Wesley Britton's Blog - Posts Tagged "space-flight"

Several hours ago, while doing my Sunday afternoon chores, I had one ear cocked to CNN to hear the updates about Richard Branson’s historic flight 50 miles up in space aboard his Virgin Galactic Unity 22 spacecraft.
After the ship landed back on earth and was being taxied to its hanger, I heard commentator Jake Tapper interviewing some expert whose name I didn’t catch, asking, and I paraphrase here, if it’s ethical or moral for billionaires to spend all that money and resources on such trips when we’re in the middle of so many crises here on earth?
Before I heard the answer, my mind flashed back to the late ‘60s when Joan Baez complained we shouldn’t be going to the moon when we have all sorts of problems on earth she thought should be solved first. “The moon can wait,” she opined.
Back then and again now, I wondered—when would humanity ever be in a perfect enough state to make space flight morally acceptable to such critics? (Bearing in mind I’m a huge Joan Baez fan, always have been.)
I liked the expert’s detailed response to Tapper, saying, in part, we need to start preparing for a future when our planet could be unable to sustain us all and humans may need to become a multi-planetary species. Before then, we could have spaceships built to direct solar rays here for energy, we could land on asteroids and other celestial bodies to mine them for useable resources. We need to take incremental steps to make using space commercially possible. That’s the pragmatic way of looking at things.
To add to the defense side of the table, it’s worth noting Branson’s invaluable assistance to the oceans and climate change over the decades. He has always demonstrated a deep interest in bettering our planet—it’s not as if SpaceShipTwo’s journey was an egotistical grandstand.
In a press conference that just concluded, it was clear Branson saw the flight as an inspirational event for young people in particular, to show them the importance of having big dreams and investing the time and resources in achieving them. Just like the space race inspired my generation so long ago. Even when some thought the point was to beat the Russians to the moon and when we did that, there was no need to continue manned landings. That was President Nixon’s view. So if commercial entities are the ones to push space exploration further, what’s the problem? No politics are involved, no governmental funding required. Sounds like a win/ win to me.
One more note from the Tapper interview: the interviewee noted the day may come when we’ll be the ones flying UFOs around faraway planets and that thought blew Tapper’s mind. That resonated with me as various reviewers have noted my books are from the perspectives of humans from our earth becoming aliens dealing with life on other worlds. Just a side-note folks—like the joke at the press conference where one of the astronauts invented the story of an alien hitching a ride on Unity. So nice to hear a news story with such positive vibes with a touch of humor to boot.