Madam, - When trying to discredit the manned space missions of the European Space Agency (An Irishman's Diary, January 2nd)Kevin Myers misses a very significant point. He says:
1. The European Space Agency is seriously misguided in spending a huge amount of money on an entirely useless and expensive attempt to put a person on another planet.
2. The money spent on this frivolous endeavour could be spent to much greater effect, morally, ethically, and practically, if it were redirected to help people in Africa and elsewhere who desperately need money to survive.
Before I go on, allow me to say I entirely agree with Mr Myers that poor people all over the world should be helped to climb out of that pit of hell in which they currently reside - a pit created for them by the West, and its morally corrupt governments and corporations.
However, I must argue against the deconstruction of the space agencies. To remove funding and support for these organisations would yield only a drop beside the ocean of help that the poor of the world need. Moreover, the benefits derived from the space race are almost beyond counting. They affect every facet of life, providing decades of medical advancements, technological innovations, scientific breakthroughs, and a raw knowledge of the universe to which one can attach no price.
Our view of our own planet has been transformed by the spectacular and touching images of the fragile earth as seen from the Moon. Man's expansion into the universe is one of the most important undertakings that our species could ever attempt. It could, if successful, essentially ensure our immortality. No planet-killing asteroid, no ageing and expanding sun, no overpopulation, and no disease or terrorist could threaten humankind's survival.
Instead of destroying the space programmes of the world, we should work to destroy the huge military-industrial complex responsible for the perpetuation of such horrors as war and famine and which works actively to ensure that unstable regimes hold the third world in a death-grip. The companies and organisations which form this huge multinational complex, such as the oil and motor companies, and organisations like Mr George W. Bush's administration and military, are the ones which need to be shut down, rather than any open, benign, scientifically important and ultimately beneficial space organisation. - Yours, etc.,
(Physics Student,
NUI Maynooth),
Huntstown Rise,
Dublin 15.