Given the 50th anniversary hoopla about the moon landing, I heard some NASA factotum yammering about why its important to go to the moon by 2020 – apparently Barack is keeping that hold over goal from GWB alive. One of the things he mentioned was that the technologies gleaned could eventually help with ‘species preservation’.
Cue an inadvertent slip from a fox news anchor last week.
My question is: given that space technology is controlled by Europe, Japan and Russia, which members of the species would be preserved in the face of a catastrophe? Would only all of Washington DC, Moscow and Tokyo be selected to continue our species on another planet? Would a single African even get to go?
Now I know that some of the “other species” don’t contribute materially to space technology, so maybe they should not assume that they should be saved using the technologies of the countries whose tax payers paid for all that transgalactic flight research. So maybe we shouldn’t call it ‘species preservation’. More like “America first, Russia and Japan next and all the rest should figure it out” preservation.