Let’s stop going into space. There’s nothing to see and no one to talk to | Zoe Williams
IIt is absolutely obvious to me that space exploration is pointless, and the more urgent the crises facing the planet we live on, the more pointless it becomes. I understand why people were excited about this in the 1960s, back when the world was young and we still thought there could be little green people – who wouldn’t want to meet them? But the most serious opinion now focuses on the question: “Where is everyone?” » paradox formulated for the first time by the physicist Enrico Fermi in 1950. If there is intelligent life somewhere, why has it not tried to establish contact? That’s because there isn’t one. There is nothing out there except planets infinitely less beautiful than the one we live on.
This all seems uncontroversial, and I almost never talk about it, except when astronauts go into space unnecessarily again, like on the last lunar mission. Here’s what I’ve noticed: people are really bored. I have plenty of opinions much more vexatious than that, but none of them arouse the same anger. Everyone is annoyed for a different reason: some think I’m deliberately trying to ruin a party; others act as if I am opposed to innovation and modernity, which I am absolutely not. They point out all the discoveries that wouldn’t have been made without the urge to travel into space, most of which seem to involve finding better ways to kill each other, and then they mourn the kind of world I want to live, where no one can see beyond their own horizon.
Some people think I don’t like the astronauts themselves, which couldn’t be more wrong: I’m sure they’re awesome; they certainly look healthy. Some people think I’m a scrooge, unhappy with financial spending because my soul has no poetry in it. It’s a paradox, and not a delightful one, that moaning about the waste of energy that space travel represents has turned into a pretty significant waste of my own energy. Seriously, Nasa, can’t you knock it all out? Doesn’t the United States, of all nations, have bigger things to worry about?
