Kate wrote: > i agree, we spend so much money on exploring other worlds which would be > fine if this world we live on were humming along nicely..but its not...this > may not be what you actually meant, but for me it is very hard to reconcile > the kind of money it takes to keep the space program going when the money > imo, could be better used in other ways...maybe finding cures for uncurable > diseases as just one example, developing alternative energy sources to oil & > nuclear, as another...out of respect for those who recently died in the > columbia tragedy & their loved ones, i hestitate to bring this up...but > given our current world situation i think the expense & rationalization for > this space program needs reconsidering...
I agree with this as well, but for the same reasons I was hesitant to bring it up. I was reading a news article which said the International Space Station project has a cost of US$95 billion to date. Imagine how much good that money could have done in medical procedures. When you think how many people have been on waiting-lists for surgery, some for years, it seems just a little disproportionate. We have also not explored every area of this planet. There are areas of ocean still unexplored, and yet we spend billions trying to find life on Mars. To what end? I don't want to be disrespectful of those who died in the Columbia tragedy either, but in recent weeks seven people were killed in an avalanche in Canada, and 46 people were killed in a train crash in Zimbabwe. Both those incidents were only given a short paragraph in our national paper, while the Columbia disaster had pages and pages of articles, including full biographies of each astronaut. Were their lives more important than the others that died? That seems a little harsh even as I write it, but I'm sure the relatives of those who died in Canada are grieving just as much as the relatives of the space shuttle. I understand the need to "further science" and I have a science background myself, but it seems our priorities have gotten a little screwed up somewhere along the line. Hell ___________________________________ "To have great poets, there must be great audiences too." - Walt Whitman Hell's Home Page - NEW & IMPROVED! http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~hell/index.html
