space&planets

[schneefink]

Today when I wanted to be excited about the successful Mars landing (!) I encountered the opinion "we shouldn't fund NASA/space programs because there are so many things on Earth where the money would be more useful," and (apart from how many scientific advances are thanks to space programs, and how many other things could be defunded first, like the military, etc.) it occurred to me that there are people who look up at the night sky and just don't care what's out there. Or at least not enough to spend resources on finding out. (The countries with space programs don't really have resource problems, they have resource allocation problems.) And part of me gets it - there are so many problems on Earth that look more immediate and pressing and so on - but on the other hand I also can't really imagine a reality in which humans don't reach for the stars. As a group, we're curious, that's what we do. It would be boring otherwise.