by guest blogger Raymond E. Feist

Science! Why go to the moon? Again?

In the best tradition of Mark Twain, a lot of people saying, “Why are we spending all that money to go to the moon when we could be [fill in the blank]?”

If you’re under 50, Apollo is history to you. If you’re under 20, any memory you have of the Space Shuttle is a kid’s memory.

Science roughly falls into two areas of research: targeted and pure (or general). Most people understand targeted: we must cure a disease, solve an environmental problem, come up with a better whatever. And of course all the politics that revolves around it.

Pure research is 100% curiosity. “How do things work?” “Why does that happen?” “What makes that work/not work?” People who are by nature curious pretty much don’t get people who are not curious, and vice versa. Most writers are curious, and usually become encyclopedia of trivia, or as my father would say, “A compendium of useless information.” It’s why I have opinions on a whole lot of things I am no expert in, and why I welcome being corrected on facts when I screw up, which frequently is the case.

One thing that may not be obvious in the case of general research is it often provides us with unexpected benefits. Because early astronauts have different issues getting in an out of gear while in space, we all now have velcro. And there are many things we all take for granted that came to us from the need to solve problems getting people to the moon and back. It’s safe to say we would not have a certain type of microchip, cell phones, and smart appliances if not for space research. Just like we wouldn’t have the internet if it hadn’t been for the Cold War, or Viagra if a smooth muscle heart medicine hadn’t shown an unexpected effect on male subjects.

In other words, often we get surprised by pure research .

So we go to the moon because we’re curious and want to know how the universe works, because we’ve learned a lot about solar radiation, climate change, the history of the universe, and a whole lot of other stuff that in the long run benefits us all.

IMHO, one might also ask why are we spending money bombing Iran instead of subsidizing the health care of millions of people?

Many equivalents exist, many of the false.

The best answer I saw was a clip Stephen Colbert showed last night. A youngster with a go-pro on his helmet was outside the Kennedy Space Center watching the launch and a local reporter asked him why he wanted to be there. His answer, “Because we’re going to the fucking moon!”

History.

Raymond E. Feist is the author of more than 36 novels, including the Rifwar Cycle and the Empire trilogy co-authored by Janny Wurts. Feist has been writing for 45 years and has more than 20 million books published world-wide in over a dozen languages.