Dear Jane and others of like mind, 

Let's not set up a dichotomy between funding for scientific exploration and funding for basic human needs, such as food, shelter, and medical care. After all, the money appropriated by NASA for such projects is ultimately spent on the thousands of people who are directly or indirectly involved in designing and building the complex equipment necessary for space exploration. In the process we are preparing to gain knowledge while we feed and clothe and house and educate the families of the vast human infrastructure that makes scientific progress and technological innovations possible. In addition, the most basic human need that sets us apart from our animal ancestors and companions is the need to feed our hungry brains and pursue the receding horizons of truth. 

I so passionately believe that every monument to corporate human effort is tremendously valuable and should be viewed as humans doing what they are designed to do, as God's co-creators, as animals with a unique brain that can serve as interface between the spiritual/infinite and the temporal/finite-- from the Great Pyramids (not built by slaves but an "army" of anonymous laborers and skilled craftsmen) through the development of the Roman legal system (consider all the scribes involved) and the construction of Chartres Cathedral or any of all the other magnificent architectural, artistic, musical, poetic, and religious manifestations of the various world civilizations, and on and on and on . . . philosophy, theology, science--especially science and technology. 

Hence, if we care about the future, the most vital projects we should fund as a nation are projects dealing with the sciences, arts, and humanities (rather than the military!) because they potentially transcend the individual life span and connect us with generations to come.

Like the great Jesuit paleontologist and theologian Teilhard de Chardin, I am in awe when I consider the harnessing of atomic power, and now the Internet with its potential to link us all and turn the whole globe into one superbrain with countless synapses and individually active nodes. I am quite aware of the ambiguity. Both were originally developed for warfare, and I still remember the sputtering little fire-farting rockets that zipped through the sky of my native Austria in the final year of World War II. But I also know that both atomic power and the Internet can be grand forces for good, and that those rockets led to other, more powerful models that would propel humanity beyond the gravitational pull of our earth. 

From outer space to inner space, we humans are called to imagine and explore and project our discoveries into levels of cumulative knowledge that can serve as foundation for further exploration. 

As for life on Mars: from the time I was three years old and my father introduced me to the heavens, through the years of marvelling at the constellations as I learned about planets and stars and galaxies, it never once occurred to me that earth is the only privileged life-bearer. It made no sense. It still makes no sense. One day, I was sure (and still am), we would discover that we are not alone--not merely in terms of organic life but in terms of intelligence and--I fervently hope--the ability to love. 

THEN we will truly belong to the universe because we will have realized that the LOVE that started it all can manifest itself in countless ways and wants us all, throughout the infinite spaces, to befriend one another.