What's Been and What's Ben

We need to go to Mars. Going to the Moon was awesome. Jump ahead 40 years and we just repaired the toilet on the ISS (International Space Station). I know that more data can be gathered by sending probes. But that is not what this is about. Or maybe it really is. We have lost scope. We (USA) don’t dream the way we used to dream. We do things we know will work so that our narrow research on photo-chemistry of comet tails instead of asking bigger questions. Perhaps we know enough about our immediate surroundings that we don’t wonder big questions – or are afraid that our current thinking will be challenged.

I know we can dream. It is natural to fall into a Garrison Keilor mentality that believes that individuals don’t matter much and can’t change anything. We got air conditioning and cable while nobody else in the world seemed to have come up with a better idea so we lived lives of complacency. People tend to value themselves relative to their neighbors and nobody else lives in ways that really impresses us. Bold measures requires a need to do so. It took $4/gallon gas to scare Americans into fuel-efficient cars that we could have made a few decades ago.

Mars will provide us a war we can win. It will bring us new technology and ensure that we lead the next 40 years of science. Keep in mind that American science sucked until we got us a bunch of German scientist. Wernher von Braun gave us modern rocketry after giving it to Germany. Going to Mars will reinvigorate our tech sector and drive forward the next generation of engineers and scientists to give us something tangible that everybody is cheering for. The average age of NASA engineers was 28 when Apollo 11 splashed down – now it is 47. To reference the movie Primer, you know what they do with engineers when they turn 40?