House of Lords Podcast: Lord Speaker's Corner26 Mar 2024

The Astronomer Royal, Lord Rees of Ludlow: Lord Speaker’s Corner

Should Mars be our plan(et) B?Should we continue with manned spaceflight?

Hear from the Astronomer Royal, Lord Rees of Ludlow, in the latest episode of Lord Speaker’s Corner.

‘Now that robots can do the things that humans were needed for 50 years ago, the case for sending people is getting weaker all the time.’

In this episode, Martin Rees - astrophysicist, former President of the Royal Society, and now Lord Rees of Ludlow and Astronomer Royal – explains to Lord McFall of Alcluith that he thinks governments should no longer pay for manned spaceflight. He explains ‘robots can do all the practical things,’ meaning that ‘only people who really have a high appetite for risk should be going into space, and they should be privately funded, not by the rest of us.’

Looking beyond Earth, Lord Rees also advocates for the need to focus effort on tackling climate change rather than looking to move to Mars. He suggests that ‘dealing with climate change on earth is a doddle compared to making Mars habitable.’

‘There's a risk that we will leave for our descendants a depleted world with mass extinction… I think it's an ethical imperative that we should change our policies so that, just as we benefit from the heritage of centuries past, we leave a positive heritage for the future.’

From AI to bioethics, climate change to the disparities between the global north and south, Lord Rees shares his perspectives on some of the current challenges that we face. He also gives advice to ageing billionaires, saying ‘these billionaires when they were young, they want to be rich, now they're rich, they want to be young again, and that's not quite so easy to arrange.’

See more from the series https://www.parliament.uk/business/lords/house-of-lords-podcast/

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