Really?

The casual observer from the past might be forgiven for thinking that the above blurry photograph was taken of the decisive moment of one of those tragically misguided thermonuclear tests in the forties and fifties that ushered in the Cold War and divided East from West. But no, this is a Jeff Bezos Blue Horizon rocket ship exploding on its launchpad during what should have been a routine operation. This behemoth of a launch vehicle, alongside Elon Musk's similar efforts in this field is meant to usher in a 'new age' of space exploration by offering us mere humans the opportunity to colonise our one and only planetary moon; a place visited by a very few of our species in one very specific era of our history. But the question one has to ask is: Why? to what ultimate end is this frontiersman-ship directed at such huge expense, when our terrestrial, humanitarian issues are so pressing and in need of such enormous funding to even get us back to some sense of normality, here on planet Earth?

We have already despoiled our home planet and its near-earth orbit: the detritus of our profligacy and wastefulness litter land, sea and space already to a species-threateningly degree. So what do the monumentally rich 'titans' [read willy-waving dickheads] of pseudo-industry [ones and zeroes in the service of capital accretion and little else] come up with as a 'solution' to our ills? The exploitation of our nearest uninhabitable planetary rocks for mineral and wealth gain; as if we hadn't already wrecked our home world with such hubris, self-aggrandisement and greed. What the fuck does Moonbase [Alpha?] really amount to, if UFO threats don't actually exist, as in the kid's TV series from the late sixties? It just means mucking up another world whilst the protagonists rake in more short-term cash to bolster their out of control egos and wish fulfilment.

I really would like to say that it matters nowt to me, as I'm much nearer the grave than the cradle these days; but I would so dearly like to still be alive when these idiots are slapped down and their crazy schemes stopped in their tracks. None of what they say they want to achieve is really ever going to amount to anything concrete or ground-breakingly significant, scientifically; so why not spend these unimaginable sums of money on sorting out the real, pressing problems we have to face, here at home, now? My surmise is that too many politicians and ordinary folk are caught up in the mythology of Star Trek and its American Frontier, cattle-driving, sod-bustin' origins: go west, young man, go west; lending these 'pioneers' credence and support. It would be nice that if, just for once in our history, we might attend to the home and our own selves - society - before trashing someone else's neighbourhood...