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The Moon Landing 03/02/2010
 
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing. On 20th July 1969, Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin became the first human beings to stand on another world. To mark the occasion, Armstrong, Aldrin and fellow Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins attended a meeting with President Barack Obama, during which Aldrin called for a new mission to space - this time, to Mars; even going so far as to suggest that the trip should be one-way. Though refraining from going as far as Aldrin, Armstrong too echoed his sentiment during a rare interview in which he lamented the end of America’s ambition to explore space. In his own words, “the space race just faded away”, concurrent with the gradual thaw in the Cold War which had initiated it.  

The increasing lack of political motivation, coupled with the enormous financial toll of funding the space program in the midst of an economic depression, meant that Nasa’s remit fell by the wayside. In some respects, the parallels with the situation today are uncanny. Two rival superpowers vying to become the dominant force in space (America against Russia then, China now), mired in an seemingly un-winnable war against an apparently all-pervading enemy (Vietnam and Communism then, Iraq, Afghanistan and terrorism today), while suffering economic recession, rising unemployment, and a swine flu outbreak. All of this suggests the realistic chances of sending human beings to Mars are now, as they were in the 1970s - zero. It simply doesn’t seem that human beings are currently in a position to reach out into the cosmos. There are too many problems here on Earth, to justify (both economically and politically) sending six people to an uninhabited ball of rock fifty-million miles away. As much as I agree with expanding our horizons, I don’t agree that it should be done at any price.  

I believe it is the duty of politicians not to seek the glory and cheap popularity (as they so often do) of landing on Mars, while more than half of the world’s population suffer from malnutrition and starvation. Spending billions on a new space program while ignoring the plight of many third-world countries would be an affront to the notion of ‘global community’ that governments around the world are increasingly promoting as the way forward. Even on a domestic scale, there are too many issues which need resolving before embarking upon a grand quest out into the solar system. Instead of spending a fortune to reach another world, I think we should concentrate on fixing this one.