Countdown to the Moon

Dave is a business development manager at nPAE Precision Astro Engineering that makes accessories for amateur astronomers. He also volunteers with MediCinema that allows for patients at St. Thomas hospital to see films while they are recovering.

We talked about astronomy, the challenges of light pollution, and the opportunities of putting observatories all over the world in remote areas. The return to the moon is not something that is being covered in a significant way in the UK. Hopefully as we make more progress and the participation of ESA and the UK space agency, there will be more attention to it. Returning to space is foundational to the future of humanity.

Would Dave go to space if it were safe and affordable? Absolutely. Definitely as far as the moon, but potentially to Mars if it was a round trip.

Sanjoy is the founder of the Love Commandos, a group that helps people seeking a love marriage in societies where marriage is traditionally arranged.

Sanjoy points out that the moon is one. It is not divided into countries with borders like the earth has. Humanity is one people. And when we go out into space we should go as one people. Not as a divided species, but as people who are looking at the amazing universe that we live in and seeking to elevate all of humanity.

When you look at earth from the moon, you see a blue ball, small, finite, fragile, undivided. You see a world that should be united. Where the people work together to help each other. A simple principle we should have “Do not go to sleep if your neighbor is hungry” We should look out for each other.

It may seem impossible that humanity can unite as one. But consider what we have been able to accomplish in the past 100 years.

Shaheer Rizvi teaches entrepreneurship in Pakistan. The biggest obstacle to entrepreneurship is MINDSET. Believing it can be done. Believing it should be done. Believing that you can do it. MINDSET drives everything.

Shaheer believes that going to the moon can help with the MINDSET of humanity. Yes, we have problems here on the earth. But by going to the moon and showing that humanity can go further, we can improve our mindset about what is possible.

How many people have said, “If we can go to the moon then we should be able to solve xyz”? And after half a century of not going to the moon, how many of us have fallen into the thinking “We can’t even do today what we did in the 1960s, how can we possibly deal with this.” How has that deteriorated our mindset and vision for dealing with the problems on the earth?

I look forward to the day when humans can look up at the moon and see human activity with the unaided eye. When we know without a doubt that humanity has been able to grow beyond the cradle in which it was born.