By Julia Skikavich
Pressing global issues demanding international attention are being put on the backburner in favour of international stargazing.
In a fanfare of pomp, glory and newspaper headlines, President George W. Bush announced on Jan. 14 that there will be men on Mars in our lifetime — at the bargain basement cost of $600 billion US.
“We choose to explore space because doing so improves our lives and lifts our national spirits,” says Bush.
It certainly won’t be improving the lives of the 15 million people who will contract AIDS this year. It won’t lift the spirits of the one billion people trying to live on less than a $1 US per day.
But maybe acknowledging those realities isn’t the American way. The American way probably goes a little more along the lines of “Space, the final frontier…to seek out new life and new civilization…to boldly go where no one has gone before.” Or to put it in Dubya’s words — “to chart out the way for others to follow.”
This sounds a little bit like command and conquer. So much for this being a journey, not a race.
But the scientists don’t seem to care. They are throwing themselves at the Mission to Mars — for them it’s Mars or Bust.
There is talk at the Canadian Space Agency of having a Canadian rover on the Red Planet by 2011.
Canada is watching the American lead mission with great interest, says Alain Berinstain, acting director of planetary exploration and space astronomy. The Canadian Space Agency is just waiting and looking for ways to get Canada involved. In the past, Canada has dished out up to $15 million each time an international spacecraft has blasted off just to have Canadian scientific equipment onboard.
It seems like there is an endless amount of money to be flown up into the great beyond.
It is a little hard to believe that our little planet has this much money actually kicking around when we can’t seem to afford the $60 million US a year that could treat the 40 million people living with HIV/AIDS.
We can’t spend $33 billion US to remove the 110 million landmines still in the ground around the world, but we have $600 billion US to get a few men on Mars on the hope that we might figure out where life came from.
That’s science’s justification of the mission. Getting some people up on Mars might help us answer some of those “fundamental” questions.
Sure, it is human nature to ponder these things. Everyone wonders at some point how exactly we got to this third rock from the Sun. But as nice as that would be to know, there are some pressing issues at hand — that have answers on this planet.
Remember when we were leading up to the turn of the century there was all that talk of “ending hunger by 2000?” If you don’t remember you should take a look on the Internet. It is actually surprising how many articles and statistics are still up from back in the day — making it look plausible that Earth and humankind could and would have hunger beaten by the 21st century. It didn’t happen.
Eight hundred million people are still living in hunger. For $60 billion US, that number of people could be reduced by 50 per cent. The only problem is that money isn’t going to be on this planet. It is going to be on a spaceship shuttling towards a little glowing dot in the night sky.
During his speech, Bush quoted Eugene Cernan, the commander of the last Apollo mission, as saying “We leave as we came, and God willing as we shall return, with peace and hope for mankind.”
“America will make those words come ture,” Bush added.
So let America tell the six million children who will die this year from hunger related causes to look up into the heavens and search for hope on Mars.
Their lives might be lost, but hopefully some day we’ll know where they came from.