Saturday, October 6, 2012

#28 - Growing Food In Space

It is ludicrous to believe that mankind, at some future date, will inhabit the moon or some other celestial body. In my humble opinion, we should focus our energies and limited resources on feeding the poor and making this world a better place for all of us to live.

This does not mean that I am not supportive of space exploration. In fact, I believe that it is vitally important and even necessary. But, I would prefer to see us feeding those among us who are in imminent danger of death from starvation. Yes, instead of investing our knowledge, expertise and limited resources to grow food on the moon we should be busy trying to grow food in sub-zero temperatures or in arid conditions like our ever increasing deserts and rocky areas.

Why? Growing food on the moon may benefit a few astronauts for a short period while growing food in the desert has the potential to benefit the masses. In addition, if we could successfully grow food on the moon in large quantities it would be way too costly to benefit anyone here on earth.

To put this perspective, it would be like your parents saying this when you were born. Instead of feeding this child, we want to invest our knowledge, expertise and limited resources to grow food for another child we expect to have at some future date. Where would you be today if they had said that?

Another area where we might do well to invest our knowledge, expertise and limited resources is with the weather. As it stands today, whenever nature i.e. the weather, takes center stage in the form of a hurricane, monsoon or tsunami, we are forced to stop whatever we are doing – shut down our cities, factories or airports and watch in awe and wonder.

Why are we not investing our talents and our resources to make this life better for those of us who are here right now?

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