Spaced Out..(Osama Malik)
Funny but true, when I was a kid, I aspired to be an astronaut. I suppose that for the kid my age, the image of astronauts in their silver suits sitting in front of multi-colored panel must have looked super cool. You have to be the brightest of the bright in order to be the few among the whole humanity to travel where only a handful have ever been to. However, after I have discovered my inability to understand Physics, and after having watched 2001: The Space Odyssey and found out that being an astronaut means having to exercise by running on the boring looking circle track and live on a quiet ship with very few other human for a very long time, my desire just burned out. For me, my childish dream was not powerful enough to make me overcome my own limited calculation ability and my country’s extremely slow, or no development in space program.
Even more ironically, after having witnessed a few space shutters’ explosions, I came to doubt the worthiness of space development. To put it bluntly, the money put into space development programs could and should have saved millions who have died of famine during the past century. Why waste trillions of dollars on the search of something so unpredictable when development on some areas that can directly rescue humanity is underfunded? Apparently, more people are having the same doubts as I do. NASA’s struggle to raise more funds in the era in which the idea of man on the moon is not so exciting anymore is a good proof of how development in space is receiving less priority. However, having heard the arguments from my scientist friends that without such a long-term, high-concept development in science, human’s culture and evolution as the dominant specie on this planet will cease to develop, my perception on the issue, once again, shifted. Should it shut itself from outer space by halting scientific research on space, our planet will be just like Burma and China’ s during the period after the 2nd world war, ignorant of outer changes and thus left behind in the system of the universe. Scientists pursuing space development may be a dreamer, but it is these dreamers who over the years have been responsible for making us evolve, making us learn and grow because they are the ones who dare to take the risks and put all their life’s effort and energy to prove that their dream can materialize. After all, as the wise said, those who have no dream, have nothing.
Well, after taking in the scientists argument, I feel that after I have lost my youth, my ability to dream is drastically limited and I have become one of those short-sighted, unimaginative people with vision that goes only as far as the bottom line of their budget book. In the end, the scientists who try to prove things objectively end up being the biggest dreamer when it comes to issues concerning space.
The problem that I then want to ask is to what extent we should compromise the resources that should be used to solve our current problems to be utilized to pursue these dreams, as both sides have its own arguments and importance. Indeed, what we need is the model that can narrow gap and reach more understanding on both sides’ stance. It is hard, of course, to make it the positive sum game. Some suggestions would be to adapt the technology used in space development to solve other world’s problems, making the space development be more reachable and beneficial, and promote the benefits of reaching out and develop our world’s culture as a whole, basically to normal people and those economists.
The sophisticated believes that the development in sciences, the pursuit of the dream, is the answer, but the undeveloped believes that the harmony with nature, the inward looking and solving day-to-day problem is the way to go. The distribution of resources is always imbalance; the developed are consuming more and more resources and getting more and more threatening to the undeveloped world that are getting fiercer as their place and position in the world hierarchy is being endangered. Should the imbalance continue, a clash will emerge and will result in a new balance, either the coexistence of the two worlds under some compromises, or if the result is devastating, a new world. In any way, a new balance will be reached, and those who brought about the balance will be those who do not belong to any side, those with the eyes clear enough to compromise the conflicting coexistence with not too much pains on any sides. Often, the balancers are us children, the youth, member of the sophisticated but not yet consumed by the value of the world and who have deep interest in the undeveloped.
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