Elon Musk and The Exploration of Space: Signs of Human Desperation

Elon Musk's endeavor to conquer the boundaries of man's limit to travel beyond our planet may seem like a glorious step toward to revolutionizing our view on what our capabilities as a specie. If one would look at it broadly, it seems like a worthy ambition to pursue and an absolution with regard to our minds imagination with the pursuit of a life-long dream of interstellar travel, but regardless of all the wonderful possibilities, leaves a few vaguely unanswered questions, namely, why are we doing this? What are the benefits of such endeavors? and if there are some unforeseen liabilities to all these efforts of pursuing this?

Space travel has always been an elusive dream, that is until the Russians succeeded in launching the first unmanned space satellite, namely The Sputnik 1. This put the Soviet Union in the forefront of the race for space, obviously envying The United States of America to hasten its space program, which eventually led to the founding of NASA. America, later, had its first success in putting Alan Shepard  as the first American to orbit the planet, about a month after the Soviet Union became the first country in the world to had successfully put a man in orbit who was Yuri Gagarin. 

And now there is Elon Musk and SpaceX. During the early years of its infancy, NASA, then called The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) which was founded in 1915. NACA's sole purpose was dedicated to the research of improving the science of flight, primarily focusing its research in flight engineering and design. It wasn't much later during the 1950's that NACA was integrated into the United States government as a forefront agency responsible for advance flight research focusing most of its resources towards the advancement of space exploration as decreed by then late president John F. Kennedy.

When Conspiracy Theories Don't Seem To Be Too Far Fetched: Is There Really An Existing Space Program And Does The I.S.S. Really Exist?

Why did NASA slowed down its efforts on space exploration and why did space exploration research shifted to private conglomerates? When government spending is necessary, it always goes through oversight committees, thus it needs to pass through scrutiny, needless to say the budget that goes on spending billions of dollars worth in taxpayers money for something that most Americans would not be benefiting from. For all the American people know, the SpaceX program is just another quasi-agency shrouded by the government to funnel space research spending to divert the public eye and to elude congressional hearings.

The American government has been doing this for years. It goes all the way back when they started to recruit para-military civilian contractors to fight their little wars. Obviously, who would in their right mind scrutinize allocated budget spending on private companies as long as they are not official members of the United States government? And do oversight committees have a say when it comes to contracts given to these private entities? No, and that is why that most government spending on these kinds of endeavor are given to private companies for the sole purpose of reducing public scrutiny. Are we being that speculative?

So, what does this have to do with Elon Musk and SpaceX? If you are willing to look at the broader side of the picture, all you will see is a narrative goal, one that diverts the real reason of why SpaceX is obscured in the sense of revealing its true purpose and why the United States government has put its trust in Elon Musk to continue with the most coveted goal in human history, the conquest of space. Perceptively a grandiose goal, but attainable in the long run no doubt, but, to what benefit does human civilization get from this? Or if is there any to that extent? Or, as the famous conspiracy theory goes, did we really sen t a maned mission to the Moon?

You Don't Belong In This Club: Members Only! 
  
Well, I know that most of you, if not a lot of you had watched  the movie "2012" or "Elysium" and we all know how that turned out and how  the world governments can easily disregard all relevance of human life that does not belong within their circle of friends, and that is not a conspiracy theory as that is a fact. How does the saying goes? "fry you in your own fat"? The Government taxes you, uses your own hard-earned money for obscure government projects that you won't even benefit from, yet society is diverted to the technological wonders of the advancement of science which eventually will benefit by only a  few who belongs to the "Big Club"...and you are not in it!

Today, most people would think that racism is a thing of the past, well, racism is not only limited to creed and race, it has underlying factors such as social status as well. Today, racism is vaguely hidden in the form of how much your wallet is loaded with cash and how you define your individuality with a cause or principle, ergo, if you think like most of the people in government do. So, what does SpaceX have to do with this? Well, eventually, when civilization does conquer space and reaches its goal to colonize other planets, most of the people who paid for that effort, namely the ones who bled their hard earned tax money, would be left alone on Earth to suffer the consequences of Man's glorious endeavor to conquer space!


The Real Reason For Space Exploration

No conspiracy theories here, just facts. It is no hidden secret to most of us that the Earth, our planet, that has nurtured and nourished us, is slowly falling in decay, which we as a so-called intelligent race, had a big part of it. When does technology and industrialization leave a heavy toll on our environment? Surely, most industries would like to think of it as a necessary measure to further foster and improve the already dynamic way of life that we live in, in fact, most companies would rather imply on it as a necessary means to take humanity to the next step in our evolution, but, to what price? Surely you can't be expected to believe that all of this technology that we created does not have any recurring environmental impact on our planet? 

Carbon emission fingerprint. How much carbon emission do you thing comes off with the production of one shirt? Or one computer? Or one rocket for that matter? It seems that all these technological effort greatly hastens the environment's decay? Or am I just being a bit too paranoid? Whatever it is, the fact still remains, we are headed for a collision course with the environment, so to speak, which explains the worsening quality of the air we breath. The erratic weather patterns. The dwindling species of animal and plant life. The rising mortality rate in conjunction with diseases. Why so much an effort to pursue space exploration?

Because science has already answered the fact that there is no hope to cure this planet of ours. Think of SpaceX or any space exploration program as a bail out plan, for a privileged few that is. And to think that we are bringing people to some distant planet to colonize it and eventually trashing it the same way that we ravaged Earth, seems a bit hypocritical don't you think? Spending billions of dollars for a space program to move to another planet while we could spend only half to solve the problems of our society. Why? Because the most easiest questions to answer on why we seem to fail as a specie is so obviously vague that we tend to disregard the fact that we don't want to put the blame on us.

Is space exploration a radical idea to skim off the recessive genes, which most people are, to which most people regard as the sole reason that we have failed in healing our planet? Sounds kind of racist don't you think? Why even bother explore space when we can spend all those efforts in cleaning up this planet? So, what is man's destiny? Man has a big attitude problem when it comes to taking the blame on what is happening to our environment and frankly, these problems would not have turned out as worse if we only took upon ourselves to diversify our goals into a unified idea in solving our differences, which we really don't have much to speak of. 


The Hidden Truth of What's To Come: What you Don't Know Won't Hurt You Until The Last Minute



A sound idea to keep us under control, just as they begin to sneak out, unnoticed, leaving the innocent and ignorant baffled and bewildered. Surprise! We are leaving and the rest of you are not coming with us! And if somehow those conspiracy theories did turn up to be true? Most governments around know the truth and they tend to keep everything they know to themselves and why would they bother to tell it to the rest of the world and send it to chaos? Speaking of which, did most of you know that the peak intensity of the Sun's brightness has increased for the last 20 years making the polar and arctic ice melt much faster than what scientists had previously predicted? 

Or did most of you knew that the magnetic poles have shifted drastically in the past 30 years or so, shifting the weather patterns of the entire planet and causing catastrophic storms to ensue, not seen by mankind for the past 100 years? Well, it only took less than a century for all this mess to happen, thanks to the Industrial Revolution. Yes, we admit that we love the way that we have progressed as a society and the technology that we created has more or less lessen the burden of how we struggled with our survival as a specie, but, it is the same technology that is slowly killing our environment as well. Do you think nature would compromise? No, nature will find a way to kill us in the most poetic way, and nature is very good at this.

So, obviously, bailing out is one of the most practical means of ensuring our species survival from a planet that has kept us alive for the past millions of years since our infancy as an organism. This is how our environment would react to our continuing efforts to squander its natural resources, polluting the waters, the air, and I do think that payback time is just a matter of decades away until such time that mother nature decided to cash in the check from us. We have become a decadent and arrogant race, and I think that nature has all the right to throw us out in the cold to see if our arrogance can save us from the bleak reality that's waiting around the corner for us.

A Chained Circle: Compulsory Or Choice?

Regardless of whatever reassuring indication that we are given by our present social standing in relation to the improvements that are changing the way we live on a day to day basis, we still seem to feel an inadequacy accompanied by a foregoing lack of real assurance that all is indeed well. For the affluent, life seems to be running to their favor in regards to the complacency and convenience that it gives to them, into which they bask within its confines. How often do we see these people, going about the way that they perceive life, defiant of any possibility that everything that humanity has worked so hard to maintain this idealistic fervor may one day crumble in disarray. For most of us that live well below the austerity of such a privileged life, we have no choice of such matters, as we are all forced to follow the flow of what this society dictates as it's acceptable norms.


Scarcity or the lack of adequate social provisions tends to force most people that were not fortunate to posses the proper skills that would enable them to cope up with the mandatory requirements of this society to seek out other means of coping with this seemingly oppressive means of social survival. Given the fact that most world governments provide free educational support to all of their citizens to enable them to acquire the basic educational and vocational skills that would enable them to fend for themselves when the necessity arises. All through out the development of our modern society, we were spoon fed the belief that education and acquiring the skills that would see through it that we find our proper place in the system that we serve our sole purpose, would indeed give us that assurance that we will never have to worry about anything, just as long we conform to that systematical social belief.
Unfortunately, this is not the case for most people who seem to have done everything which was required of them in regards to fully complying with every aspect of their educational attainment. As far as what we are experiencing today, more people are now falling off that orthodox belief and pursuing other means of livelihood, contrary to what they learned from their education. The world's economy had always been the sole motivator on how we should struggle to find means to adapt to it's ever changing demands in view of the educational skills that we need to develop, the availability of finding the proper applicable skills to earn our financial needs and its sustainability. This is not so much as a problem to developed countries that have the adequate need for these given aspects in their economy, but in the case of third world countries, finding means of financially surviving on a daily basis is more of a daunting task.


That is why crime is so rampant in the third world as scarcity on the different aspects of their economy force people to do away with honesty and integrity. Poverty is the root cause of all crimes and giving people the proper education that they need to give them the capable skills to land them a decent job that won't make them become like bandits, armed with crossbows and stealing from the rich, just to sustain themselves with a decent meal. And because of this, their educational system continues to disintegrate in contrast to the worlds growing demands for skilled workers. Most third world countries have now been reduced as a source of human labor, all around the world, since basic technical skills are just simple methodological instructions that most skilled workers will have no problem of understanding. This relatively changes a big way on how a country's educational system would work for it's people in regards to overhauling their entire learning system. The dictates of  world economy had drastically reduced the thinking potential of these countries and have forced them to reestablish the way on what kind of education their children will benefit from.
Today, most third world countries are now exporting their man power to serve developed countries as skilled laborers on various aspects of their economy. And since most of these countries rely on the continuing influx of foreign currency to enable them to prevail along with being able to sustain their financial stability, the need to give the right kind of educational skills to enable them to adapt to the growing demands in regards to world labor. Providing education is not adequate enough as we would need to give them a reason for the need to acquire the skills in understanding the importance of having a fairly competent educational system in the first place. Giving them a fairly good reason to have a good educational skill, whether that be labor intensive or otherwise, will give them the right knowledge which will enable them to find the proper employment that will provide them the comforting reassurance that will earn for them and at the same time earn their self respect.

The G.M.O. Nightmare

The rising increase of today's world population is also giving rise to a new issue that concerns finding the adequate supply of food sources to sustain our need of it. This alarming issue has been presented since the late 1980's in view of our plight of finding resources that will provide us with enough food to ensure our survival as a specie. As of date, we have already reached the 7 billion marker in regards to the number of growing people that need to find adequate food supply to sustain ourselves. This is not an easy task to undertake as we need the right technology to ensure that we can produce the right kind of crops that will be used as food source for our continuing population growth. Modern science has already taken the steps to alter the natural growth of specific plant species that are mostly considered as  a source of food crops by modifying their basic genetic structure to be more resilient to the changing global climate that is making most of available food crops to succumb to the effect of global warming and other related climactic changes. 

This was at first, a wonderful and innovative approach until further research has determined that the use of G.M.O. (Genetically Modified Organisms) can alter our natural body metabolism and result in the reduction of our reproductive capacity as a result of thorough laboratory research done on mice. It was proven, without a doubt that G.M.O. crops can possibly reduce the chances of a human beings capability to properly reproduce, despite the assurance of scientific researchers that it will not otherwise. Another issue of G.M.O. is that it also has the possibility of altering ore human genome in regards to cell development which can result in mutated gene cells that can cause cancer and other detrimental growth effects that does us more harm than good. This is a dilemma in which has triggered a division of social opinions regarding the ethical consumption of genetically modified food crops.

As a society that is searching for viable means of sustaining our food supply to ensure our survival in the coming days, we are divided in our opinions whether or not we should be complacent in using this technology to develop crops to sustain ourselves despite of the risks involve that may well become the reason for our downfall as a specie. In a different point of view, we may well still have to struggle in augmenting our food resources in regards to being able to meet up with the continuing growing demand for viable food sources. In between these issues, some people have opted to improve current agricultural technologies without going into as so much as altering the natural growth of crops to ensure that they will be able to meet the demands in regards to food crops.

Most modern methods of agricultural innovations that do not require expensive modern day equipment can be achieved through numerous techniques in planting, crop rotation and other similar methods that can produce organic food crops regardless of any geographical inhibitions that make it impossible to cultivate food crops in various locations world wide due to these limitations. One proven method that can be used in cultivating various food crops that can be grown just about anywhere is using a method called hydroponics. This system uses no soil to grow plants as porous polyurethane foam is utilized as the plants propagational medium. Using various synthetic materials such as foam and natural fibers and depending on the medium used as an alternative to planting on soil, crop growth results may vary.

This method has been proven to work on areas that do not have adequate soil conditions to enable agricultural cultivation. And since synthetic materials like foam hold more quantities of liquid more than soil, finding an adequate irrigation system will not pose as a problem since it will only require very little water for the crops to grow into productivity. This can bee seen as one of the best options that anyone can conveniently do right in the comfort of their own backyard as it only requires very little space. Just imagine yourself preparing a backyard weekend barbecue on your electric smoker and you suddenly need to get some fresh fruits and vegetables to go along with the meal that you are preparing for your guests. All you have to conveniently do is walk straight up to your garden and pick it fresh from where you are hanging them. Since they do not need soil to grow properly, you do not have to dig into your garden to cultivate them.

For personal needs, hydroponics is a viable means of converting the spare empty spaces around your house in which you can start propagating fruits and vegetables for your own use, but when it comes to a much larger scale, crop rotation would be more viable for a larger community. Crop rotation is an effective way to optimize the different types of food crops in regards to the seasons and soil conditions. Having to contend with one or two types of food crop for the whole planting season used to be a fairly good way of providing food for a community. Unfortunately, we are now being faced with a problem concerning climatic changes which drastically has led to the shorter lifespan of certain agricultural crops and has made us adjust the way we plant in order to ensure that we have the right type of food crops for the right season. 

A fairly good example would be other Asian countries that use crop rotation all year round. In China, their staple crop is rice and flour but as soon as fall starts to creep in, they will start on planting green leafy vegetables, beans and nuts. As soon as winter comes in, they will have ample supply of nuts and leafy vegetables that will sustain them through out the whole winter season. This has enabled them to efficiently ensure their adequate supply of food during times of scarcity as optimizing the use of their agricultural lands by planting 4 to 5 types of crops within a whole year. This type of diversifying the types of crops that can be planted can greatly reduce the chances of the possibility of ending up with an alarming level of food to sustain a community, which should give us no reason for having to take our chances of consuming genetically modified crops in the near future, for our own safety and well being.

2018: Where Do We Go From Here?

It's the beginning of a new year again and most of us would like to start out the year full of optimism and hope so that we could at least please ourselves with things that we can achieve for our personal greater good. Yes, starting out the year (again, as the same as every other year that did), Most of us are looking forward to a year filled with good things ahead, well, not for other people, but certainly things that would give us an advantage over others. It's really not strange to think that we as people prefer to avoid anything that would make us feel irrelevant in this society that we live in, which in most cases, we tend to create a comfort zone that can be compared to an impenetrable fortress, steadfast and unbreachable.

 Our optimism could be the only thing that keeps us waking up in the morning, unless we are actually forced to do so since we have very little options left to comply on a day to day basis, meaning we are actually slaves of our wants and needs that we have to get up and go to work to earn our keep. But if you really think about it,  it just turns out that we are just existing for the sake of existence and not really living.

Frankly, it is a mundane and monotonous way of realizing that by the time we get to our twilight years, we are faced with a reality of knowing that there is nothing more left but to live in our glorious past in order to live our remaining days as people with an unclear purpose.To give people a straightforward insight to what human life is about, means justifying our decisions and the effects of those decissions we made, be that bad, mediocre or good. Sadly, our thrive to improve our society has been futile and the more we try to move forward with life using all ingenious methods of logic and creativity, we on the other hand destroy a part of our selves along with the nature of our humanity.

Wars are still as eminent, the threat of hunger still looms, nations are still coping with trying to gain advantages over one another which leaves the question of why are we still struggling to findd solutions to our problems as a society. To the point of view of a realist, things are rather falling to the worse rather than for the better. The weather is not improving, that's the ruth. The worst things could happen anytime soon as well. The threat of nuclear war is and always will be an imminent threat to our exsistance even thought most of the western world has reduced its armaments ever since the early part of the 1980's till the early 1990's, yet nuclear threat is still a fact of human life. The worst part is yet to come, especially when those G.M.O. crops and animal meat products ate now a part of the global market. Vaccines nowadays are doing more harm than good as if there was a carefully planned conspiracy to eradicate half of the human population of this planet by the new world order, or am I just being too paranoid?

Whatever the world governments are planning, one could not help think about the value, the real value of human life, as if human beings are just part of a biological food chain. Just think about it, we thrive in a system that actually eats us up in the end and the end consumer that reaps all the advantages are the ones that control our lives in a contrived system. We work to live and we die trying to live that life. Sometimes you can not help but think of all your struggles and perseverance is really worth the effort thinking that you can't fully appreciate the life you live. Thankfully, there is death...which gives life its final a solution. I mean seriously? Would you really think that this life is filled with rainbow colored promises and candy coated  dreams that really come true? Life is like a roller coaster ride filled with thrills and shrills, lights that clicked and give you an illusion of happiness. And after you get old it, you tend to fall back in line, waiting for another turn, because it enthrills you, satisfying every inch of your expectation...but its just a ride.

For most of us, and I do believe many are already spiralling down that same deep, endless abyss of dillusion. Never minding what's at the end of their long fall, as long as they are enjoying the thrill of their existence, and never looking around to see why they are falling as long as they feel that euphoric sensation engulfing their souls. Every thrilling amusement theme park ride has its end, and there are only two things to consider how humanity ends itself...either they crash...they burn or both.