Let's talk about space travel.
Recently (and I mean pretty recently, like a couple of hours ago), a few chance comments got me looking into the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger, and after that the Columbia, the latter of which spelled the end of NASA's manned space program.
Ignoring, for a moment, the fact that I did the absolute barest minimum of research on this topic, I think we can get some interesting discussion out of this. This might be more of an ethical question than a philosophical one, but it's a question I want to pose anyway: to what extent should our desire to explore be tempered by the potential loss of life? How responsible is it to be one of these explorers, knowing that the risks are so high?
I mention the desire to explore, and by that I mean the need that we have to learn everything we can about the nature of our universe. It's this motivation that spawned the Renaissance; it's this motivation that sparked the scientific revolution, split the atom, and put men on the moon—but now, apparently, we've stopped. Should we let this desire for exploration be subordinate to risks?
On the other hand, the “risks” are both very real and very...well, very risky. Is it possible to justify the loss of human life? If we don't do anything, if we stay earthbound and ensure that we never have to go through another Challenger, then it's almost an admission of defeat; but at the same time, it's a promise that parents and children will never lose a loved one due to a shuttle disaster. On some level, that's worth it.
I wouldn't be much of a philosopher if I claimed to have the answers. I'm just tossing this out there.
I think that it is every persons choice whether or not they are willing to take the risk. Now they should take safety precautions like regulating the building of the rockets, mandated training for astronauts, etc.
ReplyDeleteI do think that it is possible for the risk to be worth the reward in this case. Many people have a drive to discover new things, this is why people study philosophy (or anything else for that matter). People want to understand the universe and we should not try and stop them from doing so.
So, this might be vastly not what you were getting at, but does this mean we should privatize space travel? I guess we're getting there anyway, what with the whole "Space Tourism" thing.
ReplyDeleteI am fine with privatized space travel, but I do think that we should keep NASA. NASA is about more than just getting the opportunity to travel into space, NASA is also a research institution. In a more general sense, science is very important and I believe that it should be federally funded.
ReplyDeleteScience helps our country advance. For example, without the big push to space travel we would not have developed computer technology nearly as fast. When we start to fall behind in technology and science, like we are doing now when compared to several Asian countries, it negatively affects many aspects of the country.
Ross - I would recommend checking out President John Kennedy's "We Choose to go to the Moon" speech. I think it's a nice representation of the ballsy attitude we take toward "mastery and possession of nature" that is relatively unquestioned in this day and age. Google it.
ReplyDeleteThe later philosophy of Heidegger is also a good foil for thinking about the drives toward technology and research and considering that these are modes of historic thrownness relatively modern in origin and also perhaps not indicative of the human future.
The shuttle program is ending next year because of the budget, not because of Columbia. There are still going to be rockets in Russia and low- budget American shuttles carrying satellites and supplies for the international space station. Manned space travel makes the news, but the money that they have put into it has not yielded scientific results. I really don't think it's because of Columbia and the risks of dying in a space shuttle crash that have ended manned flights into space for the United States, just that we can no longer afford them when they don't produce the results of, say, a space probe for example.
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