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Zoe Williams speaks for many of us when she notes that the US space mission is pointless (Let’s stop going into space. There’s nothing to see and no one to talk to, 7 April). Unfortunately, it is worse than that. With a $100bn budget, the Artemis programme represents a truly spectacular misdirection of human creativity and resources.

The UN World Food Programme, before it was cut back by Donald Trump’s massive reductions to USAID, was $10bn a year. This global programme, which benefits over 150 million people annually in more than 120 countries, could be fully funded for 10 years by the cost of the pointless Artemis programme alone. It is not a difficult choice to identify which of these two investments would deliver the most social, environmental and security benefits to the modern world.
Robin Hambleton
Emeritus professor of city leadership, University of the West of England

• I wholeheartedly agree with Zoe Williams’s article. I would go a step further and suggest that some standard parenting should be applied to this frivolous activity. No one should be allowed to go to space until the human race has stopped killing each other and destroying the planet that we inhabit.

In the 40-odd years that have passed, no one has surpassed Eric Idle’s assessment: “Pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space / Cause there’s bugger all down here on Earth.”
Gabriella Herrick
Bath

• Does Zoe Williams not understand that if humanity is to survive after the Earth becomes uninhabitable as our sun begins to expand, we have to live on other planets and eventually other solar systems? Going to the moon was once called a “giant leap for mankind”. In reality, what we are doing in space exploration right now are very tiny baby steps for our species.

If we don’t end up wiping ourselves out in another global war or we fail to control our climate, then our very, very, very future selves will thank their existence to what we are doing right now. At a time when things look so bleak because idiotic autocrats and religious bigots seem to be taking us to a very dark future, let’s celebrate the shining light of hope that space exploration brings to humanity.
Peter Watts
Rhyl, Denbighshire

• It’s very brave of Zoe Williams to voice her thoughts so clearly about what a waste of money, energy and effort the space race is. As to the question “Where is everybody?”, I’ve always thought that if there are other forms of life sharing this multiverse, they probably have a much higher standard of what intelligence is than we have. A read of the Guardian on any day shows the level of intelligence reached by us humans.
Ian Hogg
North Leigh, Oxfordshire

• Saying that there are no aliens in the universe because we haven’t seen them is like scooping one cup of water out of the ocean, finding no fish and declaring the entire ocean is void of life. The observable universe has approximately a septillion stars in at least 200bn galaxies. The closest star to our sun is more than 40tn km away. Even with advanced space technology travelling at 20,000 miles an hour, it would take over 33,000 years to reach it.
Michael Fuller
Ampthill, Bedfordshire

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