There are a hundred reasons to shut down NASA. It's highly impractical, a massive money sink, and with a failing economy and environmental disasters left and right, it doesn't make any sense to keep the program running. But I can't help but be sad.
Some day, a great civilization will sail across the stars. They will travel from planet to planet, and see wonders beyond their wildest imaginations. And they will find ruins everywhere they go, the last remnants of countless civilizations who discovered the secrets of space travel, but gave up on it because it was too impractical. To condem ourselves to just one world is just that; condemnation. A death sentence. The beginning of the end.
Is this alarmist? Perhaps. The future is a big place, and anything can happen. But our planet has an inarguably limited lifespan, and unless we find a way off it we have a limited lifespan too. But it's more than just Malthus-driven pessimism. I'm an optimist at heart. And nothing lifts an optimist's heart more than looking up at the stars, and seeing a galaxy brimming with potential, with literally millions of worlds waiting to be explored. But what now? What will we tell our children when they look up to the stars? "We've been there, there's nothing to see". We need explorers, people willing to boldly go where no man has gone before. And instead we get penny pinchers and people telling us it's impractical.
Screw impractical. Let's go on an adventure.
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