Recently I've been fascinated at some of the long-term space missions that various space agency plan.

Some of these missions span multiple decades simply because of the nature of space travel.

A burning question in my mind: how does one get motivated to work on something that they'll probably not even live to see come to fruition/failure? Personally, I wouldn't be, unless if there was some pay involved.

Dealing with climate change is like this. Humans, I think are basically unable to align behind initiatives that do not affect us immediately.

I am a parent. I would like to set up my child for success. But being brutally honest, it's hard for me to even think of what going "above and beyond" means in this respect. I would do everything a normal good parent would do. But then what?

Nobody is paying people to use less plastic or stop polluting etc. So few are incentivized to do anything above and beyond the normal. Superficial things like not using plastic - sure no problem. Keeping a 5 year old phone or wearing worn out shoes - I'll have trouble with these.