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What’s the Point of Rocketing to the Moon and Mars? |
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| By Frosty Wooldridge | |
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With countless problems facing humans on planet Earth, does anyone wonder why we’re spending billions of tax dollars on shooting a manned rocket to the moon? And, ultimately to Mars?
Couldn’t that money be spent on bettering Americans right here, right now?
The Artemis space program is projected to cost approximately $93 billion by the end of 2026, according to a NASA Office of Inspector General report. Development for key elements, including the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion capsule, has cost over $24 billion and $20 billion respectively as of 2022. Key cost aspects of the program include:
Today, in 2026, one in six American children lives in “food insecurity.” As of 2024–2025, over 14 million American children live in food-insecure households, representing approximately 1 in 5 children in the U.S.. Data indicates a rise in child food insecurity, with 751,000 children experiencing "very low food security" (meaning their food intake was reduced or disrupted) and many more experiencing less severe insecurity.
Note that America, the richest country in the world, endures in excess of 778,000 homeless people wandering the streets of our major cities. They lack help, therapy, food, housing and human decency. Wouldn’t that $100 billion used for blasting off to the moon go a long way in feeding and housing those desperate people? We’re blasting through tens of billions of dollars in Ukraine, Iran and Gaza. We’re paying billions in interest on our $38 trillion national debt. We’ve lost over 270,000 drug related American deaths to the fentanyl invasion of our country. Yet, we haven’t solved the problem of drug-addiction in America. Our inner cities “boil” with hopelessness: poor schools, poorer teachers, turning out illiterate kids by the millions, 7 out of 10 African-American children lack a father, no after school programs, and the list grows. We lack a national bottle, can, plastic container recycling law that wastes billions of dollars of natural resources. We’ve got 25 million illegal aliens roaming our country causing terrorist events such as in Dearborn, Michigan at a synagogue, killing our citizens such as Sheridan Gorman in Chicago, Illinois, and disrupting our entire society. The bet is, you could name another dozen problems not being solved at the local or national levels. Yet, we blast off to the moon with four astronauts in Artemis II to circle the moon, and come back to Earth for a splashdown. What will they have accomplished? Answer: a very expensive ride in space, but nothing more. All the top NASA people brag about a colony on the moon. Then, a colony on Mars. What does that accomplish? Years ago, Brad Pitt starred in a movie, Ad Astra, where he rocketed to the moon, and on to Mars to find his father, Tommy Lee Jones, who was somewhere near Neptune in a space craft, but had lost his mind. The movie proved as stupid as the motive for landing on Mars. When Pitt arrived at the bunkers on the moon, nothing but rock, cement buildings, glass…and ironically pictures of the wilderness decorated the concrete walls of all the corridors of the buildings on the moon. When he arrived on Mars, the same thing. A lifeless planet! The movie was so inane, meaningless and pointless, so we walked out just past the half way mark. Which begs the question? Why are we spending billions if not trillions of dollars to fly the moon and Mars, when we’ve got countless problems here in America that have not been solved? What about planting billions of trees on Earth to absorb our carbon footprint of 100 million barrels of oil being burned 24/7? What about solving the 170 trillion pieces of plastic sunk or floating in/on our oceans? Do we really think we can keep trashing the oceans with our chemicals and plastics…and suffer no consequences? Reefs across the world are dying. Has anyone stopped the slaughter of 100,000,000 sharks annually? What about the horrendous animal extinction rates occurring daily across the globe? Key Details on Daily Extinction Rates:
Do these extinction rates disturb you? They should because the Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson said we will lose 1/3 of our vertebrate animals by 2050, and up to 1/2 by end of the century. That includes elephants, tigers, lions, leopards…and just about any animals that get in the way of human expansion. As it is, we lose 1,000,000 vertebrate animals in the USA DAILY from road-kills. “Based on global road network extrapolations, researchers and conservationists estimate that approximately 5.5 million vertebrates (mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians) are killed on roads every single day.”
Again, what’s the point of rocketing to the moon and Mars when we’re destroying the only planet that features water, rain, snow, jungles, grasslands, animals, plants, birds and creative magic all around us on this miracle of a planet out in the middle of space?
##  -- Frosty Wooldridge Golden, CO Population-Immigration-Environmental specialist: speaker at colleges, civic clubs, high schools and conferences Facebook: Frosty Wooldridge Facebook Adventure Page: How to Live a Life of Adventure: The Art of Exploring the World Www.HowToLiveALifeOfAdventure.com Www.frostywooldridge.com Six continent world bicycle traveler Speaker/writer/adventurer Adventure book: How to Live a Life of Adventure: The Art of Exploring the World Frosty Wooldridge, six continent world bicycle traveler, Astoria, Oregon to Bar Harbor, Maine, 4,100 miles, 13 states, Canada, summer 2017, 100,000 feet of climbing: |