I just saw a post on here from someone complaining that space travel is a waste of money and we should be curing AIDS or feeding the hungry or something.

I agree with the second part - we should be doing those things - but the first bit, I disagree with. We should be exploring space. And what’s more we should be much further ahead than we are. Given that we got to the moon in the sixties, should Mars not had been a target for the seventies?

Humans are naturally explorers - it’s how we conquered the globe and dominate more than any other species that ever existed (that we know of). We’ve run out of land to explore, which leaves us with the oceans and space. We have to know what’s out there.

I’ll tell you what is a waste of money.

Companies who spend billions of dollars inventing a new phone with a brighter screen that can send an e-mail in a fraction of a second less time than the one that came out last month. And what’s even more of a waste of money? Loads of companies doing the exact same thing.

And then people will go and queue outside shops for hours or even days to buy these phones. And complain as soon as their wifi packs up. These people are so sure that their phones are a human right that they don’t notice what a miracle it is to have a phone in the first place.

Remaking films. That’s a waste of money, especially if the original film was good. Did we need another Spiderman film? I’m not bashing the medium, films are fine, (and you all know I love books like my own children, and I want no one slagging them off), but I think that if you’re going to make films, then make something new instead of rehashing old ideas.

Humans stagnated. We ran out of places to explore, got lazy and obsessed with celebrity and shiny trinkets. We’ve gone from a race that colonised lands and hunted mammoth to one obsessed with the underwear the Kardashians are wearing.

Kindles. What was the point? Yes, I appreciate the ability to carry a thousand books with you, but how many are you able to read at any one time? Yes, OK, good for travelling. I’ve heard all the perks, but the fact remains that my books don’t run out of battery. And it didn’t take several million dollars to give them a page that allows you to read it “even in bright sunlight.”

We pump billions into the worlds militaries, most of which are sat around doing nothing, or fighting wars that no one wants and seem to be about resources and pride. If we’re worried about running out of oil, why not divert the money to the sciences and work on a synthetic, green energy source? If we think someone is running their country with the wrong religion, why don’t we just butt out and leave them to it?

I’m sure that people can pick holes in my argument here, probably call me a hypocrite on a couple of things, but you cannot deny some of these facts. You know full well that a phone from two years ago will be adequate for any job you need it to do, and no one needs a phone that can allow you to throw birds at pigs. You know that the celebrity culture is out of hand. And, deep down, you know that space is exciting. It’s the final frontier and it’s far more interesting than the dietry habits of those people in the remakes of the films you loved twenty years ago.

Just my two cents.

  1. fellfromfiction posted this