Butterflies on Mars

Carl Sagan said that the rocket is the symbol of the human spirit. Like a candle in the dark.
It's a shame that America has no rockets anymore. On the abandoned laumch platforms tourists take pictures of the great behemoths that took us to the moon. If mankind fails and becomes extinct before we have ever set foot on any planet in this solar system then I would be ashamed. This is the great dilemma of our time. We have the means necessary to do whatever we want, but we are not using those opportunities. The people who are telling us we can't go to Mars because we don't have some sort of technology developed, well, those people are lying. If you want to do something you set goals to develop a technology to achieve that purpose, not the other way around. America wanted to go to the moon in the sixties. They knew they needed a new metal that did not exist back then. A few years later they made it in a laboratory. I told you: there is nothing can stop us from doing the things we want to do. When there is a vision, we are unremitting.

But sadly, the world has been turned inward, we are lost, toying around in low-earth orbit, conducting random experiments that are of little to no use for the future exploration of space. That is the reason we are growing crops in ISS. Ha! If we are going to Mars nobody will take a whole greenhouse full of vegetables with them. One step at a time remember? It's not so hard..

Social disturbance, economic concerns, environmental disasters, war and resource disputes will eventually drive us into space. Living systems reach out to their environment, merging with larger system in the fight against entropy. It is at it's frontiers that a species experiences the most perturbing stress. But the aura of wonder and awe drives us over that edge, allowing us to become more than we are. If we all turn towards the Earth and inward, space will be abandoned, and the universe will forever be a dead and silent place. But I want to see butterflies on Mars! And ponies on Venus! I want to see little children laugh and giggle on asteroids tumbling round to sun! I want to turn slag into soil! I want to spread life into the universe.

The driving motors behind evolution are exploration, self-transcendence and wonder. If we insist that the human quest await the healing of every sore on the body politic, we condemn ourselves to stagnation. Living systems cannot remain static, they evolve or decline. The inner experience of this imperative is space exploration. If we want to see our progeny spread among the stars, we must come to terms with ourselves and accept the futility of our individual concerns - our daily life, and start doing something that can actually push us forward into a meaningful direction. Ships to other worlds for example.. No kidding, you can also do something meaningful here on Earth. Like helping her recover from man's disruptances. Tip: you must see the Earth not as an extension of man, but man as an extension of Earth. It is through us that the planet knows itself, through humanity. We are the captains of Spaceship Earth and we must therefore have both the humility to nurture her and also the pride to leave her.

There is absolutely no time to lose to start doing either one of these. We are running a sprint here. Cough cough. Hurry..