Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. From housetop Work
Speaker 1: Dot Cargo. Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert lamp and I am Christian Sagar.
Speaker 1: We're going to kick off here with a quote from
Speaker 1: the late great Carl Sagan sort of set the tone
Speaker 1: for this episode. We were wanderers from the beginning, from
Speaker 1: nine percent of the tenure of humans on Earth, we
Speaker 1: were hunters and foragers, wandering on the savannahs and the steps.
Speaker 1: Even after four hundred generations in villages and cities, we
Speaker 1: still remember. The open road still calls like an almost
Speaker 1: forgotten song of childhood. We invest far off places with
Speaker 1: a certain romance. The appeal I suspect has been meticulously
Speaker 1: crafted by natural selection as an essential element in our
Speaker 1: long term survival. That was a a lark, Carl Sagan.
Speaker 1: I'm all right, like I said, I think uh, I
Speaker 1: think Chuck has the best one in the house. Toufforts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I like that. I was. I was sitting here giggling
Speaker 1: the whole time, tracking not to laugh into the microphone.
Speaker 1: So that's an appropriate quote for us to start this
Speaker 1: episode with, because we are going to be talking today
Speaker 1: about all well, not all, but various anti space exploration movements,
Speaker 1: whether they be religious, political, economic, Uh, there's there's a
Speaker 1: largic Yeah, yeah, it turns out there's quite a bit
Speaker 1: of them. And uh, you know, I don't think we'd
Speaker 1: classify Carl Sagan as being among them, obviously, no, but
Speaker 1: he kind of sets the stage I think by like that.
Speaker 1: That's a quote from him that kind of captures the
Speaker 1: overall optimism for space and enthusiasm for space that you know,
Speaker 1: I want to definitely get out there for my own part,
Speaker 1: I'm I am definitely a space optimist of space enthusiast.
Speaker 1: I think there are several key arguments for space exploration
Speaker 1: and our investment in space exploration. I mean, namely, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, pushing the technology, ensuring the long term survival
Speaker 1: of the human race, and giving us the ability to
Speaker 1: even protect the planet like in the in movies. As
Speaker 1: I've said before, saving the world is an everyday occurrence
Speaker 1: for hero but to actually save the world, our ability
Speaker 1: to protect the planet from near Earth objects, from meteorites, comments, etcetera,
Speaker 1: like that is as close as we can realistically get
Speaker 1: to saving the planet in a short term, tangible way
Speaker 1: against mass extinction. I think if you had asked me
Speaker 1: before we did all the research for this episode, I
Speaker 1: would have said something similar. And now I'm on the fence. Uh. And,
Speaker 1: which is sad to me because in personal anecdote, like
Speaker 1: I grew up as a little kid, I wanted to
Speaker 1: be an astronaut. That was like my thing as a
Speaker 1: long kid, and my parents bought me all those books
Speaker 1: of like you know, those like giant like uh um
Speaker 1: fold up books of like the interior of the Space
Speaker 1: Shuttle looks like, or like how to become an astronaut,
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Uh. And I remember very specifically being
Speaker 1: a kindergartener in the classroom. I was in New Hampshire
Speaker 1: at the time when the Challenger exploded, and Christie mcculloff
Speaker 1: was a New Hampshire teacher that was aboard the Challenger,
Speaker 1: and so at the time it was you know, a
Speaker 1: really big deal is super upsetting, and but I was
Speaker 1: still like so into the whole astronaut thing. Uh. And
Speaker 1: now look at me now, I you know, I talked
Speaker 1: about science on podcasts and write horror stories about demons.
Speaker 1: I I don't know if I ever achieved my dreams.
Speaker 1: You're rarely go into space at all. No, No, it's
Speaker 1: it's few and far between. I got to talk to
Speaker 1: uh Elon Musk and Richard Branson about that, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, Like reading all of this information, I
Speaker 1: got to say, there are some compelling arguments against it too,
Speaker 1: I would agree. And you know, I think the important
Speaker 1: thing about this because some of you might be listening
Speaker 1: and you're you're thinking, you're like me, You're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm already one board space question and I'm not
Speaker 1: really interested in the counter arguments. But I think it's
Speaker 1: it's healthy to explore the arguments against the things that
Speaker 1: we value, because hey, that gives you a chance to,
Speaker 1: you know, hold on a little tighter, do the things
Speaker 1: you do believe in, question the things you believe in,
Speaker 1: and you know, maybe end up with a more balanced perspective.
Speaker 1: I agree, And after you know, going through this and
Speaker 1: what we're going to present to you today, I can
Speaker 1: tell you that they're there are definitely like like weak
Speaker 1: points in the armor of both of the arguments that
Speaker 1: sort of make you go, okay, like maybe we could
Speaker 1: refine this here. They're like, let's let's really nail down
Speaker 1: why we're going into space and then like for some
Speaker 1: of the arguments against it too, like they need to
Speaker 1: be refined as well. You know, it's a little a
Speaker 1: little loose sometimes, especially like so the one that really
Speaker 1: got us got the ball rolling for us on this
Speaker 1: was an article that we're going to talk about at
Speaker 1: the end of the podcast that is called the Manifesto
Speaker 1: from the Committee to Abolish Outer Space. And it reads
Speaker 1: like a total like farcical, dadist sort of I don't know,
Speaker 1: anti capitalist manifesto sort of joke from the nineteen seventies, right, Um,
Speaker 1: but there is some like if you read real deeply
Speaker 1: on it, there is some logic between the lines. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I thought it was worth reading through to
Speaker 1: promote discussion. Yeah, yeah, totally. And that's why this is
Speaker 1: ultimately all about. We're we're gonna provide you with some arguments.
Speaker 1: You take those, combine them with what you already know,
Speaker 1: which already believe, and then you can give us feedback
Speaker 1: on how that may have changed your viewpoint, how that
Speaker 1: caused you to double down any viewpoint, etcetera. So, before
Speaker 1: we dive into the various sort of categories of anti
Speaker 1: space arguments, there was one article that I read that
Speaker 1: i'd like to use as like a cap off for
Speaker 1: us to start with. And this was written in by
Speaker 1: a guy named Gary Westfall, and it's called The Case
Speaker 1: against Space uh. And it's in it's it's actually in
Speaker 1: a science fiction journal called Science Fiction Studies. Uh. It
Speaker 1: was issued seventy two. If you want to go look
Speaker 1: it up. Um. And he basically says, look like, I'm
Speaker 1: part of the sci fi community. I love science fiction.
Speaker 1: I'm a science fiction writer. I teach science fiction. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I have been in love with the idea of
Speaker 1: going to space for decades now, but lately, like my
Speaker 1: enthusiasm for it has waned. Uh. And he says there
Speaker 1: have been different supportive arguments for space travel in recent
Speaker 1: error eras right, So you can sort of break it
Speaker 1: down from the fifties and sixties to the seventies and
Speaker 1: eighties and then up to his point in the nineties.
Speaker 1: And I think as we go on today, we'll see
Speaker 1: some more in the the ats and the teens that
Speaker 1: we're existing in now. But uh, he said, the fifties
Speaker 1: and the sixties, they were all philosophical arguments, right, humanity
Speaker 1: must venture into an occupy outer space so that we
Speaker 1: can fulfill our inherent drive for exploration and inhabit unknown realms.
Speaker 1: Not because it is easy, that it is hard. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: Well Kennedy didn't have a Boston accent. He had a
Speaker 1: he had a Kennedy accent. Yeah, but I can try.
Speaker 1: Uh you know what. No, I'm not gonna I could
Speaker 1: do his brother. I had a bad ice cube anyways. Okay,
Speaker 1: But to continue on, this is basically like the Star
Speaker 1: Trek argument, right, like like a new life, new civilizations, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a manifest destiny kind of yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is a good way to put it. Um. In short,
Speaker 1: he says, this is an exact quote. In short, the
Speaker 1: history of our species powerfully suggests that progress will come
Speaker 1: from continued stable life on Earth and that a vast
Speaker 1: new program of travel into space will lead to a
Speaker 1: new period of human stagnation. And interestingly enough, he then
Speaker 1: quotes the exact quote that you put above from Carl Sagan.
Speaker 1: Then he says, Okay, then in the seventies and eighties
Speaker 1: was shifted right because the whole philosophical thing wasn't really
Speaker 1: working out anymore, and it became a practical economic argument,
Speaker 1: and it was something like this that outer space will
Speaker 1: solve our many problems, uh, the ones that are confronting
Speaker 1: us here on Earth, and that people will step forward
Speaker 1: to solve these problems and we're gonna make a lot
Speaker 1: of money doing it. It's kind of an industrial uh
Speaker 1: trickle down economics kind of you, which sort of velcrow
Speaker 1: as the star. Right, look at this. We have velcro
Speaker 1: because of space, And isn't your life better because of velcro?
Speaker 1: Velcro is perfect? Yeah, I forgot all about that. Uh,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna like it's just gonna be us thinking about
Speaker 1: like all the like space stuff from our childhood, like velcrow,
Speaker 1: tang and like freeze dried ice cream suppose. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: But here's his quote about that one. He says, thus,
Speaker 1: when people were unmoved by calls to fulfill the basic
Speaker 1: destiny of manity, which is the exploration one, it was
Speaker 1: hoped that the magnetic allure of the dollar sign would
Speaker 1: draw them into the space camp. And they were talking
Speaker 1: about everything from gathering free energy from the Sun to
Speaker 1: mining key metals on the moon, building space factories that
Speaker 1: would make big money, developing and selling life saving medicine
Speaker 1: and devices. And that is something that's going to come
Speaker 1: up later in this podcast as well. Then in the
Speaker 1: nineties we switched again, right, And this is what I
Speaker 1: like to call the Armageddon argument, which is basically the
Speaker 1: movie Armageddon. We need to go into space for defensive
Speaker 1: reasons and for prevention. We need to make sure a
Speaker 1: massive asteroid doesn't strike Earth and kill all of us,
Speaker 1: or even better, we move into space. The asteroid can
Speaker 1: hit Earth and destroy if it doesn't matter because we've
Speaker 1: colonized other planets, right And I that's one that I
Speaker 1: especially think it's still a very compelling argumentation. It's a
Speaker 1: big picture argument. And that's one of the things about
Speaker 1: any of this because when you're trying when you're looking
Speaker 1: at space, you're talk thinking about you're talking about space exportation,
Speaker 1: you're talking about a massive megaproject, and you get they
Speaker 1: have all these different ideas of what it means, what
Speaker 1: the benefits are, what are the short term versus a
Speaker 1: long term and what does it mean to see this
Speaker 1: as an extension of culture? Yeah, yeah, I agree, And
Speaker 1: so like I said, like I guess what I'm looking
Speaker 1: for is by the end of this podcast that I'll
Speaker 1: be able to be convinced back to my five year
Speaker 1: old self who was enamored with the idea of being
Speaker 1: an astronaut. But uh, Westfall basically uses the rest of
Speaker 1: this this article to make arguments against those three cases,
Speaker 1: um and he He basically finds that there's no compelling,
Speaker 1: immediate reason why we should accelerate our space programs. He says, yeah,
Speaker 1: sure would be fine for us to go into outage space,
Speaker 1: but we've got much more pressing issues to deal with
Speaker 1: here on Earth, all right, So let's segue from that
Speaker 1: into and this was brand new to me. You educated
Speaker 1: me on this for for this episode, that there are
Speaker 1: religious reasons to go to space. Yeah, there or at
Speaker 1: least the case has been made um and granted you
Speaker 1: you don't see as much of this anymore, at least
Speaker 1: in mainstream arguments. But but it's still pretty interesting. I've
Speaker 1: been long fascinated by by space religion and the idea
Speaker 1: like what happens to our beliefs when we actually take
Speaker 1: them into space, or just what do we do? What
Speaker 1: happens when we take old beliefs essentially old cosmologies, I
Speaker 1: mean maybe even like Babylonian cosmologies, and we try to
Speaker 1: hold onto those sometimes without without daring to tinker with them.
Speaker 1: In an age of modern cosmological understanding. Very Jodorowski like
Speaker 1: that that that's like a big theme of his and uh,
Speaker 1: what is it meta barons and that that university sort
Speaker 1: of created around that was a wild universe. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so there are various examples of this. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: there's some religions of Hinduism instantly comes to mind. They
Speaker 1: have displayed an amazing ability to adapt supernatural cosmologies to
Speaker 1: agree with new information on the nature of the universe. Um.
Speaker 1: But other examples stand out to exemplify religions uh, sometimes
Speaker 1: unflinching refusal to change in the face of scientific advancement. Geocentricism.
Speaker 1: You know, there's no way anything but the earth can
Speaker 1: be the center of creation. Uh. And speaking of creation creationism,
Speaker 1: there's no there's no way that this uh, that any
Speaker 1: of this scientific data and these these scientific theories about
Speaker 1: the origin of species can be any different from this
Speaker 1: ancient text that I still hope, right, Why I bother
Speaker 1: to go looking? We know we have the gnosticism here already. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: of course, so it's not that all that surprising that
Speaker 1: certain religious groups or certain religious individuals have spoken out
Speaker 1: to varying degrees against space exploration and space travel or
Speaker 1: or raise some very particular religious questions about it. UM.
Speaker 1: One that I found very thought provoking occurred in two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve, and this this came from the General Authority
Speaker 1: of Islamic Affairs and Endowment SPATWA Committee UH. And and
Speaker 1: I do want to to UH to clarify that this
Speaker 1: is UH. This is just one single United Arab Emirates committee. UM.
Speaker 1: They were not They're not speaking speaking all of Islam. UM.
Speaker 1: This is just one committee speaking out here. But they
Speaker 1: were mainly interested with what a one way mission to
Speaker 1: Mars would mean UH from an Islamic perspective. So this
Speaker 1: is of course the whole idea of the first settlers
Speaker 1: to Mars are essentially on a suicide mission. Well, just
Speaker 1: that constitutes suicide? And if so, UH does the Koran
Speaker 1: speak out against it when it says do not kill
Speaker 1: yourselves or one another. Indeed, Allah is to you've ever merciful.
Speaker 1: And they were argumenting that, yeah, Muslims should not go
Speaker 1: on this journey. But the but there even more remarkable
Speaker 1: part of this was and this was brought up is
Speaker 1: the notion that some Muslims might take the trip to
Speaker 1: Mars in order or to quote escape punishment or standing
Speaker 1: before Almighty Allah for judgment that I don't quite understand,
Speaker 1: but I guess like I'm also not like an Islamic scholar,
Speaker 1: but I would assume that even if they died on
Speaker 1: the mission to Mars, they would still face judgment from
Speaker 1: Allah well after life. That that's where it gets crazy, right,
Speaker 1: because if you if you leave Earth, does that mean
Speaker 1: you were leaving God's domain? Is each God is God
Speaker 1: only lord over a single planet? Um? I think the
Speaker 1: most would argue that that a that a modern depiction
Speaker 1: of God is a God of all creations, and therefore
Speaker 1: if you if you take him off on one world,
Speaker 1: you can't just go to the next and claim immunity. Um.
Speaker 1: And I think that was the the idea that that
Speaker 1: one out here, But it's so much science fiction spins
Speaker 1: off of this very simple idea that we're getting into
Speaker 1: today of should we or shouldn't we go into space?
Speaker 1: You know, like immediately thinking of you and I were
Speaker 1: just talking about this book the other day, Uh, Mary
Speaker 1: Doria Russell's book The Sparrow. Yeah, I have not read it,
Speaker 1: but it's been on my to read list for a
Speaker 1: while really fascinating sci fi book about you know, the
Speaker 1: idea of the future sending Catholic Jesuit priests along with
Speaker 1: a team to a new planet where they found alien
Speaker 1: life so that they can be missionaries basically and teach
Speaker 1: them about the Catholic faith. Uh. And of course everything
Speaker 1: goes horribly awry, but it's it's fascinating, yeah, but it's
Speaker 1: also sort of an argument or it ends up sort
Speaker 1: of being an argument for not doing such a thing. Well, um,
Speaker 1: we'll get the Catholics in a minute. But by my
Speaker 1: next example comes from the Church of Jesus Christ of
Speaker 1: Latter day Saints, which, you know, a lot of people
Speaker 1: might not think that Mormons are going to really come
Speaker 1: up when we talk about space ready religions, but as
Speaker 1: a relative newcomer to the religious world marketplace, Uh, they
Speaker 1: were really preloaded for the space age from the beginning.
Speaker 1: As pointed out by Roger D. Lonnia's curator of the
Speaker 1: Smithsonian's planetary Exploration programs in his paper A Western Mormon
Speaker 1: in Washington, d c. You have a couple of key
Speaker 1: attributes to the Mormon faith that that make it perfect
Speaker 1: for space. It's grounded in frontier religion kind of giving
Speaker 1: back to that spirit that that that that that quote
Speaker 1: from Sagan capture uh and uh. And so you see,
Speaker 1: you see this idea, you know, you're gonna push the frontier. Uh,
Speaker 1: not not only the frontiers on Earth, but you're gonna
Speaker 1: push the frontiers in space as well. Yeah. And that
Speaker 1: was primarily through a guy named Dr James C. Fletcher,
Speaker 1: who I believe was Mormon. Uh. He was also NASA's
Speaker 1: administrator from nineteen seventy one and nineteen seventy seven and
Speaker 1: then again from six to nineteen eighty nine, very influential
Speaker 1: on the Space Shuttle program and other space exploration research. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was big into set as well. He considered all
Speaker 1: of this, uh, you know, part of his Mormon faith
Speaker 1: that he should push these ideas because Mormon cosmology also
Speaker 1: involves a universe full of worlds without number that are
Speaker 1: inhabited by intelligent beings. So, in other words, earthlings are
Speaker 1: not the only creatures in Mormon cosmology. It comes pre
Speaker 1: loaded with the idea that yes, there are other worlds
Speaker 1: under God's domain that are also liberated by the same savior,
Speaker 1: and they have they have people on them or something
Speaker 1: like people you know, Um, so you don't have to
Speaker 1: worry about discovering alien life and having as much of
Speaker 1: a uh, you know, a religious um you know, apocalypse
Speaker 1: in the mind. So the opposite version of this in
Speaker 1: like sci fi fantasy type of stuff. I have to
Speaker 1: I don't know why, but this is just immediately popping
Speaker 1: into my head. There's this recent storyline in the Thor
Speaker 1: comic books where um Thor realizes that like every planet
Speaker 1: with sentient life has its own pantheon of gods, right,
Speaker 1: and so like he's part of the Norris pantheon of gods.
Speaker 1: But he flies into space and he goes to another planet,
Speaker 1: and it turns out like this planet had its own pantheon,
Speaker 1: but somebody had been murdering all of their deities. So
Speaker 1: Thor takes it upon himself to also become their new deity.
Speaker 1: You know. Uh, it's just interesting, Like this is just
Speaker 1: like amazing springboard for fertile, imaginative ideas for science fiction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and heed it is. Now it's interesting with with Thor
Speaker 1: of course, because he's a part of a pantheon of
Speaker 1: god's apposed to a monotheistic model, Yeah, which is mainly
Speaker 1: what we're talking about here. Both the Islamic and Mormon examples.
Speaker 1: Now to return to the Church of Latter day Saints.
Speaker 1: Uh not. Everyone in the history of the Church has
Speaker 1: been super on board with space exploration. In nineteen fifty seven,
Speaker 1: just a few short years before the first human ventured
Speaker 1: into space, prominent Mormon Joseph Fielding Smith remarked that quote,
Speaker 1: it is doubtful that man will ever be permitted to
Speaker 1: make any instrument or ship to travel through space and
Speaker 1: visit the Moon or any distinct planet. And in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty one, the same year, the Cosmonautori Gargan made history,
Speaker 1: I mean the first man in space. Uh. Smith further stated,
Speaker 1: we will never get a man into space. This is
Speaker 1: of course before before he went up. Um, we will
Speaker 1: never get a man into his face. The Earth is
Speaker 1: man's fear, and it was never intended that he should
Speaker 1: get away from it. The Moon is a superior planet
Speaker 1: to the Earth, and it was never intended that men
Speaker 1: should go there. You can write it down in your
Speaker 1: books that this will never happen. Well, boy, was he wrong,
Speaker 1: or or maybe it's all been a lie. Right, It's
Speaker 1: like the shin I'm surprised nothing came up about the
Speaker 1: Shining conspiracy, the idea that we faked the moon landing.
Speaker 1: I think that that plays into some of the attitudes
Speaker 1: will get out, you know, the the nineteen some of
Speaker 1: the early skepticisms that we could do it, and then
Speaker 1: when we did do it, Uh, you had to double
Speaker 1: down on your beliefs and say, well, no, way that
Speaker 1: we actually did. I should probably explain what I mean.
Speaker 1: I just threw that out there, like that's common knowledge
Speaker 1: or whatever. This is more along the lines of our
Speaker 1: our colleagues over at stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 1: But so the idea that the idea goes like this,
Speaker 1: well it should be noted, this is a this is
Speaker 1: a fake conspiracy theory because they created conspiracy theory that
Speaker 1: nearly but people fascinating the people got really into it.
Speaker 1: You've seen about it. Yeah, So, like the the idea
Speaker 1: goes that the moon landing and all of our space
Speaker 1: exploration has been faked, and that in particular the moon
Speaker 1: landing was shot and faked by Stanley Kubrick, and subsequently
Speaker 1: the shining is a metaphorical thematic apology to his wife.
Speaker 1: I think for committing the act of lying to the
Speaker 1: public about what happened on the Moon. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's elaborate, and it's such a neatly constructed, elaborate conspiracy
Speaker 1: theory that you can't help but find it, find it fascinating. Um.
Speaker 1: But doubting the moon landing, that, of course, is a
Speaker 1: very real thing. And and I do think that that
Speaker 1: that spirit is echoed and some of the stuff we're
Speaker 1: gonna discuss here in a bit now. I do want
Speaker 1: to mention one more thing about Joseph Fielding Smith, and
Speaker 1: that is that later on his um his grandson, writing
Speaker 1: about about all of this, uh he uh, he made
Speaker 1: a case that that one of the points that Smith
Speaker 1: was making was that if you went to another world,
Speaker 1: you've discovered that they had the same Savior, they had
Speaker 1: the same God, and therefore you wouldn't have to have
Speaker 1: faith anymore. That that that by visiting another planet, you
Speaker 1: could confirm the existence of God and therefore remove the
Speaker 1: importance for faith and the human experience. UM okay, I
Speaker 1: don't like just taking that from like a sort of
Speaker 1: like debate logical perspective. I don't know that I necessarily
Speaker 1: agree just because another species evolved to have a monotheistic
Speaker 1: religion that that confirms the existence of a God. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I'd have to hear more. It's an it's
Speaker 1: an interesting idea. I imagine it would require a deeper
Speaker 1: discussion of Mormon theology. I guess, as our colleague Holly
Speaker 1: Fry often says, I require more data. Yeah, but but
Speaker 1: I do. I do find the Mormon faith very interesting
Speaker 1: and it's in its space ready nature. Though as we've
Speaker 1: explored here that it still doesn't mean you're gonna not
Speaker 1: encounter some some problems when you bring your faith into
Speaker 1: an everly, ever increasingly space age. Oh yeah, yeah, certainly.
Speaker 1: Now some other examples here. Scientist David Rittenhouse insisted back
Speaker 1: in seventeen seventy five that quote, the doctrine of a
Speaker 1: plurality of worlds is inseparable from the principles of astronomy.
Speaker 1: But this doctrine is still thought by some pious persons
Speaker 1: to militate against the truths asserted by the Christian religion.
Speaker 1: A two thousand fourteen University of dat And study found
Speaker 1: that Evangelical Protestants are much sure Jesus will return in
Speaker 1: the next forty years than the humans will make significant
Speaker 1: strides and space exploration. Huh. That seems to me to
Speaker 1: be one of those things that's cyclical, is that like
Speaker 1: every generation feels like they're just on the cusp of
Speaker 1: revelations or or whatever kind of end of the world
Speaker 1: apocryphal story occurring. Yeah, And I mean that's just I
Speaker 1: think the nature of any kind of you know, very
Speaker 1: evangelic or very fundamentalist movement is that you're going to
Speaker 1: be more more focused on on the short term and
Speaker 1: the religious version of the world given, not the next life.
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily have any problem with that so long
Speaker 1: as like, like you said, like they're focusing on like
Speaker 1: earthly problems, you know, taking care of earthly problems. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're investing in space X. And certainly that ties into
Speaker 1: some of the secular arguments we're gonna explore this um.
Speaker 1: This particular study was carried out by University of day
Speaker 1: and Political Science Assistant Professor Joshua Ambrose Ambrosius, who used
Speaker 1: data from the General Social Survey and three Puce surveys
Speaker 1: to compare knowledge interest in support for space exploration among Catholics, Evangelical,
Speaker 1: mainline Protestants, Jews, Eastern religions, and agnostics, and the key
Speaker 1: findings were that that were as follows, Evangelicals, who account
Speaker 1: for one quarter of US population, are the least knowledgeable, interested,
Speaker 1: in supportive of space exploration. Interesting, Jews and members of
Speaker 1: Eastern traditions are more attentive and supportive. Uh. Also, no
Speaker 1: matter where you're talking about, clergical support is important. So Evangelicals,
Speaker 1: for instance, were twice as likely to recognize the benefits
Speaker 1: of space exploration if their pastors speak positively about science
Speaker 1: and UM. And of all the Christian faiths, Catholics, Uh,
Speaker 1: they seem to have the most the most openness and
Speaker 1: so they've all read the sparrow. Yeah. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: that Vatican has um. They have an astronomer, they have
Speaker 1: they have an interest in space. They occasionally have meetings
Speaker 1: where they discuss, Hey, what happens when we speak to
Speaker 1: speak with aliens? So exactly. Well, I would assume that
Speaker 1: you would be like adapt the same kind of methodologies
Speaker 1: that you use for missionary work in other countries in
Speaker 1: the same way as you would for first contact. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and if someone wanted to get kind of critical,
Speaker 1: and certainly this is a critical episode, you might say
Speaker 1: that the Catholic Church historically, UH is interested in large megaprojects,
Speaker 1: we would dubious price tags and questionable benefits for the massage. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: they've certainly got the pocketbook capable of doing it. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think that that was sort of the
Speaker 1: argument of the Sparrow was that like in the future,
Speaker 1: governments were wouldn't be able to fund such a thing,
Speaker 1: so they had to turn to the Catholic Church in
Speaker 1: order for the funding, subsequently leading to Jesuit missionaries being
Speaker 1: included on every mission. Yeah. So I guess basically you
Speaker 1: can you can boil all of this down by saying
Speaker 1: that when you have a supernatural worldview, even if you
Speaker 1: have just like a basic mythological background to your world view, um,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a potential risk to it in taking
Speaker 1: your culture into space, taking your mindset into a space age,
Speaker 1: and so therefore there's going to be a certain amount
Speaker 1: of resistance. All Right, we're gonna take a quick break,
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we're gonna get into some economics.
Speaker 1: All Right, we're back. We're going to discuss some economic
Speaker 1: anti space arguments. Alright, So, as we've talked about on
Speaker 1: the show many times before, pretty much any time we
Speaker 1: talked about space, but I'm thinking of like our rods
Speaker 1: from God episodes space mirrors, Like any time we talk
Speaker 1: about launching something into space, it is super expensive, right,
Speaker 1: that's right. I mean some of the figures here are
Speaker 1: just are truly astronomical. Um, I'm gonna lay out unintended. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna lay out a few here. And these came
Speaker 1: from an article UM from the Space Review. First of all,
Speaker 1: Apollo program, this was of course one of the big
Speaker 1: ones UM, and went for fifteen years ninety nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 1: It cost twenty point four billion, and if we simply
Speaker 1: added yearly spending all up, we were we're took looking
Speaker 1: at a round a hundred and nine billion in modern currency. UH.
Speaker 1: That brings that breaks down to nine point nine billion
Speaker 1: per flight with each lunar land and costing eighteen billion dollars. UH.
Speaker 1: Sky Lab, the Skylab space station program, that cost UH
Speaker 1: two point two billion in the money of the time,
Speaker 1: that would be a ten billion in two thousand ten dollars.
Speaker 1: And and that was across its nine year existence nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty six through nineteen seventy four. Meanwhile, the Space Shuttle
Speaker 1: program cost roughly one hundred ninety eight point six billion
Speaker 1: in two thousand ten dollars um. A lot of the
Speaker 1: sources I was looking at this came from a two
Speaker 1: thousand ten articles, so you can, you know, you can
Speaker 1: boost that those prices a little bit in your head.
Speaker 1: I noticed that as well though, doing the research that
Speaker 1: a lot of this I think it takes time to
Speaker 1: gather these this information, so we don't have a lot
Speaker 1: of data that's like right up to like you know, June. Now,
Speaker 1: the I S S is an entirely different scenario to
Speaker 1: to look at. NASA may have spent the equivalent of
Speaker 1: seventy two point four billion on the I S S
Speaker 1: as of two thousand ten. So I've also read other accounts,
Speaker 1: including some more recent ones. They'd argue that the station's
Speaker 1: true cost is somewhere between a hundred and a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty billion dollars or I've also read accounts that
Speaker 1: make an argument that it's just kind of difficult to calculate.
Speaker 1: It might be incalculable. Wow, Yeah, I think I have
Speaker 1: notes in here later on about the I S costs.
Speaker 1: But so we'll at the when we get to those,
Speaker 1: we can compare and contrast but that sounds right to me.
Speaker 1: I mean it was again no pun intended, astronomically expensive.
Speaker 1: So Westfall, the guy I brought up at the beginning,
Speaker 1: he uh comes to the economic argument. Now. Remember this
Speaker 1: is the argument that he said was primarily made in
Speaker 1: the seventies and eighties. Right, it's worth the investment because
Speaker 1: we're gonna make all this money, man, like all these
Speaker 1: technologies that we create that will bring back to Earth.
Speaker 1: It's going to be totally worth it. Uh. And he says, yeah,
Speaker 1: but we observe a cycle in this literature, right that
Speaker 1: they first they announced that someone has developed the quote
Speaker 1: perfect plan for space exploration. Right, maybe it's a new
Speaker 1: rocket chip or something that's cheaply ineffective. Or then other
Speaker 1: people start to examine this perfect plan and they find
Speaker 1: a few little problems. They go, well, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: that rocket chip actually cost fifty times what you you
Speaker 1: announced originally, right. Uh. And then they find oh, there's
Speaker 1: a rate of failure. Uh, maybe we shouldn't do this yet,
Speaker 1: or maybe this thing is gonna crash and scatter radioactive
Speaker 1: dust all over Australia or something like that, right, um.
Speaker 1: And so as these objections start to mount, the people
Speaker 1: who proposed it in the first place stopped talking about it,
Speaker 1: and then they immediately shift to another new perfect plan
Speaker 1: that they talk about. So this is the cycle of
Speaker 1: that he accounts for and argues against that you see
Speaker 1: in these economic arguments that you know that like I'm
Speaker 1: thinking right now of like Elon Musk and SpaceX right,
Speaker 1: like that's probably the current one that we're seeing where
Speaker 1: it's like, how we can totally do this, We're gonna
Speaker 1: land this. What's the most recent thing, like they landed
Speaker 1: a space rocket on a platform in the middle of
Speaker 1: the ocean, like what like a month or two ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a talking about the whole Dragon programmer. I
Speaker 1: think it's Dragon too at this point. I wrote something
Speaker 1: about it for how stuff works now, uh, and it's
Speaker 1: pretty impressive technology. But yeah, this is the latest where
Speaker 1: where the you know, the the proponents of this were saying,
Speaker 1: this is this is how we're getting to Mars. This
Speaker 1: is the this is the vehicle, and it just takes
Speaker 1: further development to get it where we needed. So it's
Speaker 1: the new perfect plan that we're working on. Yeah, essentially
Speaker 1: here semi perfect. Yeah, yeah, it is. It is the
Speaker 1: new perfect plan. Now some additional anti space arguments were
Speaker 1: presented in Engineering and Technology magazine back in two thousand
Speaker 1: eleven by Cornish explore U been Handbury tennyson um. And
Speaker 1: he was taking the anti space argument in a pro
Speaker 1: con article that was that was pretty interesting. It was
Speaker 1: kind of cool. They like laid him out like right
Speaker 1: next to each other, the pro and the con argument
Speaker 1: at the bottom. It was sort of like, so where
Speaker 1: how have you been convinced? Yeah? Which one? Which one
Speaker 1: do you side with? So here a couple of quotes
Speaker 1: here that I have to read. He says, the amount
Speaker 1: of money being spent on space researches in the billions,
Speaker 1: and it has achieved extraordinarily little except for a bit
Speaker 1: of improved technology, which would probably have come about anyway
Speaker 1: by other means. I guess he means that we could
Speaker 1: have had velcro without going into space, right, Yeah, we
Speaker 1: probably could have built velcro without also going into space. Yeah. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: he says, we we have no shortage of crisises here
Speaker 1: on Earth. Economic environmental, we've got deforestation, we've got global
Speaker 1: clim climate change going on. Uh. He says we should
Speaker 1: be spending these colossal sums of money on sustainability and
Speaker 1: management of the human population. He said, quote, if you
Speaker 1: put the money that is wasted in in space into
Speaker 1: the hands of climatologists, you could have lasting benefits for mankind.
Speaker 1: I don't think space science is bad science. I just
Speaker 1: think it's a waste of time. Yeah, And Henbury Tennyson's
Speaker 1: argument is really him considering space research a gross waste
Speaker 1: of time, money, and effort that could be used to
Speaker 1: do other things like manage our own planet, which you know,
Speaker 1: that's something that we we already saw in the religious arguments.
Speaker 1: Now it's popping up again and the the economic ones.
Speaker 1: He says, this is interesting because I had not heard
Speaker 1: this before, and it's it sounds a little pseudo e
Speaker 1: to me. But but we'll see what you and the
Speaker 1: listeners think. He says that all civilizations collapse after five
Speaker 1: hundred years, and that this is usually because of their
Speaker 1: greed to development and leads to the extinction of their culture.
Speaker 1: Uh so, I don't know. I mean, okay, sure, let's
Speaker 1: for the sake of this argument say that that's true, um,
Speaker 1: and that our ambitions towards space are a sign of
Speaker 1: our own event will collapse, that we're we're closing in
Speaker 1: on the end of our our time. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I've certainly read some material about the collapse of civilizations,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I don't think that the five year estimate
Speaker 1: is that far off. And that being said, a collapsing
Speaker 1: civilization doesn't mean now what it used to me, and like,
Speaker 1: like used to it meant some another army is going
Speaker 1: to rise up and defeat you, and they might solve
Speaker 1: the early just leave an empty city behind. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: whereas now we sort of just have like uh, fallen empires,
Speaker 1: right right. But then but then space itself is I mean, granted,
Speaker 1: there are a very few major players in the game,
Speaker 1: but it is an international game, with newer players making
Speaker 1: strides more and more every day, and that's part of
Speaker 1: the problem, as some people argue to but both actually
Speaker 1: they argue that it's part of the problem and what
Speaker 1: makes it good, and we'll get into that later as well.
Speaker 1: The last thing that he says here is because in
Speaker 1: this is another thing that comes up in both sides
Speaker 1: of the argument, because of population issues. Basically, because like
Speaker 1: there's too many people on Earth, we should instead concentrate
Speaker 1: all these funds that we're throwing into space exploration into
Speaker 1: food production and rainmaking technology. I wonder what he would
Speaker 1: have thought of Willem Reich in his Cloudbusters. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: so the other the other side to that argument, as
Speaker 1: we'll see, is basically, we should go into space because
Speaker 1: there's a population problem, so we can get all of
Speaker 1: these people off of Earth and colonize other planets and
Speaker 1: take the resources from those planets. Yeah, it's like it
Speaker 1: depends on how optimistic your view of humanities future in
Speaker 1: space happens to be. If you think we can create um,
Speaker 1: you know, arcs to send off to other planets, or
Speaker 1: if you think that it's just so far off that
Speaker 1: it's it's not even remotely an answer to even our
Speaker 1: even our longer term problems. So good old stuff to
Speaker 1: blow your mind. Regular Richard Feynman shows up in this
Speaker 1: literature to who we have infamously talked about before in
Speaker 1: his Bathtub Adventures or his sorry hot Tub Adventures criticizing
Speaker 1: um reflexology. What episode was that on, I'm trying to
Speaker 1: remember now. Was it on Cargo cult Science? Yes, it was,
Speaker 1: because he coined the term cargo cultures. Yeah. His his
Speaker 1: major thing is that human space travel and particular in
Speaker 1: particular has never achieved any major scientific break THEWS or
Speaker 1: had not of course during his lifetime. Yeah, that sounds
Speaker 1: about right for Fineman though, and his like kind of
Speaker 1: angle of criticism of how science is approached. But you know,
Speaker 1: I was with him on the cargo cult science thing. Well,
Speaker 1: you know this, this is one of those arguments that
Speaker 1: I often find pretty compelling, and I've heard others make
Speaker 1: it as well, And especially as the technology has advances,
Speaker 1: we've gotten to a point where the near future technology
Speaker 1: is uh, you know, perhaps even even further along than
Speaker 1: than Fineman could have possibly imagined. You know, when we're
Speaker 1: talking about our ability to engage with VR increased communication
Speaker 1: between when robots, I mean, Joe and I did a
Speaker 1: recent episode talking about some of the plans for exploring
Speaker 1: the Jovian moons, and so many of those are predicated
Speaker 1: on the use of probes that are been controlled by
Speaker 1: this particular communication hub that's sending information back to us.
Speaker 1: And it does make you raise the question do we
Speaker 1: need to engage in the costly, dangerous endeavor of sending
Speaker 1: a human out there for largely symbolic reasons like a
Speaker 1: human concett in a steel container here on Earth and
Speaker 1: watch this on a screen, or we can take him
Speaker 1: or her and put them in an enclosed steel box
Speaker 1: to watch it on a screen. Um, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of like, why do I need to go to China?
Speaker 1: I can walk to watch a documentary about it? Well,
Speaker 1: except you can go to China, right and um but no,
Speaker 1: but no, that's a that's a good counter argument as well.
Speaker 1: It's like and it gets back to some people to
Speaker 1: make that argument when you say why I haven't like
Speaker 1: for some Americans, I like, I I've certainly met people
Speaker 1: before who go why do you travel so much? I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, you get to see new sites and learn
Speaker 1: about new people, and it expands your ideas about the world.
Speaker 1: And they're like, hey, I can get all that stuff
Speaker 1: watching the travel channel. Yeah, but you can't catch a
Speaker 1: weird flu watching and that's part of my travel experience.
Speaker 1: But I don't come back with some sort of weird bug.
Speaker 1: Then I know I didn't actually explore so A really grounded,
Speaker 1: sort of very like logical look at the economic argument
Speaker 1: was conducted actually in by the US Congressional Budget Office, UH,
Speaker 1: and they performed what they say is a nonpartisan analysis
Speaker 1: for Congress to review the economic benefits of what we
Speaker 1: would get out of eliminating the space program, and this
Speaker 1: would be from the years. The proposal is specifically to
Speaker 1: terminate human space exploration. So it's important to say that because,
Speaker 1: like as Robert was just saying, we can send up
Speaker 1: unmanned probes and stuff like that right Like we're using
Speaker 1: radio waves right now to map Jupiter in particular, so
Speaker 1: we can see sort of what the geography of the
Speaker 1: planet is like underneath all those spots. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that's the other I mean, even getting me on probes
Speaker 1: and robots, I mean just pure sensors, pure telescope technology,
Speaker 1: Like the human eye is not gonna is not going
Speaker 1: to be able to glimpse these things. We need the
Speaker 1: We need the eye of technology to glimpse and understand
Speaker 1: these things. That's the that's the lens. That's important. So
Speaker 1: the Congressional Budget Office says, look, this proposal would allow
Speaker 1: NASA to continue its aeronautics and its robotics missions. That
Speaker 1: you know, we're not cutting that out, just the human stuff. Now.
Speaker 1: They found by crunching the numbers that this would save
Speaker 1: seventy three billion dollars in that time span from three
Speaker 1: They argue that because most space missions use electronics and
Speaker 1: information technology, that there's no need to send humans into
Speaker 1: space because the instruments don't need the people there to
Speaker 1: operate them. And by using quote robots, I think robots
Speaker 1: is a bit of a strong term here, but that
Speaker 1: won't put human life in danger either, right Uh. And
Speaker 1: it would actually decrease the cost. Because we make the
Speaker 1: missions one way, we don't have to figure out a
Speaker 1: way to bring them back and bring them back safely,
Speaker 1: and that's a huge cost. Yeah, a one way mission
Speaker 1: to Mars, uh isn't nearly as scarier thing when it's
Speaker 1: just a robot. Robot Matt Damon. So yeah, robot Matt.
Speaker 1: He's going to science the beep out of this. I
Speaker 1: mean that's actually a pretty you know, when you think
Speaker 1: about that movie, which was great, like most, I mean,
Speaker 1: the whole thing that all the problems depend on the
Speaker 1: fact that you sent a human there, and then there's
Speaker 1: all of this you know, symbolic power and sending him
Speaker 1: there and all this additional cost and keeping him alive
Speaker 1: there and then and getting him back. Whereas it's just
Speaker 1: a robot, you just write it off like any other robot.
Speaker 1: We've sent out into his face. Yeah. Yeah, which some
Speaker 1: people argue that's a problem too, especially lay along the
Speaker 1: sort of pollution slash anti capitalist lines. But anyways, to
Speaker 1: finish it off the this congressional article, they specifically added, look,
Speaker 1: there's also arguments against this too, and here's what they are.
Speaker 1: That eliminating human space flight would end the progress that's
Speaker 1: necessary to send humans to Mars, leading right into that
Speaker 1: Martian uh analogy. And also that there is possibly a
Speaker 1: scientific advantage to having human beings on the I S
Speaker 1: S to conduct experiments in micro gravity. That's true, that's
Speaker 1: a good one. We kind of it's easy to forget
Speaker 1: I S S and and all the work that goes
Speaker 1: on there when we start thinking about these more futuristic
Speaker 1: visions of sending humans to other planets. Now. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, in two thousand eight, Freakonomics hosted a basically
Speaker 1: like a round table of a bunch of space exploration
Speaker 1: experts with the theme is space exploration worth the cost?
Speaker 1: And I'm not going to break it down by like
Speaker 1: each one. You can go look at it yourself. It's
Speaker 1: pretty interesting, but they pretty much came down totally in
Speaker 1: favor of space exploration and there are reasons where that
Speaker 1: space exploration stimulates children to enter into stem fields. The
Speaker 1: returns on investments generate royalties from patents and licenses. But
Speaker 1: what's interesting is that all that money goes back into
Speaker 1: the US Treasury instead of into NASA. So some of
Speaker 1: them were arguing, Hey, you know, if you made it
Speaker 1: so that the money that's generated from the technology that's
Speaker 1: invented by NASA goes back into NASA, NASA will be
Speaker 1: self funding. Then uh. And also this was a weird argument.
Speaker 1: I thought. Uh. One guy said, well, we spend a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty four billion dollars a year in the
Speaker 1: United States on alcohol, so why shouldn't we spend that
Speaker 1: kind of money on going into space? See, and this
Speaker 1: is this is where we get into an argument. We
Speaker 1: see with science a lot that sounds to me like
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that I would see in Facebook comments.
Speaker 1: And then people will say, oh, but where is this
Speaker 1: lost flight? How come we can do this? We can't
Speaker 1: find that? Uh, you know the whole Really, we can
Speaker 1: put a man on the moon. Why can't we achieve
Speaker 1: this thing in our culture, in our life, either scientifically
Speaker 1: or or or non science? Whatever is like a specific
Speaker 1: current event type crisis. Curing cancer, it's another big one.
Speaker 1: How Come how the argument is always like, oh, why
Speaker 1: why aren't they curing cancer? I think, well, they can't
Speaker 1: cure cancers. They're stopping wildfires. This is fluid dynamics. Yes,
Speaker 1: this is a different realm. And just because just because
Speaker 1: cancer research is hugely important and lives are are on
Speaker 1: the line, it doesn't mean that these other areas of
Speaker 1: scientific inquiry or not important, right right. Uh, they made
Speaker 1: many more arguments in favor of space. So I'm gonna
Speaker 1: throw some of these down here and then we'll keep
Speaker 1: those in mind as we continue on with the arguments
Speaker 1: against going into space. Uh. One is that it would,
Speaker 1: of course allow us to establish human civilization on another world.
Speaker 1: We talked already about the new technologies, but in particular
Speaker 1: they gave us some examples saying we've developed a better
Speaker 1: understanding of osteoporosis and balance disorder as a result of
Speaker 1: sending people into outer space, and we've built new medical
Speaker 1: devices such as digital mammography that generate wealth. Now now again,
Speaker 1: like it's debatable is that going to the treasury, is
Speaker 1: it going to NASA, or is it going into private hands? Also,
Speaker 1: miniaturization of electronics devices for space flight led to our
Speaker 1: present day computers and phones. So these are some tangible
Speaker 1: examples of that kind of trickled down and technology that
Speaker 1: we were discussing earlier. The other argument economically that I
Speaker 1: thought was interesting was they said NASA's development in the South,
Speaker 1: meaning the South of the United States, by establishing centers
Speaker 1: or space flight operations, uh, that those brought economic economic
Speaker 1: development into areas that previously didn't have them, basically providing jobs,
Speaker 1: specifically thinking of Cape canaveral and Garda and Huntsville, Alabama.
Speaker 1: It's also the reason you have like five or six
Speaker 1: German restaurants in Huntsville, Alabama. It's like the mecca of
Speaker 1: German restaurants in the entire region. All except for what's
Speaker 1: the what's the fake German town here in Georgia Helen? Helen?
Speaker 1: I think Helen only that is Helen is not a
Speaker 1: destination for Yeah, if you if you're from the South,
Speaker 1: have you ever been to Helen, Georgia, You know what
Speaker 1: we're talking about. But it's like this little like touristy,
Speaker 1: fake German village. It's kind of bizarre. Yeah, they do
Speaker 1: have a good Thai restaurant data. By the way, in
Speaker 1: the fake German town, there's a great rest there, just
Speaker 1: f y I to local listeners. Other other reasons why
Speaker 1: we where we should go is this is an interesting terminology.
Speaker 1: It allows us to address global challenges with quote space solutions,
Speaker 1: and one of those is the international context. So it
Speaker 1: offers a venue for peaceful cooperation between nations. Uh. And
Speaker 1: that results in a foreign policy boost and prestige to
Speaker 1: those nations, right. Uh. And so the person who made
Speaker 1: this argument says that it justifies the Cold War basically,
Speaker 1: which again, like like I said at the top, some
Speaker 1: of these arguments I find a little bit loose like that.
Speaker 1: That one's kind of strange to me. You end up
Speaker 1: kind of taking uh, it's you end up taking approaches
Speaker 1: if you're playing a game of civilization right where you're
Speaker 1: you're thinking, oh, well, this brought up my technology technology score,
Speaker 1: but then also it lowered the risk level. And it's
Speaker 1: just it gets it's helpful to take these these broad views,
Speaker 1: but it's also it also creates its own problems with perspective. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so as well. Another one is some again
Speaker 1: sort of loose, right, but uh, well, you know, of
Speaker 1: course we should keep doing this and spending these billions
Speaker 1: of dollars because it will answer the are we alone? Question?
Speaker 1: Which sure it will, and that that would be fascinating,
Speaker 1: you know, that would be great headlines. Right. But do
Speaker 1: we need to know are we alone? More than we
Speaker 1: need to I don't know, feed the hungry? Yeah, stuff
Speaker 1: like that is sort of where the economic argument gets tricky.
Speaker 1: It's also one of those things. Um. Not to be
Speaker 1: too much of a downer, but sometimes I think about
Speaker 1: that and I think, well, it would be great to know,
Speaker 1: but the answer can only mess us up, you know,
Speaker 1: like the answers no, then oh I feel so alone.
Speaker 1: If the answer is yes, well then it's whoa, what
Speaker 1: does that mean for my sense of identity? What does
Speaker 1: that mean for my faith? And then are they scary
Speaker 1: or not? Should I now just be petrified of the
Speaker 1: the Independence day version? Um? And then there's this, you know,
Speaker 1: continual argument that we keep coming back to that ex
Speaker 1: exploration is intrinsic to human nature, so of course we
Speaker 1: have to fulfill our human nature right um. And whenever
Speaker 1: I hear that, I can't help but think of the
Speaker 1: Franklin Expedition into uh the Arctic because I did a
Speaker 1: lot of research into that for another project, and that
Speaker 1: was basically, you know, this pre space age that that
Speaker 1: was their outer space, like being able to traverse the
Speaker 1: Northwest passage. Uh. And they lost tons alive and spent
Speaker 1: many a lot of money. They still don't know what happened. Well,
Speaker 1: they sort of know what happened to the Franklin expedition.
Speaker 1: But you know, there's there's many a horror story written
Speaker 1: about the cannibalization that possibly went on on the icy
Speaker 1: wastes of the North uh, purely so that we could
Speaker 1: fulfill this need of human exploration. So there's that. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: one guy in particular, he says, quote asking if space
Speaker 1: exploration with humans or robots are both is worth the
Speaker 1: effort is like questioning the value of Columbus's voyage to
Speaker 1: the New World in the fourteen nineties. Now, it's interesting
Speaker 1: about that is one of the people that we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about next actually makes that argument and says, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a bad thing too. Yeah, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of compelling arguments that that was. That was a
Speaker 1: bad thing. And it's kind of weird to say you
Speaker 1: can't doubt this because doubting that is like second guessing
Speaker 1: something that happened in the past. I can't really, I
Speaker 1: can't change what happened with Columbus. You know, a lot
Speaker 1: of aspects of that scenario sucked. But um, you know
Speaker 1: I am in that flow of time. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to go back and kill him. Yeah. I gotta say,
Speaker 1: like a lot of these people in this Freakonomics roundtable,
Speaker 1: you know, it was a couple of years ago now,
Speaker 1: so maybe their their arguments would be different. But I
Speaker 1: admire their enthusiasm for space travel, but some of their
Speaker 1: arguments weren't very well thought out. And I think part
Speaker 1: of it comes from, again just going from the broad
Speaker 1: view to the smaller view and it ultimately being kind
Speaker 1: of its own wicked problem. Right. Yeah, absolutely. Now, another
Speaker 1: thing I want to point out here before we take
Speaker 1: another break is that, you know, looking back, it's easy
Speaker 1: to look back at the footage of of of the
Speaker 1: the original space race and thinking, well, everybody was behind it.
Speaker 1: There's just so much like political and public will that
Speaker 1: was devoted for it. Of course, you were able to
Speaker 1: pull off such a megaproject, and of course, to a
Speaker 1: certain extent that's true. We were we were able to
Speaker 1: do that kind of things that those pep we were
Speaker 1: able to pull off landing humans on the Moon because
Speaker 1: that political capital was there. However, Uh, I've found a
Speaker 1: couple of sources that really drive home the fact that
Speaker 1: public opinion polls conducted during the Apollo missions, um the
Speaker 1: voices of critics that we can look back on, it
Speaker 1: shows that not everyone was really as on board as
Speaker 1: we sometimes like to think. Yeah, like I'm imagining like
Speaker 1: the Archie Bunkers of the world probably didn't like get
Speaker 1: as excited about the mission to the Moon as like
Speaker 1: maybe the rest of us. Yeah. And in fact, if
Speaker 1: some of this comes from space historian Roger Lanaias of
Speaker 1: the National Inner Space Museum, who we mentioned earlier in
Speaker 1: that piece about Dr James C. Fletcher, Yeah, he said, quote.
Speaker 1: Polls do not support a contention that American embraced the
Speaker 1: lunar landing mission. Consistently through the nineteen sixties, the majority
Speaker 1: of Americans did not believe Apollo was worth the cost.
Speaker 1: With the one exception to this poll to this a
Speaker 1: poll taken at the time of Apollo eleven lunar landing
Speaker 1: in July ninety nine, and uh, consistently throughout the decade,
Speaker 1: forty five to sixty percent of Americans belief that the
Speaker 1: government was spending too much money on space, indicative of
Speaker 1: a lack of commitment to the spaceflight agenda. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that's sort of like our revisionist history, right, especially through
Speaker 1: pop culture, like like, yeah, now we've got movies with
Speaker 1: Tom Hanks where we sit around and celebrate how amazing
Speaker 1: our ingenuity was for sending Apollo up there. But at
Speaker 1: the time, Yeah, yeah, indeed, and uh has pointed out
Speaker 1: in an excellent Atlantic article by Alexa c Magical. Could
Speaker 1: that I recommend anyone check out. I'll include a link
Speaker 1: to it on the landing page. For this episode, I
Speaker 1: was titled the Moondoggle, The Forgotten Opposition to the Apollo Program.
Speaker 1: Um He says, there was a fair amount of civil
Speaker 1: rights criticism of the space program. So you had, for instance,
Speaker 1: in the in the musical scene, you had the the
Speaker 1: late great Gil Scott Heron who died in two thousand eleven.
Speaker 1: You may know him for the Revolution will not be
Speaker 1: telefol televised. Home is Where the Hatred Is. A number
Speaker 1: of songs are this highly talented artists. Uh. He wrote
Speaker 1: a couple of songs that were critical of the program,
Speaker 1: most notably nineteen seventies Whitey on the Moon um, which
Speaker 1: is probably the most notable example. But the it kind
Speaker 1: of goes like this. I'm not gonna sing it, but
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna quote it. He says, with all that
Speaker 1: money I made last year for Whitey on the Moon,
Speaker 1: how come there ain't no money here? White He's on
Speaker 1: the moon. You know, I just about had my fill
Speaker 1: of Whitey on the Moon. I think I'll I'll send
Speaker 1: these dollar these doctor bills airmail special to Whitey on
Speaker 1: the Moon. And of course what he's saying here is
Speaker 1: that we're spending all of this money on well, on
Speaker 1: sending white people to the moon on this space program.
Speaker 1: That is not benefiting people who are suffering. It's not
Speaker 1: and it's not benefiting UH, individuals who are still fighting
Speaker 1: for their own civil rights, while all of this money
Speaker 1: is is fighting to do really with with hardly tangible benefits,
Speaker 1: certainly not to the common man. Ray Bradberry has a story,
Speaker 1: I can't remember the title of it, that's in The
Speaker 1: Illustrated Man that's along the lines of this too, Yeah,
Speaker 1: where the premises that African Americans have basically moved to
Speaker 1: Mars because civil rights issues on Earth were so horrific,
Speaker 1: and then white people on Earth had mind all the
Speaker 1: resources and we're starving and they needed help. So they Uh,
Speaker 1: it's about like a rocket man coming to Mars. He
Speaker 1: lands on Mars, and some of the people on Mars
Speaker 1: are like, why should we accept these people? Why should
Speaker 1: we help them? Ultimately, the community comes together and says,
Speaker 1: of course we're gonna We're gonna take care of So
Speaker 1: essentially Bradberry wrote an afro futurist pete. That's interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's an incredible story. Off to go, I'll go look
Speaker 1: that up because I I found I find afro futurism
Speaker 1: a very interesting area. Yeah, you have this convergence of
Speaker 1: of enthusiasm for space and science fiction but also the
Speaker 1: civil rights movement. Yeah, there was stuff like that even
Speaker 1: in like the old EAC comics in the late fifties.
Speaker 1: In fact, like one of the reasons this is an
Speaker 1: interesting little side note, one of the reasons why horror
Speaker 1: comics were banned in the fifties and why the Comics
Speaker 1: Code was created was because EAC comics had a story
Speaker 1: that was a sci fi story where at the end
Speaker 1: of the story, the an astronaut takes off his helmet
Speaker 1: and it's a black man and it's you know, the
Speaker 1: people writing it were meant to be a civil rights
Speaker 1: promotional story, but the black man was sweating. There was
Speaker 1: a bead of sweat dripping down his face in the panel.
Speaker 1: And the people who were against the story at the
Speaker 1: times said that that was like too primal or something
Speaker 1: like that, and that you know that the comic book
Speaker 1: was pushing boundaries too far by showing the sensuality of
Speaker 1: the humanity of this astronaut. Huh, yeah, that is fascinating.
Speaker 1: So hey, Gil Scott Heron wasn't alone. Yeah, indeed, um,
Speaker 1: and certainly they were. Yeah, it went beyond just just
Speaker 1: you know, the work of your artists. Um. In Black
Speaker 1: protesters marched on Cape Canaveral to protest the launch of
Speaker 1: a Paula fourteen. Uh. Then civil rights leader Jose Williams, who,
Speaker 1: of course we have Jose Williams here in Atlanta. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he framed this as a protest against quote, our nation's
Speaker 1: inability to choose humane priorities, which gets down to the
Speaker 1: economic argument again, right, Like it's just truly a priority
Speaker 1: and what's more important to us. Yeah, clearly, if you
Speaker 1: look at the way that the budget breaks down, the
Speaker 1: war is tremendously more. Yeah, and that is war. Robert
Speaker 1: defense that's often used as an argument for space exploration is, Look,
Speaker 1: if you spent just a fraction more of what you
Speaker 1: spend on the war in the Middle East on space exploration,
Speaker 1: then we would we'd experience all of these tangible benefits
Speaker 1: as as opposed to just the merre tangible benefits of
Speaker 1: military research. Yeah. I think about the Star Wars and
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about the movie, the Star Wars program
Speaker 1: research done in the eighties. That's combining both worlds. It's
Speaker 1: the space exploration world combined with militarization, which we talked
Speaker 1: about with the Weapons in Space episode. Yeah. Now that
Speaker 1: that Alexacy Madrigal article that mentioned he he spends a
Speaker 1: lot of time talking about the work of his Israeli
Speaker 1: American sociologist uh Amatali at Ziani uh and his fifty
Speaker 1: four book The Moondoggle, Domestic and International Implications of the
Speaker 1: Space Race, And in this book at the only laid
Speaker 1: out scientific opposition to the space race as a cash
Speaker 1: and crash approach to science, and he argued that, based
Speaker 1: on the opinions of various scientists that he spoke to,
Speaker 1: space should only be pursued in balance with other scientific
Speaker 1: and technological pursuits, and shouldn't be pursued in a manner
Speaker 1: that weakens other scientific endeavors. One of the facts that
Speaker 1: cited here um in the book, and then cited by
Speaker 1: Magical is that of every three dollars spent on research
Speaker 1: and development in the United United States in nineteen three,
Speaker 1: one went for defense, one for space, and the remaining
Speaker 1: one for all other research purposes, including private industry and
Speaker 1: medical research. He also argued that the space program at
Speaker 1: the time function as something of a brain range. He
Speaker 1: had the best in the brightest and where they drawn,
Speaker 1: they're drawn where the energy is, they're drawn where the
Speaker 1: money is. And that was the exactly Yeah and um.
Speaker 1: And it's also argued that while one of the Space
Speaker 1: program did create jobs, it did stimulate the economy, it
Speaker 1: mainly did so with a focus on highly skilled positions.
Speaker 1: Yeah sure, right, Yeah, they're not. There's not that many
Speaker 1: jobs for janitors at NASA necessarily as there are for
Speaker 1: engineers with PhDs. So how are we going to abolish
Speaker 1: outer Space. Okay, So Sam Chris, I was unfamiliar with him,
Speaker 1: I learned. Actually, it turned out I was familiar with him.
Speaker 1: I had read articles by him before, but I didn't
Speaker 1: realize who he was. Uh. He just in February of
Speaker 1: this year wrote a piece at the New Inquiry that
Speaker 1: I've already said as the manifesto of the Committee to
Speaker 1: Abolish outer Space. I learned about it from uh my
Speaker 1: patron saint for Stuff to Blow your Mind, warren Ellis's newsletter.
Speaker 1: He included it in his newsletter, um Warren Ellis being
Speaker 1: a political science fiction writer, mainly of comics but also
Speaker 1: of pros. Uh. So, Chris, from what I can gather,
Speaker 1: seems to be a writer who alternates between I guess
Speaker 1: what I would call florid prose satire and nonfiction essays.
Speaker 1: And his big thing seems to be challenging what we
Speaker 1: assumed to be authority figures in modern thought, like Neil
Speaker 1: de Grass, Tyson Slaboy, Jack, Richard Dawkins, Nate Silver, people
Speaker 1: like that. Uh He's written for Wired, Slate, invice. This
Speaker 1: isn't just some like crazy guy off on his own blog,
Speaker 1: although he does have his own blog and trying to read,
Speaker 1: it is fairly impenetrable. Um. And I also recommend take
Speaker 1: a look at this guy's Twitter feed two because it's
Speaker 1: it's also like pretty out there. Um. But this piece,
Speaker 1: in particular, he argues that the promise of the beautiful
Speaker 1: journey to space is actually a political lie. It's an
Speaker 1: ant and so he's making an anti capitalist argument. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he says that this political lie is perpetuated by
Speaker 1: science communicators who pretend to love science. And what I
Speaker 1: wonder is if we would be included in there now
Speaker 1: he does include some of our peers in there. Uh.
Speaker 1: In a separate piece, he expands on it in a
Speaker 1: Wired article against Neil de grass Tyson and I f
Speaker 1: L Science. He accuses them of quote making the universe boring,
Speaker 1: telling people things that they already know, and dispelling misconceptions
Speaker 1: that nobody actually holds. So I'd like to think that
Speaker 1: we were not guilty of those things. But hey, listeners,
Speaker 1: let us know. Yeah, I feel like this is an
Speaker 1: area we could we could really discuss at length another time.
Speaker 1: But there is this whole push and pull between science
Speaker 1: and public science science and you could I guess I've
Speaker 1: heard it called vulgar science. Uh, and we've talked. We
Speaker 1: talked about it in the Cargo Cults episode and sort
Speaker 1: of in the Wicked Problems episode two, that there is
Speaker 1: a somewhat like deification of quote unquote science in today's
Speaker 1: pop culture news cycle, and space is kind of a
Speaker 1: shining gym. It is, you don't quite, It's like, it's
Speaker 1: essentially haven't it's essentially the afterlife for the vulgar science y. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another quote he has here is he says science here
Speaker 1: meaning in these situations of writing, has very little to
Speaker 1: do with the scientific method itself. It means ontological physicalism,
Speaker 1: not believing in quote our Lord Jesus Christ, hating the
Speaker 1: spectral lee, stupid and more than anything, pretty pictures of
Speaker 1: nebula and tree frogs. So, okay, I sort of get
Speaker 1: where he's coming from here. But you know, I'm often
Speaker 1: accused of being a curmudge, and this guy really seems
Speaker 1: to be planting a flag there. He's been a bit
Speaker 1: of a hardcore. Yeah, But his manifesto, he says, look,
Speaker 1: space itself in the existence of life is actually vanishingly short,
Speaker 1: and we are all headed toward death because the universe
Speaker 1: is already unmaking itself. But in the meantime, here we
Speaker 1: are polluting space with all of our electronic debris and
Speaker 1: probes and what we refer to as space junk, right uh.
Speaker 1: And he says, if our exploration of space goes like
Speaker 1: our exploration of Earth has, then Mars will end up
Speaker 1: exploiting We'll just end up exploiting Mars for resources, right uh.
Speaker 1: And there's a there's an infamous book by Robert Zubrin,
Speaker 1: the Case for Mars, that is often cited as being like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is the go to book of like
Speaker 1: why we should, why we should get up there? Why
Speaker 1: zuber is a great advocate four Mars. Yeah, I interviewed
Speaker 1: him several years back. Yeah, and it's he is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's gung ho. He's like, he's very much of the
Speaker 1: mindset not only should we go to Mars, we should
Speaker 1: be there today. He makes an impassioned argument, Well, Sam,
Speaker 1: Chris hates that guy. Uh. He says that this brings
Speaker 1: us back to what we mentioned earlier. He says that
Speaker 1: Zubrin's case for Mars is basically an analog for Columbus
Speaker 1: pillaging the America's uh, and that you know, going to
Speaker 1: Mars will lead to quote the spread of a rationalism,
Speaker 1: the banalization of popular culture, the loss of willingness by
Speaker 1: individuals to take risks, to fend for themselves and to
Speaker 1: think for themselves. So, okay, I don't know if I
Speaker 1: agree with it. Yeah, I don't know if I do either.
Speaker 1: I also think, like um, like many kind of quasi
Speaker 1: Marxist critics, this argument ends up getting lost a lot,
Speaker 1: and it's sort of flowery poetic prose and trying to
Speaker 1: show how great of a writer this guy actually is,
Speaker 1: rather than focusing on his argumentation. Uh, like this segment
Speaker 1: here where I'm telling you about what is in this
Speaker 1: It took me, like I would say, a good hour
Speaker 1: to pull this out of the morass of his language.
Speaker 1: But also I would imagine he would say, well, this's
Speaker 1: this is postmodern argumentation, man like, it's a manifest doing
Speaker 1: the same way to the cyborg manifest. Totally. Donna Harroway
Speaker 1: is exactly in the same camp. Yeah yeah, so uh
Speaker 1: he says the journey to any frontier is going to
Speaker 1: result in the depths of millions. But we convince ourselves
Speaker 1: that Mars is okay, right, because Mars is lifeless. Nobody
Speaker 1: can die on Mars. Right. Uh, And he brings us
Speaker 1: back around again to the Columbus thing, and he says, well,
Speaker 1: feudalism is dying in Europe. The conquering of the America's
Speaker 1: kept the ruling class in power by shipping vast quantities
Speaker 1: of precious metals back to them. So this is basically
Speaker 1: an anti capitalist argument against going into space because Earth
Speaker 1: is running out of both physical space for human beings
Speaker 1: and the minerals of value for us to exploit. He
Speaker 1: even goes so far as to say that if we
Speaker 1: end up going to Mars, it could lead to slavery again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he comes down hard on this. Now there's a
Speaker 1: similar argument, but I would say less strident argument made
Speaker 1: by Paul Dickens in a article that he wrote for
Speaker 1: Monthly Review, which is an independent socialist magazine. And Dickens
Speaker 1: basically says, look, the humanization of the cosmos is primarily
Speaker 1: about benefiting the powerful, namely economic and military institutions, and
Speaker 1: it will keep happening as we continue to colonize the cosmos.
Speaker 1: So he says, we need to come up with some
Speaker 1: kind of alternative forms of this. So he's not like
Speaker 1: necessarily against going into space. What he's against is doing
Speaker 1: it for the gain of the upper class essentially. Uh,
Speaker 1: And he says, yeah, we look at going into outer
Speaker 1: space as being a symbol of modernization. It's progress. It
Speaker 1: brings social unity, right. Like he actually points out he
Speaker 1: says one of the most lauded benefits of space exploration
Speaker 1: is teleworking. That we wouldn't have teleworking technology. Uh. If
Speaker 1: it wasn't for the space race, well then I guess
Speaker 1: it was all worth it. But I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: tell we both telework, but man alive is it seems
Speaker 1: like we haven't gotten that technology nailed down yet. The technology. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: and to say nothing of the weirdness of trying to
Speaker 1: work from home around at all the rights. So then
Speaker 1: he also mentions, hey, look at this big boom in
Speaker 1: space tourism. Now keep in mind this is in two thousand, hen,
Speaker 1: this is six years ago. So he's already talking about
Speaker 1: Richard Branson getting a you know, trying to create like
Speaker 1: the space tourism industry, charging people exorbitant prices so that
Speaker 1: can fly lower, be at lower orbit. Uh. He also
Speaker 1: mentioned something that I had never heard of before, called
Speaker 1: the Space Renaissance Initiative, which is apparently an international group
Speaker 1: of over seventy private organizations that promote space exploration, and
Speaker 1: they have their own manifesto, and this manifesto is to
Speaker 1: help the economy because there's too many people on Earth
Speaker 1: that are making too many demands on Earth's resources. So
Speaker 1: they sort of see themselves the same way as like
Speaker 1: the wealthy philanthropists who funded exploration to the New World, right,
Speaker 1: the people who helped Columbus out. Okay, they're not saying
Speaker 1: there are too many people, let's throw some people into
Speaker 1: outer space. Yeah yeah, not not that far, not yet.
Speaker 1: We're not gonna put him out the airlock. Uh. But
Speaker 1: he says, look, that's a weird argument, right, because instead
Speaker 1: of finding a solution to our problems, you're just basically
Speaker 1: jettising them away, right, We'll just push push them off.
Speaker 1: So another argument by philanthropists like this is something like
Speaker 1: will find cheap supplies for labor or raw materials up there, right,
Speaker 1: So that's going to benefit the economy as well. His
Speaker 1: evidence that he showed in for the quote global space
Speaker 1: economy was that it had increased between two thousand four
Speaker 1: and two thousand nine. Uh. Now you hear people often
Speaker 1: to crying like that. NASA is not getting enough funding.
Speaker 1: But he's talking about everything from commercial satellites to military hardware,
Speaker 1: space tourism, and launch services, and that government budgets actually
Speaker 1: rose in two thousand nine up to two hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty one billion dollars to promote space exploration. And at
Speaker 1: the end he mentions the growth of SpaceX under Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: which we kind of talked about at the beginning, right
Speaker 1: as that's that's currently are are kind of like quote
Speaker 1: perfect plan for going to space, as we're enamored with
Speaker 1: launching and landing these rockets that SpaceX is working on.
Speaker 1: So all of this raises a question that I would
Speaker 1: I would pitch to you the audience, who owns outer space?
Speaker 1: And what about the collisions between all that stuff that
Speaker 1: we have an outer space? Who's responsible for that? With
Speaker 1: all the space junk that's floating around up there, Like
Speaker 1: there's a lot of like who who takes responsibility when
Speaker 1: those crash into each other? He even argues, you know,
Speaker 1: what could we do with the money there that we're
Speaker 1: spending up in space here on Earth? Could we end
Speaker 1: poverty with all of those billions of dollars that we're
Speaker 1: spending on going to space, I might got answers No, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I would say no as well. I imagine that
Speaker 1: it's a much more pervasive, wicked problem than Yeah. There
Speaker 1: is a tendency to sort of, when you're talking about
Speaker 1: these vast sums of money, to sort of throw them
Speaker 1: down hallways and say, how throw this money down the
Speaker 1: hallway of poverty. You got it, you got it. That's alve,
Speaker 1: throw this money down the hallway of of overpopulation. You've
Speaker 1: got it solved. And it just it never works out
Speaker 1: that way, alright. So there you have it. A lot
Speaker 1: of the anti space arguments, some arguments for that we've
Speaker 1: mentioned in place, everything in balance, but for the most part,
Speaker 1: focusing on uh, on the voices that are saying this
Speaker 1: is maybe not worth the amount of money we're spending.
Speaker 1: Maybe the benefits here aren't really worth chasing after, certainly
Speaker 1: with not not with this level of money. Um, but
Speaker 1: you know, economic arguments, religious arguments, political arguments. So there's
Speaker 1: something to it there. I just don't know where I
Speaker 1: fall anymore, Robert, I don't know. I mean, I want
Speaker 1: us to go to space. I love I love those
Speaker 1: ideas as like as as everybody does, right, Like like
Speaker 1: I said, like I was a little kid sitting there
Speaker 1: watching Krista mcculliff go up, and I was supposed to
Speaker 1: be proud of one of my uh uh local New
Speaker 1: Hampshire right's flying into space uh and have this tragic ending.
Speaker 1: But um, I don't know. I mean, when you present
Speaker 1: all these other arguments of what we could do with
Speaker 1: that money, who it's benefiting, I don't know where I
Speaker 1: fall anymore. Yeah, I find the arguments, the arguments about
Speaker 1: ways we could use the money to better benefit people
Speaker 1: here on Earth and better address sustainability problems here. I
Speaker 1: find those to be pretty compelling at the same time.
Speaker 1: And this may this may actually spill more into almost
Speaker 1: a kind of religious or you know, just just fear
Speaker 1: based decision making process. But there are plenty of times
Speaker 1: where I'll be I'll be outside, like playing with my son,
Speaker 1: and I'll this happens way too often. I'll look up
Speaker 1: in the sky and I'll imagine, uh, something burning through
Speaker 1: it coming down, And it's kind of like a scenario
Speaker 1: where a family waits to the last minute to pack
Speaker 1: and move out of the apartment that they're having to
Speaker 1: make kate and it's like, why didn't you pack up
Speaker 1: ahead of time. Why didn't you prepare? You knew this
Speaker 1: was coming, and you didn't prepare, And now it's coming down.
Speaker 1: So I keep coming back to our planet's ability to
Speaker 1: to shield itself from near Earth objects, to shield our
Speaker 1: culture and our people in our species from a mass extinction,
Speaker 1: And I just I always come back to that and
Speaker 1: think that that is worth the effort, Like that should
Speaker 1: be a major line item on on every UH, on
Speaker 1: every politician's desk. But so so maybe maybe here's the compromise.
Speaker 1: We we put all that money rather into space exploration.
Speaker 1: We're gonna build uh like a giant force field that
Speaker 1: envelops the entire planet Earth. Sure, if we can figure
Speaker 1: out of plant. Um, but that's the thing. How are
Speaker 1: you gonna you're gonna? I mean, I'm being phasical, no, no no,
Speaker 1: But but I like the play does come back to
Speaker 1: the idea that even even my view here, my sort
Speaker 1: of go to argument for space exploration is still more
Speaker 1: about Earth. It's still more about safeguarding what we have
Speaker 1: here rather than and exploring all of these you know,
Speaker 1: fascinating things about say the Jovian moons, right, yeah, yeah, absolutely, Yeah.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of good arguments on both sides. And
Speaker 1: you know what, listeners, we would love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: I imagine at this point there's a lot of you
Speaker 1: out there that are probably already halfway through writing as
Speaker 1: a message, whether it's on Facebook or Twitter or Tumbler
Speaker 1: or through email. Uh. You can find us on all
Speaker 1: of our social platforms, including Instagram now at blow the Mind.
Speaker 1: That's our handle there, and don't forget, hey, we're on
Speaker 1: stuff to Blow your Mind dot com too. That's where
Speaker 1: we've got everything from podcasts to videos to articles, all
Speaker 1: the stuff that Robert, Joe and I are generating every week.
Speaker 1: And if you want to send us an email, we
Speaker 1: address as always is blow the Mind at how stuff
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