Popular Culture Review 29.2
to alienation , injustice , and the death of real community . And so , for all my love�for all our love�of outer space , we must tread lightly .
Although we are typically a gung-ho society when it comes to technology , such complications are not merely of my own making but show themselves on a larger scale in our culture , popular and otherwise , as we begin to look at the ways in which our civilization has conceptualized , advertised , and actually gone about the business of heading to space . Thus , like a wayward Major Tom finally heading home from an odd odyssey , let us move backwards in time�from our plans for colonizing Mars , to our missions to the moon , to the first steps we humans took above the firmament into our first orbits�thinking together about what it is we are racing toward when we blast off into space .
2 . MISSIONS TO MARS
The most important thing we can do�on so many fronts�is have a real discussion about our future , not taking for granted that anything is inevitable . In our culture at large , science is typically seen as the path to objective truth , with technology celebrated at every step . The fundamental ideology of science is in need of a good shake-up and critique , though , and finding a way to critique the “ scientism ” of our culture can stand in tandem with an understanding that the empirical investigation of our world has merit . If NASA has a future that will spark real interest in the public , it seems that that future will likely include more missions to Mars . But : should we go to Mars ? And why should we�or why shouldn ’ t we ?
In 2009 , NASA commissioned a series of posters for an exhibit at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor ’ s Complex . ( See figures 1-4 .) Visitors to the Center were encouraged to think
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