Ad Astra Critique of Mars Colonization

The Ad Astra critique is why bother? Why spend precious resources on going to another planet when our own planet is in so much disarray?

This video examines whether or not it is worth exploring space and becoming a multi-planetary species.

In the movie [spoiler alert] you hear astronaut Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) frequently narrate his complaints about space…

Roy’s mission is to find his father lost in space.

Roy starts his journey on Earth and when he arrives at the moon spaceport terminal, his first thoughts are…

“All the hopes we ever had for space travel covered up by drink stands and T-Shirt vendors. Just a recreation of what we are running from on Earth. We are world eaters. If my Dad could see this now he’d tear it all down.”

When he gets into a moon rover, which will take him to his connecting flight to Mars, he is ambushed by Moon pirates…

Arrrrrrrgh!

“Here we go again. Fighting for resources. What the hell am I doing here?”

And then when he gets to Mars the planet is presented as a dystopian h*ll-hole.

He meets a depressed Director of Operations who was born on the red planet. She goes on to show Roy a classified video of his father whereby his father admits to murdering the rest of his crew…

“Some of our people weren’t able to handle the psychological stress of being so far away from home. They desired to return to Earth, but I could not permit that.”

And when Roy finally reunites with his father, he sees a shell of the man he once was. Roy’s father still refuses to return to Earth because he wants to keep searching for new life.

But Roy concludes we humans are all there is and with that, he makes the long voyage back to Earth.

The thesis of the film can be summed up as it is better to focus on improving life on Earth than to go in search of new worlds and new life.

Comedian Bill Maher had made a similar critique…

“New Rule: F*ck Mars! Stop fantasizing that Mars is Earth’s backup planet. There’s this constant drumbeat to get to Mars. Explore Mars. Colonize Mars. Billionaires talk about Mars like it’s Margaritaville. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos wants to go. So does Tesla’s Elon Musk, who wants to have a million people living there in 50 years. Even Donald Trump favors Mars over Earth. His budget slashes the EPA. But last month, he signed a bill calling for a manned mission to Mars by 2033, which NASA estimates would cost $450 billion. F*ck Mars! It’s time to Make Earth Great Again.”

The suggestion though that we should not walk until we master crawling will forever keep us on our hands and knees.

To choose to stay where we are would unquestionably lead to humanity’s more immediate end.

We must go beyond Earth in order to preserve and spread our “light of consciousness”…

“We must preserve the light of consciousness by becoming a spacefaring civilization & extending life to other planets.” — Elon Musk

Our destiny is the stars and to deny this to ourselves because of short-term thinking would be to deny life itself.

If we always present problem-solving as an either/or choice then we will always find an excuse to do nothing…

Why spend money on Mars when you can spend it on Earth?

Why spend money on entertainment/fashion/travel when you can spend it on homelessness?

Why spend money on U.S. homelessness when you can spend it on Ethiopian homelessness?

Why spend money on Ethiopian homeless adults when you can spend it on Ethiopian homeless children?

Why spend money on Ethiopian homeless children when you can spend it on Ethiopian sick and dying children?

But then what’s the point of living if all we care about is dying?

Yes, we should prioritize Earth over Mars, but large investments in space technology have already done wonders to increase our quality of life here on Earth.

And as John F. Kennedy said,

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.”

We choose to go to Mars in this decade because that goal will serve to unite us around a larger common purpose, inspire us to innovate faster, be a fun adventure, enable us to learn more about our universe, and ultimately maximize the continued existence of humanity into the distant future.

Let’s improve Earth.

Let’s build a moon base.

And let’s terraform Mars so we can eventually make humanity multi-planetary.