Going to Mars

We attended the CNN future summit recording the other day. The topic was “the future of transportation”. Among the panelists were an ex-astronaut and a woman who paid 20 million USD for a space explorer – she went onto the International Space Station for 11 days (I think). And when asked if she would be willing to do it again, she said, “in a heartbeat.”

Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying what’s right or what’s wrong. I mean, everyone is entitled to his/her own aspirations and everything else.

What set me thinking was, really, why are we trying to venture into the outer space, spending billions and billions of dollars, trying to “conquer” the universe, while we can’t even look after our own people, ie the human race?

Science is good. Research is good. The objective of science, I think, should be how to make life better for people. It may sounds very philosophical, but had Albert Einstein known that the atomic bomb was to be used to harm lives, he wouldn’t have participated in the initiative of making the bomb.

We can’t stop social stratification from happening. In a race, there will be some people moving forward and some lagging behind. If, as according to functionalists, there is a function for social stratification, then I think its function should be for the higher class / rich / power elite, to help those at the bottom of the strata, so that they have the mean to at least compete in this world.

After all, it’s really about the human race.