One Giant Leap

It was thirty-five years ago today that millions of people around the world sat riveted in front of television sets and radios, experiencing a live broadcast from the Moon. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped out of their gangly ship Eagle onto the Sea of Tranquility to become the first humans to set foot on another world. And all our achievements in space since then, while astounding, just haven’t been the same.

We have sent probes to the furthest planets. We have sent robotic ambassadors careening out of our Solar System, hopefully to be found someday by other sentient beings in the Galaxy. We have sent landers into the crushing heat and pressure of Venus to collapse after a few minutes, and we have sent mobile rovers to Mars to explore the surface of the Red Planet. We have gazed up close at the volcanoes of Io and the rings of Saturn. We have sent vast laboratories into Earth orbit to study physics, chemistry and biology outside our gravity. We have launched powerful telescopes into space to peer into the furthest reaches of the Universe.

It seems astounding now, but more than four times as much time has passed since Eagle settled onto the Moon’s surface as did between President John Kennedy’s 1961 challenge to be the first to the Moon and the day it actually happened. In that time, six additional Moon landings were launched, five of them successful. But in the thirty-two years since Apollo 17 blasted off the Moon’s surface on its way home, people have never gone into space further than a low orbit.

Why not?

Even from a purely material standpoint, the Solar System is a potential gold mine of minerals and ores, particularly in the asteroid belt. The winds of Jupiter hold massive amounts of hydrogen for fuel and energy needs here on Earth as part of a hydrogen-based energy system, far more than we could use in a thousand lifetimes. And what has happened to the spirit of exploration? It’s not for nothing that Star Trek is one of the most successful franchises in entertainment history.

The push into space has run into two brick walls: budgetary constraints and a supposed lack of interest. As for the former, we can easily free up money by canceling some of the more useless weapons programs. (Item One on the chopping block: National Missile Defense, which has never passed a truly objective test, was designed to defend against a danger which no longer exists, and will cost $50-75 billion, pre-cost overruns.)

As for the latter – well, the next time you go to a museum or a stargazing event, look at children peering through a telescope at the moons of Jupiter or the Andromeda Galaxy. Watch them gasp in amazement and wonder – and then ask yourself if we truly no longer care.

And think of the roads not taken if we turn our backs on the Universe. As Jim Lovell (played by Tom Hanks) said in the film Apollo 13, “Imagine if Christopher Columbus had come back from the New World and no one returned in his footsteps.”

The exploration of space holds far too much promise to turn back now. Let us continue the journey begun at the Sea of Tranquility.