The View from the Heavens
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A look around the globe, with its devastating economic breakdown and seemingly interminable brutal wars, can easily bring an individual to the point of despair. There seems to be no way out of the hideous devolution of human civilization, and massive depopulation of the planet, in the very short term.
Yet, just as the horror of the Black Death in Europe of the 14th Century led a small group of scholars to make the intellectual breakthroughs that led to the 15th-Century Italian Renaissance, so, today, the seeming hopelessness of the world situation is provoking leading scientists throughout the world to search for a solution in a new domain—in the heavens.
Already, ten nations on the planet—including the four major powers which Lyndon LaRouche has designated as the crucial initiators of a new monetary system—have set up programs for establishing bases on the Moon. Despite the fact that the world financial breakdown is crippling their science efforts, they are keeping the idea alive.
Then, on Aug. 25, at an international aviation and space conference in Moscow, the head of the Moscow office of the U.S. space agency, NASA, Mark Bowman, invited Russia to carry out a joint manned flight to Mars. Bowman, who is also the director for NASA's Human Space Flight Program, said that the flight should be under the control of NASA and the Russian space agency, but with the participation of other nations' as well.
Of course, to achieve this objective, Bowman added, it would be necessary to complete the International Space Station (ISS) mission, and to send a manned mission to the Moon, to collect essential scientific and technical information. The ISS already represents a highly successful experiment in peacetime international scientific cooperation, even though it is a far cry from the scope of activity which had been planned many decades ago.
Man's return to space, on a much more ambitious mission than before, would be a most appropriate starting point for bringing civilization out of the current cataclysmic collapse. The United States' abandonment of the commitment to breakthroughs in scientific and industrial progress corresponded almost precisely with the first U.S. Moon landing in 1969. But by that year, the leading financial powers in the U.S. had already abandoned the perspective of using the Moon landing as a launching pad for exploring space; there has been a downward trajectory ever since.
Along with the downgrading of science, there has lawfully followed a degradation of technological progress in all areas essential to a human existence worthy of the dignity of man. Gearing up the space program around manned space flight, would put us back on the upward path, including for solving the seemingly intractible problems of shortages of essential means of life here on Earth.
There is every reason for optimism that this Moon-Mars mission will be adopted by the U.S., Russia, China, and India—and many other nations—thus providing the kind of joint commitment to cooperation and increasing knowledge that is required in many other areas, specifically, the need to dump the bankrupt imperial monetary system, once and for all. A revolutionary mood is growing internationally, against the failed financial order.
The view from the heavens gives us the perspective we need to assert human welfare and intellect, over the grimy obsession with money and other tangible goods. Let's go to Mars!
