Mars.
Wow. Visualizing Mars.
One
of the most interesting topics that came up while talking about Mars, to me,
was the ethics of going to other planets and the cross-contamination we could
be causing and not even realize. It’s a new level of consciousness, to not
bring Mars-things here or Earth-things there. The elaborate clean rooms they
have, taking that which comes and goes from space and going through multiple
levels of sanitation, speaks to the concern that NASA has about ethically
implicating the solar system in cross-planet contamination.
But
I was struck by how beautiful it was that NASA was so concerned. Because they
should be. We should be. As a culture based upon colonization and oppression,
with its origins in a messed up manifest destiny, we ought to be wary of wading
into space with the same kind of blind ethnocentrism. Mark mentions jokingly in
“The Martian” how he is technically in international waters when he is stranded
on Mars—how he, by growing his potato plot, is actually colonizing Mars.
According to international treaties, there will be no official claiming of
space.
…but
how long will that last? How long before capitalistic greed takes over, and a
space-race put into dire proportions in light of global climate change and
globalized destruction squanders all thoguhts of international peace reached in
outer space?
I’m
not sure. Maybe space is that place of hope, where the entire world will rally
as we realize our shared humanity, our connection as beings of this earth.
Maybe things will go like they did in the Martian, with the entire world
rooting for one man as a symbol of all mankind…I hope so. And NASA’s policies
give me that hope.
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