[Skybird]

Or nature saves what little is left of us. I love Science fiction, but that is what we talk about from today'S perpsective. when I was at school, landing a man on Mars was projected to happen by the mid- or late 90s. but then budget cuts set in. Different orientations. Politcal changes. Etc etc. To cut it short: there can be no doubt that until today NASA has not landed a man on ars. Nor have the russians or the Chinese. The technology exists, although it remains to be a "Himmelfahrtskommando." But still it does not happen. Obviously reality man creates is oibject to more than just variables of logic, reason, technology and engineering. Money is such a factor. and how money isn spend is not decided by engineer, but by corportations and politicians. these can but must not have knoweldge aiout engineering. and if they have, they can but must not have interest in it, and may choose other priorities. This happening also is part of man'S reality.

until we get a new welath of energy, we will need to learn to manage energy running low, I'm sure. Peoppe already have become aware of diferences in their bills for heating if they waste heating headlessly in winter with open windows - or start to isolate theirt houses and windows. a profane example - but it illustrates how real progress sets in: not with fanafres and stampedes in the toewn hall, but slowly, unspectacular, often dictated by needs to scrifice, and enduring. I do not ruole out fusion powre in the future, I can't becasue I do not know enough aboiut it. what I know is that it still is many many years away, and is not a certainty. What to do until then? Oil becoming exopensive. Pollution going throzgh the ceiling. wind needing another 20-30 years before the now planned German Nordsee-Windpark will be finished. Building new nuclear powerplants due to the monumental hidden and follow-up costs of nuclear energy not really being an economic option, if you only look close enough. Gas meaning high dependency on producers again. Well, one recommendation that is obvious is: starting to save energy. that wins us time. This is one way of interpreting "sacrifice". Or to give up the demand to always travel by airplane, and have long-range voyages for holidays three times a year, so that you have enough money left to pay heating in winter. Not to run three cars in a family household, when one or two would do. The factor behind all this is: money. and on that, engineering cannot help you to avoid financial realities. people will chnage - but possibly not before lacking money forces them to do so. If that then will still be in time, is somethign different.

I do not know if we will ever do space mining. The task is huge, the challenge is right that: a challenge. Possible that it comes that way. Possible that we will not get there. Let'S wait and see. But what if we would make it into space right now, with our current state of mind? what different would that be than exporting our self-made problems to the stars, infesting them with the pleague of human spirit in infectous, lethal disorder and blowing our suicidal attitudes to stellar levels? I don't want that. i mean i would want to go to the stars eventually, but not as long as our mind is so seriously in disorder. I do not wish us to behave like the Aliens in Independance Day. also, as long as we do not use forieng ore on foreign worlds, but bring it to earth instead, it means to contribute to the already existing pollution of earth by injecting foreign potential pollutants into earth's system. and if we have no second earth to evade - what kind of life then? I strongly believe that every level of knowledge, technological as well as other wise, needs a level of sense of responsibility that can only come from mental evolution. but our mental developement already serious lags behind our current technological ponteitals and knowledge. this gap is what has brought us and planet Earth and all species living on it into the mess we are in.