Culture and Life

by Rob Gowland

What price a man on Mars?

So George Bush is taking America to Mars. Not literally of 
course, more's the pity. But with the help of the rest of the 
world's scientists, the USA — "the greatest and most powerful 
country on Earth" — will send a manned expedition to the Red 
Planet.

Whether they ever get there is hardly important. As Bush's 
advisers have no doubt told him, just having such a project will 
enhance his re-election prospects.

It "extends the frontier", opens "new vistas for the human race", 
and takes voters off this planet, with its regrettable problems, 
and lifts them into the realm of science fiction. What could 
possibly be more escapist?

Look what the project to put a man on the moon did for Kennedy? 
(And compared to a journey to Mars, going to the Moon is just a 
doddle across the street.)

And look at the other benefits: lots and lots of companies 
(especially big ones) will gleefully receive huge handouts of 
government money for all manner of projects (some of them 
actually relevant to the Mars mission).

Corporate America will indulge in all sorts of skull duggery to 
secure a Mars Mission research and development contract, for such 
a contract is — in the words Kerry Packer once used so tellingly 
to describe a television broadcast licence — a "licence to print 
money".

Companies in the US aerospace industry, the digital technology 
industry, the petro-chemical industry and a host of others will 
leach off the public purse on behalf of the Mars mission for 
years.

And since it is all "cutting edge" research and development, no 
one can say that a company's contribution is too expensive. So 
they can in effect charge the Mars program whatever they like.

If previous space program development costs are anything to go 
by, that is exactly what the lucky corporations will do. Bush and 
Co will bask in the grateful glow from all the companies they 
will have helped to enrich with Mars Mission handouts.

But with the US already irredeemably in debt and corporate 
taxation reduced to a joke, the only place money for such lavish 
handouts can be found is in the few remaining public programs: 
education, social services, support for cultural and scientific 
(as opposed to technological) activities.

Already, millions of US people have no health care. Additionally, 
Bush has cut social services severely and will cut them further.

There is virtually no public housing, public transport is a 
disgrace, a stay in a public hospital can leave you destitute.

If a Mars Mission will help the Republican cause and enrich the 
corporate sector, George W Bush will be an enthusiastic 
mouthpiece for it.

And just think of the possibilities: here is a whole planet, just 
waiting to be drilled and mined and otherwise exploited. And 
there is no indigenous population to get in the way, no one to 
get upset about sacred sites or land rights.

There are no settlers or other locals to complain about 
pollution, no wildlife freaks worrying about loss of habitat. 
There aren't even any tourists bleating about "disfiguring 
mullock heaps" or "despoiled landscapes".

Just lots of lovely minerals there for the taking.

And what if a manned Mars expedition is so expensive that poverty 
will inevitably spread as a result? That's never stopped the US 
corporate sector before, and it won't stop it now!

A "Mission to Mars" will allow the US to walk as tall as if they 
had just clobbered the hell out of some poorly defended Third 
World country, but without the tiresomeness of anti-war 
demonstrations and UN criticisms.

Ha! Just let those left-wing bleeding hearts try to protest 
against going to Mars. Why, the Mars Mission is in the national 
interest.

But there will be protests, for poverty is growing apace in the 
USA. So is homelessness, drug abuse and social breakdown.

Pouring squillions into a trip to Mars will inevitably arouse 
complaint, no matter how much the spin doctors try to wrap it in 
the flag.

After all, putting a man on the moon did.

In 1972, black American singer/songwriter Gil-Scott Heron, penned 
and performed Whitey on the Moon, a bitter, heartfelt 
complaint from the ghetto against the extravagance of the manned 
Moon program.

The white Establishment's "mission" for the US to put a man on 
the moon before the Russians, when millions of Americans still 
did not even have running water or electricity and lived in rat-
infested slums, was rightly seen as obscene.

Dubbed "the father of rap" and an entertainer of the stature of 
Michael Jackson, Heron is known as the writer of the famous piece 
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.

In Whitey on the Moon he is writing for poor Black 
Americans, but his song is equally valid for poor whites, Native 
Americans, Asian Americans or Latinos:

A rat done bit my sister Nell with Whitey on the moon. Her face 
and arms began to swell and Whitey's on the moon. I can't pay no 
doctor bills but Whitey's on the moon. Ten years from now I'll be 
payin' still while Whitey's on the moon.

The man just upped my rent last night cuz Whitey's on the moon.

No hot water, no toilets, no lights but Whitey's on the moon.

I wonder why he's uppin me. Cuz Whitey's on the moon? I was 
already givin' him fifty a week but now Whitey's on the moon.

Taxes takin' my whole damn check, The junkies makin' me a nervous 
wreck, The price of food is goin' up, And as if all that shit 
wasn't enough:

A rat done bit my sister Nell with Whitey on the moon. Her face 
and arms began to swell but Whitey's on the moon. Was all that 
money I made last year for Whitey on the moon? How come there 
ain't no money here? Hmm! Whitey's on the moon.

Ya know, I just about had my fill of Whitey on the moon. I think 
I'll send these doctor bills airmail special... to Whitey on the 
moon.