<story><title>Why Explore Space? A 1970 Letter to a Nun in Africa</title><url>https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-a-1970-letter-to-a-nun-in-africa/?</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>grondilu</author><text>One of my math teacher told me once a short story about Henri Poincaré arguing with a child about the use of mathematics.  When the kid asked him what were maths used for, he answered : « and you, what are you used for? »&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know if this story is true or not.  I suspect it isn&amp;#x27;t.  But frankly I have the feeling there is more sincerity in this answer than in this long letter to a Nun in Africa.&lt;p&gt;If you spend some time on a spaceflight forum, you will read enthusiast posts about how cool it would be to see other words, to experience micro-gravity, or how interesting the science behind rocket engines is, but I rarely read about how space science will solve hunger, world peace and whatnot, and when I do it&amp;#x27;s precisely as an answer to someone who brought this up, and in this case someone who does not work in aerospace.&lt;p&gt;When a Kid loves space and rockets, when he spends countless time reading science-fiction books, it&amp;#x27;s because to him it&amp;#x27;s fun, fascinating and exciting, not because it&amp;#x27;s supposed to feed starving children.  I doubt an adult rocket scientist or engineer is fundamentally different.  Deep down he just doesn&amp;#x27;t give a crap about starving children in Africa.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mturmon</author><text>&amp;quot;When a Kid loves space and rockets, when he spends countless time reading science-fiction books, it&amp;#x27;s because to him it&amp;#x27;s fun, fascinating and exciting, not because it&amp;#x27;s supposed to feed starving children. I doubt an adult rocket scientist or engineer is fundamentally different. Deep down he just doesn&amp;#x27;t give a crap about starving children in Africa.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I appreciate your focus on measurable behaviors.  But make no mistake, there are lots of people involved in space science because they want to improve people&amp;#x27;s lives.&lt;p&gt;There are unique opportunities to measure climate change from space, for instance, and significant numbers of people in this area have literally devoted their professional careers to finding out what&amp;#x27;s going on with climate change.  They will tell you that straight out, and their decisions in other areas of their life mirror that outlook, so you can tell it&amp;#x27;s not lip service.&lt;p&gt;The people who study planetary atmospheres can be motivated by similar considerations (hello, runaway greenhouse effect), also terrestrial weather (hurricane intensification, tornado genesis, etc.), space weather (solar flares, etc.), ecological forecasting, etc.  Some folks are &lt;i&gt;drawn&lt;/i&gt; to these areas because they matter in an obvious way.&lt;p&gt;You are correct that &lt;i&gt;some&lt;/i&gt; space scientists&amp;#x2F;engineers are motivated by pure curiosity, tenacity, novelty, etc. -- inward-looking things.  But by no means all, and in some disciplines, it tilts rather the other way.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why Explore Space? A 1970 Letter to a Nun in Africa</title><url>https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-a-1970-letter-to-a-nun-in-africa/?</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>grondilu</author><text>One of my math teacher told me once a short story about Henri Poincaré arguing with a child about the use of mathematics.  When the kid asked him what were maths used for, he answered : « and you, what are you used for? »&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know if this story is true or not.  I suspect it isn&amp;#x27;t.  But frankly I have the feeling there is more sincerity in this answer than in this long letter to a Nun in Africa.&lt;p&gt;If you spend some time on a spaceflight forum, you will read enthusiast posts about how cool it would be to see other words, to experience micro-gravity, or how interesting the science behind rocket engines is, but I rarely read about how space science will solve hunger, world peace and whatnot, and when I do it&amp;#x27;s precisely as an answer to someone who brought this up, and in this case someone who does not work in aerospace.&lt;p&gt;When a Kid loves space and rockets, when he spends countless time reading science-fiction books, it&amp;#x27;s because to him it&amp;#x27;s fun, fascinating and exciting, not because it&amp;#x27;s supposed to feed starving children.  I doubt an adult rocket scientist or engineer is fundamentally different.  Deep down he just doesn&amp;#x27;t give a crap about starving children in Africa.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Pyxl101</author><text>&amp;gt; When the kid asked him what were maths used for, he answered : « and you, what are you used for? »&lt;p&gt;I think there&amp;#x27;s more than one way to read that statement. It seems overly cynical to interpret that anecdote as implying that children have no use (present or future); I think the implication is that while they may have no &lt;i&gt;present&lt;/i&gt; use, they will have future use when they develop into adults.&lt;p&gt;Similarly, new branches of mathematics or space science might not be used for much today, but will develop into fields that have uses in the future. Just as humans must invest in rearing their children, so too must they invest in developing their science and math.&lt;p&gt;Not everyone is effective at solving every problem. I don&amp;#x27;t know anything about agriculture or logistics or politics or many other fields that would be needed to begin to tackle hunger in other countries, or even my own country. I solve the problems that I know how to solve, and we all cooperate as a society. The technology developed in one field like robotics or global positioning makes other fields like agriculture more effective (automated farming machinery). It would be shortsighted to suggest that everyone put their field on hold and inefficiently try to tackle world hunger. A better question is &amp;quot;do we have the right amount of people and resources dedicated to solving world hunger?&amp;quot; which gets back to the budgetary and governance matters discussed in the letter.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think it&amp;#x27;s true that a rocket scientist necessarily &amp;quot;doesn&amp;#x27;t give a crap about starving children in Africa&amp;quot;. It&amp;#x27;s probably more that he doesn&amp;#x27;t know anything about the issue and has no expertise with which to solve the problem, and so he focuses on problems that he can solve, like launching satellites for weather, communication, GPS, which may in turn assist people in other countries with problems like food distribution. Without the rocket scientists, satellite equipment shuts down, and everyone in every field is worse off. We should trust to the natural equilibrium and distribution of human interest, balancing that with the government we&amp;#x27;ve created, to make sure that problems get solved adequately -- we should not judge people for the field that they&amp;#x27;ve chosen if it contributes to society.&lt;p&gt;Even fields like computer science, as applied to building Internet forums like this one, contribute in their own way by bringing people together and allowing them to have discussions like this.</text></comment>