Space, the final boondoggle

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Some who saw on TV the remarkable lunar images from spacecraft Orion are asking once again about billions being spent "out there" while the world faces staggering unmet challenges, like the spreading destruction of unchecked climate change.

Orion's recent test mission is the first of four planned moon flights. It's part of Artemis, a program the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) says will see more and longer moon walks before building a lunar pad to launch flights to Mars. Further out, NASA foresees searching planets suitable for life should things on Earth become untenable.

Meantime, the U.N.'s latest climate report warns the world is hurling toward "uncharted territories of destruction." Without immediate, full-bore intervention, the report said, Earthlings will experience scorching temperatures by 2050, before Earth slides toward an irreversible "tipping point" of still higher temperatures, more severe storms and floods, spreading drought and rising seas.

It seems certain Earth will be unfit for life (already is, for many) long before NASA can find a life-supporting planet, let alone get a critical mass of humans there.

Author and scholar Amitai Etzioni is among prominent writers who say any serious space endeavor "will inevitably cut into the drive to save Mother Earth."

Zipping around space is expensive. By 2025, Artemis will cost nearly $94 billion, and its next three moon flights $4.1 billion each. But that's a fraction the cost of a trip to Mars, known to be rocky and dusty with a toxic atmosphere that provides meager shielding from solar radiation.

Earlier, NASA launched the James Webb Telescope, a deep-space project that in 2004 was given $1 billion and six years to complete. After $10 billion and an 11-year launch delay, keeping Webb functioning aloft will cost hundreds of millions.

Beyond capturing stunning images, says NASA, Webb will help scientists understand galaxy formation after the creation of the universe and, again, help investigate distant planets for life.

It may be worth pondering the redeeming social value of studying galactic formation relative to tending to pressing earthly tasks that would benefit so many.

The Apollo program that landed astronauts on the moon cost $175 billion (inflation-adjusted). Project Mercury was $1.65 billion, Gemini another $7.3 billion, the Space Shuttle $200 billion, and the International Space Station $72 billion. It cost $2.6 billion for a space rover to bounce around the moon.

And benefits? Science writer Shannon Stirone concedes that most are "priceless" intangibles. She supports NASA's drive to "… do mighty things," whatever that may be.

Matthew Williams writes in Universe Today: "What's the price of awe and amazement?"

Indeed. Space and astronauts are captivating, an image burnished by NASA's corporate-size PR staff that cheerleads with blizzards of news releases and stunning photos of rocket launches, moonwalks and those distant shots of marble-blue Earth. Spectacular stuff for a mostly adoring public, including youngsters aspiring to wear the cool astronaut uniform.

Meantime, other youngsters, tangled in the frayed social safety net, aspire for a good meal and safe bed. Basic human needs — health care, food, housing, education, child care, elder care — are perpetually underfunded. The Century Foundation says education alone has a $150 billion shortfall.

Pew Research says a record 89.4 million people worldwide have been displaced due to conflict, violence and disasters, including the advancing ruin of climate change.

Despite decades of hollow talk by leaders of industrialized nations, greenhouse gases still increase in the only atmosphere we have. The U.N. says a quadrupled effort is urgently needed just to slow the change rate.

But, hey, those in astro-land say a solution to mounting social chaos is to just pack up and jet to another planet.

Perhaps, but consider that a Mars flight would be brutally expensive ($10 billion per person, by one estimate); pioneer travelers would face an eight-month flight in cramped quarters, and assuming safe landing in ultra-thin atmosphere they'd struggle to survive — without any creature comforts of a home they'd never again see.

Ron Way lives in Minneapolis. He's at ron-way@comcast.net.