In support of Earth…

I fully agree with Peter Harris’s letter in the July edition (p10) suggesting that we stop looking up and start looking down. I recently read Carl Sagan’s excellent book Cosmos and it left me pondering the eye-watering amount of public money that’s spent on space.

No doubt, Peter Harris’s detractors will point to the advantages already gained from space exploration. But I believe these are all achieved in the first 22,000 miles (roughly 10 per cent of the distance to the Moon). Those same people will probably say we have to keep going forward, or else we’ll go back.

I’m sure Peter Harris and I could fill this magazine with things to fix here on Earth, all of which would make bringing back a scoop of rock from Mars look very easy.

John Harris