Yes, yes. Happy 40th moon landing anniversary, NASA. There are celebrations galore to mark the event, which I suppose is fine, given the general gloom prevailing. But let's not get carried away. There is nothing on the moon - or on Mars - that is nearly as important as there is on Earth.
Listening to all the Apollo nostalgia, you hear lots of stuff about not only exploring Mars, but colonizing it. And some even see this as the ultimate escape from a dying Earth. These people, I submit, have watched too many Star Trek episodes.
Even former astronaut Buzz Aldrin has succumbed to the mania, calling in today's Washington Post for "the first homestead in space: an American colony on a new world." Oh my.
Well, Buzz, the real life laboratory is Earth in the here and now, and the goal has to be keeping Earth green and livable, not studying how Mars became the Red Planet.
Almost every day, there is a new dire report on how bad things have become so quickly, whether it's our seas becoming acidic, our glaciers melting, or the tropics heading north. Doing the necessary on an urgent basis - drastically reducing greenhouse gases, protecting forests and wetlands, to name only a few priorities - will require effort that will dwarf that of the space program.
Do we want to divert precious resources from the fight to save Earth to mount a quixotic attempt to colonize a planet millions of miles away? Talk about a distraction from Priority Number One. Maybe we need a massive "place branding" campaign for the place that can't be replaced - Earth.
I'm no Luddite, and admit that research for space exploration has produced highly useful spinoffs in the battle to save planet Earth. But we Earthlings cannot entertain notions of trashing our planet and finding refuge on Mars. We can't just continue to pollute our way to the next pristine wilderness; there aren't any left. It worked for a while - picture American pioneers heading ever Westward - but the trash builds up, if not in landfills, then in terms of carbon trash in the air and in our oceans. The atmosphere - the ultimate bubble - holds it all in.
So honor those astronauts, engineers, and scientists who gave us the original Moon Walk, but harbor no illusions about Mars providing a home away from home. And the next time you hear a politician go on about Mars exploration, bring him down to Earth.
(image: AppleWorks clipart)