relationship to our planet or bring cheap desalination to thirsty peasants.
The biggest reason I support the space program has nothing to do with the benefits to science, and everything to do with how I feel about the pictures that we get. I feel the pulse of pure curiosity. I cried when I saw the video of an explorer landing on a moon. My humans did this amazing thing, and I’m proud of them.
Violence to self and others is part of the human toolbox as well. I don’t believe for two seconds we can eradicate it – I’m not even sure if we can channel it. I hope that science can help us with that. If you have eradicated violence in yourself, please remember that to be consistent in all this, you might want to consider abandoning any advances from the space program that have benefited you personally to teach the peace that you appear to believe is injured by the space program misallocating the resources of our finite planet.
Here is a partial list. http://techtran.msfc.nasa.gov/at_home.html
Less politely, sex travel & death. You were probably on a wireless internet connection when you wrote your tragic screed, and if you are immune to irony you cannot make yourself proof against mockery.
http://www.stevey.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/50-years-exploration-huge.jpg
