Penis-Shaped Projectiles...

As a child of the generation that witnessed and were awed by the NASA space missions of the sixties and early seventies: particularly the Apollo Moon missions - specifically Apollo Eleven - I can't help having a sinking feeling about current space flight enterprises. It would be naïve at best and I would say disingenuous to believe that space exploration was anything more than a willy-waving contest: then between the dominant superpowers of the US and the Soviet Union; now between über rich corporates who have run out of ideas on how to best each other on terra firma.

Where once I was a star-struck boy with Arthur C. Clarke-fuelled dreams  of a Dan Dare-like exploration of space - itself in truth an extrapolation of Kipling and Haggard's imperial visions of Empire and dominion - now I see things pretty much for what they are, and take a more pragmatic view of such ventures. Fact is, all the useful, practical science we can garner is in near-earth orbit; the rest is just confection, telescopes and astronomy aside. Shoving rockets into space for any other reasons than these now well-established and basic scientific ones just gets us back to the question of ego contests. We have no good reason to colonise other planets, nor have we the technology or the longevity with which to do it. Given the issues that press us on Mother Earth, we'd be far better pooling the enormously vast resources that these would-be space explorers hold to far better and more urgent use. Just a thought, as most of us would be left behind anyway...