Being There
Why the future of space faring will be virtual
We’re in the middle of a long silly season for space exploration. Overly influenced by sci-fi dreams of cowboys in space, fanboy billionaires and politically-driven NASA planners alike are fixated on the entirely pointless pursuit of pushing humans out of Earth’s gravity well at huge expense in order to achieve precisely nothing whatsoever of scientific value. Mars is the ultimate goal, with a return to the Earth’s Moon seen (illogically) as a waypoint. Meanwhile, missions that would reveal countless wonders must beg for scraps, while many other missions of incalculable value will never get funded.
This is, to put it mildly, totally backwards.
It seems we humans are incapable of recognizing that space is nowhere we should be. The distances are vast and the dangers are multitudinous; worse still, there’s no value in putting people into tiny metal containers and sending them off to spend years waiting to get from Point A to Point B because humans will be restricted to a very narrow range of potential destinations. No matter how whizzy our tech, humans aren’t suited for the gas giants with their lethally powerful radiation, and superhot Mercury is equally impossible. So that leaves only the surface of Mars and the clouds of Venus, both of which will be far better served by other means.
