MASS

Episode 13 Who Speaks for Earth?

Carl returns to familiar topic with his disdain for the nuclear arms race. He gives mankind a pass on our quest of mutual destruction by blaming our fool hardy logic on baggage left over from the territorial aggressiveness of our cave-man heritage.

He implores us to channel and pool our resources on the positive advancement of science and space exploration. And not squander them on destructive pursuits like military programs and war. He wishes we could make a straight line of scientific progress and not the zig-zag of factions fighting amongst themselves and destroying the accomplishments of others.

I was just reading in the Chicago Tribune today that the Chinese military has an estimated $200 billion budget and is second only to the United States. I wonder what we could accomplish if these two pools of money were added and spent on space exploration.

Since Cosmos came out in 1980, the military competition with the USSR has been replaced with the "war on terrorism". To me it is such a waste of resources to have our super computers analyzing cell phone records rather than trying to find new chemicals to fight cancer.

I try to be positive but it seems war and distrust of thy neighbor will always morph into some new expensive program that drains the resources of positive progress. Hopefully we will become enlightened and head to the stars rather than destroying ourselves or wallowing in the filth we create on Earth.

Watching the 1980 Cosmos TV series and reading the book has been a thoroughly enjoyable experience. I was surprised that astronomy was only one facet of the discussion. History and psychology seemed to be as important to the conversation. I can't wait to see what topics the 2014 version with Neil DeGrasse Tyson discusses.