The Price of a Life

The age old question: How much is a Life worth.  Clearly such a value exists since the military offers up their soldiers for sacrifice on a daily basis.  But there in lies the illusion.  It's not a sacrifice if there is the possibility of survival.  it's a probability game, and the US puts an extraordinary weight behind even a sliver of hope of survival.  In other words, 1 kamikaze bomber is unacceptable to us, but 16 fully manned bombers sent on a Doolittle Raid is perfectly acceptable.  It seems that "we" can't handle the idea of certain death.  There has to be some probability of survival, no matter how remote.  I would argue that we spend more lives than necessary because of this.  "Leave no man behind!"  ... perfect, lets go back and get him and make sure we add 3 other bodies right next to him..

Why "we" operate under these guidelines is the first question.  The second is: who is "we"?  Is it our country, our religion, our western culture?  Which facet of our lives has the insurmountable distaste for suicide missions?  Did you know that we could put a man on mars right now!  Could launch tomorrow (well thats a slight exaggeration) but the point is that there are dozens of astronauts that would sign up for that one-way flight in a heartbeat.  To have that opportunity to be among the first men/women on mars.  So why haven't we launched?  Because we haven't figured out how to make it a TWO-way mission.  We can get them there, but we can't get them back.  And although the astronauts themselves consider the trade MORE than adequate, the american populace has determined it to be morally unjust.