[ SOUND ] President Obama has announced that America will be sending humans to Mars by the 2030s. Anne should we be celebrating the President's bold goal? Absolutely, absolutely we should be celebrating the President's bold goal. At first, it seemed like maybe Obama was giving up America's. Reaching for the stars by axing the space program that was designed to bring people back to the moon. That's right. He was getting hate mail from astronauts at the time. As he should have been. But now he's going even further working in concert with America's booming private space industry. And it's gonna be great. But look, hold on. Hold your horses. Because I see economic costs to this. It's not cheap to send people out to space to the red planet And plus, we've got all of these other issues back home to figure out. We've got poverty, and wars, and debt crises, and global warming. I mean, these are not insignificant challenges that we should have to overcome here before we start Setting our sights out into the other parts of the solar system. Well one of the good things about spending a lot of many on space research is that it does eventually benefit all of these things that you're talking about. You're gonna have to walk me through this cuz So, for example, in the 60s when we spent a ton on this stuff, those innovations also fueled innovations in hospitals, in weather prediction, in satellites, in cooling technology, in roofing. That list actually goes on and on. The really good thing about wide- ranging government funding for research Is that while there isn't any immediate market payoff, it does benefit humanity eventually in more profound ways down the line. All right I'm all for technological progress, but humans are fragile creatures. It's a dangerous mission. It It is a dangerous mission, but that is the entire point. We need to become able to live on Mars because Earth is such a cold and inhospitable place. Not yet. We have climate change and it's getting worse. There might be an asteroid headed for Earth. Life on Mars might be humanity's last best hope. Also, it would just be really cool. That's a fair point. For one show that's always out of this world, come to fortune. com for more tech debate. [ SOUND ]

Going to Mars Might Not Be the Best Idea

Not when there are so many issues on Earth
