We Did It, But Why?

I heard on the radio this morning that Juno was in orbit around Jupiter. That's quite an accomplishment. Like finding a needle's eye in a haystack. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory sent a space vehicle nearly two billion miles, and its course eventually intersected with the largest planet in our solar system – and all at a cost of only one billion, one hundred million dollars (so far). That's really a bargain. At a cost of under a dollar a mile it's less than what we have to pay for some domestic flights. Economy class. And Juno is expected to provide scientific information for the rest of its life, which is estimated at twenty months. Moreover it achieved orbit on the Fourth of July. How proud we all are.

Or, at least, how proud they all are. I'm not proud. After all, I paid for this boondoggle. All American taxpayers did. And we're not done paying. Continued monitoring of the ship during its Jupiter orbiting, by the large governmental staff, will cost a lot of money. As will the analysis of the scientific data they collect. And that analysis will go on long after Juno crashes on the planet, as, ultimately, it will do.

Why are we doing it? Why, at a time when so many fear for the survival of the human race which they see threatened by nuclear power, global warming, war, disease, and a host of other scourges, do we devote resources to this kind of program rather than using the money to deal with some of the menaces we face? It must be remembered that the Juno expedition is only a small part of a much more ambitious effort, and the expenditures are far greater than the cost of this particular project. Consequently there would be a significantly larger pool of currency available for addressing more immediate problems if the program were to be tailored back. It's certainly not enough to solve all the world's ills, but it's a start.

Why are we doing it? Our scientists and our government will tell us that the advancement of science and knowledge more than justify the expense. Perhaps it will take centuries, perhaps millennia, but the scientific knowledge that humanity gains from this mission will certainly help future generations. Perhaps. But perhaps future generations should pay for it rather than we and our children. If there are future generations.

Even the results thus far leave me wondering. According to the report I heard today it won't be until the 2030's that we send people to Mars, and, in all likelihood, we'll never send them to Venus for reasons of time, distance, radiation, and many other factors. If it's for the scientific knowledge that our descendants a millennium from now have, give some thought to our own view of the science of the year 1016; those ideas that we don't consider to be old wives' tales we pass off as bad science, or we laugh. In all likelihood our efforts today will suffer the same fate no matter how much we invest in them.

So what is our motive? There are several motives, but the main ones are, firstly, that we can do it. In addition, it adds to our prestige as a nation and our profile as a force to be feared just to show that we can. But an important causative factor is curiosity – not the curiosity of most citizens who rarely if ever think about Jupiter, but that of the scientists who ponder the unanswerable questions of the universe. They may not benefit from the answers, but they want to know, and our government is willing to pay for answers. With our money.

This wondrous event, the shining moment of a project that will doom our children to increased debt and decreased security, marked the anniversary of another event in which one generation spoke for those that followed – the issuance of the Declaration of Independence by the “Founding Fathers” who soon thereafter wrote a constitution for their new country. Although most of us don't agree with the author of the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson believed that one generation should not speak for the next. It was has view that each of us should decide his own fate. There should be a new revolution every generation. Strangely enough, that was his understanding of the mathematics and science of the time. Many philosophers based their ideas on imaginary equations which lacked any validity. And, as a result, Jefferson's approach was a faulty one which would have limited the entire concept of a heritage.

In the past couple of centuries we've become more selective about what is important and what is not – what we accept and what we don't – what we can live with and what can wait. And we're a little more cognizant of what we're passing on as obligations and goals to our children. Some of what we leave as a heritage is reasonable and, indeed, necessary. But not everything. Tikun Olam, the repair of the world as it is now, is high on the list of valuable aims. We do those children no favor by ordaining that they pay for projects that may help their distant descendants while having to limit their investment in their own world.

Before we worry about the thirty-first century we should deal with the twenty-first.