NASA officials have defended the space agency's InSight probe to discover the interior structure of Mars, after facing pointed criticism, earlier in the week, that the project was an "astronomical waste of money".
The landing on the surface of Mars has raised several questions about the mission. Foremost amongst these, concerns the cost. NASA says that the cost of sending InSight to Mars has been $830million, which is fine if you have $830million to throw around, but when there are acute problems in the US with basic needs, it sounds like rather a lot of money.
The second question was; "Why?"
"Why?", as in "Why spend such a lot of money on investigating Mars, when we have a perfectly good place to live right here on Earth?"
A NASA scientist said:
"The Earth is not sustainable into the far future. We estimate that life on this planet will not be sustainable for more than around 500 more years, so we urgently needed to address this."
But a SPOOF realist said:
"Why go to all the expense of ruining a second planet, when we could rein ourselves in a bit, spend the money on basic human needs, address poverty, starvation, drought, homelessness, health, lack of good education and other areas of lack, throughout this world, without wasting it on preparing the way for future generations to go and make the same mistakes all over again, somewhere else?"
But the NASA bloke then said:
"That's all well and good, but then how would the members of the rich elite that supply all the shit for doing our 'work' maintain their vast wealth from the income it generates? I mean, you have to be realistic. Yes, we know it's pointless work, and we know that going to Mars - or any other planet - is something that 99.99999999% of Earth's inhabitants will only experience through reading about it on the internet, but the Masters of the Future are going to need somewhere to crawl to when the shit hits the fan, and so, yes, we are denying basic human needs to millions and millions of people RIGHT NOW, so that a few, filthy-rich pieces of turd can survive on some far-flung ball of red hot dust 500 years from now. Doesn't that sound exciting?"
