Lindy Elkins-Tanton, writing in Slate, writes that if India or China were to beat us to Mars, it would feel like a military defeat for us. If Trump’s Secretary of Education gets her way, then school funding will be cut, the money will go to the rich kids to go to private schools, and the rest of our children will be trying just to get by and make ends meet, let alone think about getting to the stars. That would completely undercut Mr. Trump’s narrative about making America great again. Instead, he would lead us to humiliation worse than Vietnam or Sputnik.
The GOP political model of dumbing down the entire population so they can be controlled and getting the know-how to get to the stars are two mutually exclusive things. We saw it in the last election, where low-information voters who made a median income of $72,000 turned out in disproportionate numbers to elect Donald Trump. And when we think about the GOP War on Science, how do we expect to build rockets to get us to Mars if we don’t even have a basic understanding of climate science, which implicates us in the warming of our planet?
The choice is clear for the next two elections – build a nation where 99% of us are a permanent underclass and a wealthy elite who are there to control us, or build a nation where our diversity is our strength and everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed. Our people are not going to start thinking about reaching for the stars unless and until we take care of their basic needs first. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs teaches us that people first need four things – food, water, warmth, and rest. Next, we need safety and security. Then, we can give people a sense of belonging, a feeling of accomplishment, and a full unleashing of their creative potential. Once we lift our people out of the first two rungs, then we can think about getting to Mars.
There is no middle ground here; the research is clear. Charter schools do no better than public schools, and in many cases do worse. So if Trump and DeVos follow through and carry out their plans to expand charter schools exponentially, it would set our kids back further and further, and it would set back our country in the race for Mars, since fewer kids would emerge with the skills necessary to innovate.
The choice is clear. If we don’t invest in our public schools, we lose. If we do, we win. And Elkins-Tanton has an idea that is even better, in my view:
And another solution is to collaborate. Imagine the Americans, from NASA and SpaceX and other private organizations, and the Chinese, and the Indians, and the Russians, and the European Union, are all living in nonstandardized modules at some “safe” distance from one another on Mars. Would they want to stay apart in such an extreme environment, or would they want to communicate and collaborate (even if that’s not the case back on Earth)?
Let’s not just hopefor collaboration. Let’s take more and better steps now to create and foster a space collaboration. We can make private-public space partnerships easier, including those that cross national borders. We can work harder at the international meetings on space topics to create multinational collaborative bodies. We can work harder at developing globally beneficial international standards.
Exploration started out about nations and wealth. Space exploration could be about more—it could be about our species. When we go to Mars—it will happen—let’s make sure it is a step deeper into human civilization as we do it.