Artemis 0

I watched the NASA countdown yesterday until the Artemis I mission was scrubbed. Disappointing, but better safe than sorry.

These problems keep recurring, so this is either a design issue or a quality control one. Hope they fix this soon, and I do mean FIX ... not just band-aid.

I listened to the C-SPAN call-in program during the countdown and found many of the comments amusing. Chief among them was the belief our current Moon missions and future Mars missions were important because we have to find another place to go after we make Earth unlivable.

The 8 billion humans now living on our planet are NOT going to Mars. I would be surprised if more than 8 thousand ever make it. Not with today's technology. It's just too far and costs too much to go there.

I think the most likely scenario already has appeared in the movies - a few people will go somewhere with a large cohort of embryos, which will be developed once the final destination is reached. In that way human life could be preserved apart from a dying Earth, and at minimal expense.

But it's quite likely the embryos which make the journey will be genetically altered either to better survive the journey or to tailor them for conditions in their new "home". If that's the case, can we even say it will be "humanity" which will be saved?

My personal belief is that planet Earth is our one and only chance at survival. We either fix this mess we have caused, or we go down with the ship (so to speak).

And one thing we better get in our heads is that we CANNOT thrive in a sea of our own waste. We either reduce our numbers and live in harmony with a restored natural balance, or we choke to death from our own pollution.

And the clock is rapidly ticking.

By the way, I heard the Saturn V rockets were built with an eye on going to Mars. But after the initial Moon missions, we abandoned the program and lost all the related technology because the Vietnam War nearly bankrupted the country. I have a premonition the Ukraine "war" will do something similar to our current space-related plans. We're on the fast track to Western bankruptcy and a great "reset", and once that happens I doubt going to Mars will EVER be allotted enough resources to be anything more than the pipe dream it always has been.