I have learned, from an article in The Wall Street Journal, that Elon Musk is making "an enormous bet" on his so-called "Starship," a rocket which stands roughly 400 feet tall at liftoff and remains in an experimental phase. Here is a rocketship comparison, from the article:
Resources are never "unlimited." Any commitment to one effort is a choice against another - or even against all others.
I would like to suggest that we recommit ourselves to Mother Earth. Instead of draining our human resources so that a very few people can be sent off to an uninhabitable Mars, let's redirect those resources to nurture and restore the only place in the entire universe where we know that life is possible.
Remember those discussions about "Spaceship Earth?" Wikipedia reminds us what that was all about:
Spaceship Earth (or Spacecraft Earth or Spaceship Planet Earth) is a worldview encouraging everyone on Earth to act as a harmonious crew working toward the greater good.
That's my idea of the way to go!
I agree as to a commitment to defend and protect the natural world. However, I disagree in the "Spaceship Earth" image. The Earth and its biosphere are not a spaceship, an artificial creation of human beings. The Earth is a natural planet that maintains conditions that support life in all its myriad interconnected forms as a result of billions of years of self-arising through the natural processes of evolution and natural selection. The earth functions well on its own. The Earth needs not more human management, but much more letting it be as it is. Humans are not a "crew" managing the planet. Humans have forgotten, and been propagandized from the reality that we are intimately integrated with all life and all natural processes that have resulted in the living world in which we live today.
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