Thursday, September 24, 2009

Water on the moon?

I was listening to a little news talk radio (from South Africa) for my global mass media project and one of the current events they were talking about was that yesterday we found water on the moon. Apparently the water is in the soil which really just amounts to us finding that there are hydrogen and oxygen atoms on the moon. I'm unimpressed mostly because I see this as just another way for someone to capitalize on the ignorant masses. How long is it until we start seeing bottled moon water for sale? Of course the price would be astronomical...sorry for the bad joke.
The main problem that I have with this is that everyone is still so focused on outerspace when we hardly even know about our own oceans. This greatly bothers me considering that many people believe that we evolved out of the ocean and oh yeah the ocean cover over three quarters of our planet. It seems to me that we keep finding new life with crazy adaptations that often inspire and enthrall scientists worldwide. I can say that the space race and space travel in general has provided us with many technological advancements. I also believe that if we furthered our aquatic research we would see similar technological advancement and a lot of it would actually be applicable in every day life. I also think it would be helpful because underwater colonization seems like a more viable option than putting people in space. As a scuba diver I have enjoyed the ocean for about ten years and i honestly enjoy that it isn't overrun with people, I just wish there was more attention paid to it so that I could reap the benefits.

2 comments:

  1. I gave a slight chuckle at your so called "bad joke" ;)

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  2. The race for space is interesting because governments will do anything to get ahead. Ethics are also compromised in the name of science. A lot of money and time is focused on space so America as a "superpower" can stay ahead of Russia, Japan, etc. What SHOULD receive attention, or what attention can be divided is forgotten in the name of science, namely the race for space.

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