I’m generally most positive about scientific research, but, I have to declare an element of cynicism when it comes to revisiting the moon. Especially as a supposed place to colonise or as a base-camp for a Mars visit and future colonisation. We’re not even capable of maintaining the life-sustaining ecosystem we have.
This was heightened recently during Dr Nicola Fox’s (Head of NASA) guest editorship of R4 ‘Today’ when asked what Nasa had ever done for us, Fox gave the surprising answer that it was responsible for memory foam mattresses…
I’m also with Will Self reflecting on his trip to the Large Hadron Collider. Again R4 for anyone who fancy’s a listen.
Brian Cox would disagree of course, but he’s not on here anymore.
We had a memory foam mattress once. It was a horrible thing that made us hot and sweaty. A natural fibre mattress is so much nicer.
As for going to the Moon or Mars it just seems a ridiculous waste of money when there are so many more pressing concerns. I’d ban the ridiculous willy waving space exploits of Branson and Musk too.
The findings that have come from various telescopes, including Hubble and JWST.
“While working as a NASA consultant, James Lovelock developed the Gaia hypothesis, for which he is most widely known.”
“James Hansen is best known for his research in climatology his 1988 Congressional testimony on climate change that helped raise broad awareness of global warming, and his advocacy of action to avoid dangerous climate change. From 1981 to 2013, James Hansen was the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, a part of the Goddard Space Flight Center.”
There’s countless billions spent on space projects of all descriptions, which is quite frankly a complete waste of money.
The scientists need to focus their attention on improving our planet and its ecosystem to benefit all living things on it before they start looking to the stars.
As I say Jim, I’m generally positive about scientific research. It’s the idea of revisiting the moon and colonising I’m cynical about. NASA has spent billions of tax payer funds on the Space Launch System for example, now totally redundant (always a job creation scheme imo) and undercut by ego-driven private investment.
Will Self is a very clever man, but I believe any effort to acquiesce sympathy to anything he says or writes will leave you with dread and no optimism about everything.
Life on this planet will end. So I think exploring other potential places to live makes absolute sense. I don’t think we are even at the “end of the beginning” in this pursuit though.
Must change my avatar to Private Frazer from Dad’s Army “we are doomed I tell you”
@GraemeH
Hi
I get a knot in my gut every time I read or hear about visiting the moon.
Leave it alone it’s protected since forever and gives us our life here I hate the idea of them going there and wasting it too.
We had one once, used for a couple of years when we weren’t in a position to reinstall the waterbed after moving. It was quite comfortable - not as good as the waterbed, but not bad. No sweatiness, presumably due to the ventilating construction. Subsequently I separated the memory foam half from the other foam, used some of latter for other things, and the memory foam retained for improved comfort on the sofabed when we have visitors. One of my sons has a memory foam mattress he finds very comfortable. But before buying the first I did my research, and learned there is a lot of difference between makes - with the top brand, the most expensive, having poor performance, IIRC causing sweating, and also prone to splitting…
Ours was a Tempur. It certainly raised the tempurature. But we did get it cheap, about £400 instead of £2,000. We now have a Vispring pocket sprung mattress and it’s so much nicer.
