Why the Space Program?

originally posted by: seagull
reply to post by Juston

 

The apathy is, IMHO, very real, and scarily so. People, again in my humble opinion, seem to give a damn, at least publically, about the wrong things.

I wasn't very old at the height of the Apollo moon shots, I had just started school. The kids thought it was the bestest thing ever. We knew who all the Apollo astronauts were...

...Some how, some way, we must recapture that feeling; and hold on to it. That will require appealing, not to peoples pocketbooks, but to their souls. Awaken the vision of worlds awaiting our footsteps by appealing to our sense of wonder. How? I don't know...but that's the answer, IMHO.

Some of my best memories of my father include being glued to the television watching the launches and later the images from the Moon. He had watched the world from his youth on a ranch a 2 day buckboard ride from the nearest town to seeing man set foot on the Moon. It saddens me that I may not live to see man set foot on Mars.

I remember sending a letter from an address we got out of the "Weekly Reader" and receiving a blue loose leaf folder and then autographed color 8x10's of the astronauts and newsletters about the programs to fill it with. I regret I did not hang on to that.

I think we loose an important part of ourselves if we do not continue this journey and I'm very sad that our government seems to think that space exploration is not important enough to keep properly funded. They are very wrong to not think it's a priority worthy of the investment.

a reply to: Blaine91555

I remember sending a letter from an address we got out of the "Weekly Reader" and receiving a blue loose leaf folder and then autographed color 8x10's of the astronauts and newsletters about the programs to fill it with. I regret I did not hang on to that.

How could I have forgotten those?

I remember getting those pictures, too. That was, without doubt, one of the highlights of my elementary school years.

I didn't keep mine either, unless my mom somehow salvaged them.

It was one of the things that kept Apollo alive for me, after it was cancelled. ...and before the Space Shuttle.

While Voyager, and Pioneer, along with Viking were spectacular... It wasn't the same as Apollo going to the moon, and landing there.

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We've seen the moon. Mercury. Venus (sort of...a bit cloudy.). Mars. Jupiter. Saturn. Uranus. Neptune.

Now Pluto-Charon!!

New Horizons arrives later this month after its long, long trek to the edge of our home.

So damned cool. ...and to think I've lived to see us leave the planet for the first time, and now, we have, by proxy visited all the major planets in our little corner of the Universe.

Mercury. Gemini. Apollo. Pioneer Ten. Voyager One and Two. Along with so many others were our first faltering steps into the vast Universe that awaits.

Dr. Suess, of all people, said it best:

You're off to Great Places!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting,
So... get on your way!”
― Dr. Seuss, Oh, The Places You'll Go!

Every time I see a new bunch of pictures of places so far away I come to the realization that our world is so very, very small. It's a nest. It's a place that eventually we must leave some day.

Voyager Two is our herald to the Universe. Now trekking its way towards the constellation of Andromeda...

How can this not fire the imagination? We, by proxy, have taken our first steps into the vast unknown.

There are so many ways that we can follow. Project Orion.

Or any number of different ways...

Some of course are more likely than others...

I grew up in the age of Star Trek. Some of those gadgets that seemed so unlikely in the 60's are such facts of life now that we don't even thing about it any more... Looked at a cell phone lately?

We are on the cusp of leaving the Atomic Age... ...and stepping out into the Age of (what should we call it?) Icarus?

I've said it many times in this thread, and others, but it bears repeating...

Man is, at heart, a wanderer. An explorer. What happens when you stop pushing those boundaries? When there are no more horizons to look to? You stagnate. Maybe even die...

There is a vast horizon, a New Horizon if you will, out there beckoning. It'll be dangerous. It'll be scary. But what's life without something to challenge us? Boring. Stagnant.

The stars, man, the frickin' stars are waiting for us. Beckoning us, just like they beckoned our earliest ancestors, to head for the horizons.

I won't be alive to see us reach the stars, but I'd like to live to see us make a start. That'd be a pretty cool legacy to leave our grandkids, wouldn't it?

Earth is our home. A warm, comforting nest.

But eventually, like any fledgling, comes a time to leave it, or begin to work towards it. Stretching our wings.

Like any fledgling, some will fail. But most will not. ...and will find new homes to make their own nests.

This is what I think, every single time, when I see new pictures of such delightfully weird, and strange, places.

Dreams.

Do you ever dream of the stars? I do.

Those twinkly little beacons in the sky that shine down on us through the muggy summer sky on a hot July night, or spangle the sky above us on those cold, clear winter nights in January, when we can see to eternity.

I've dreamed of those stars. Many, other than myself, have dreamed of going to those twinkly little stars that dance above us in the vault of heaven.

Dreams are what drive us. Dreams drove Man to achieve, to push boundaries and horizons. To discover. To create. Dreams, and an unquenchable thirst for knowledge... for adventure... for treasures of many sorts.

New Horizons pictures have, for me anyway, blown those dreams into an inferno. Were I given the opportunity? I'd get on that rocket-ship tomorrow. Pack my toothbrush and off I'd go.

Second star to the right, and straight on 'til morning.--J.M. Barrie

That's my dream. Is it "our" dream?

I hope so, because without that dream, Man is doomed. This fair, blue, oh so lovely little rock that's "just right" will be our grave unless we keep the dream alive.




Without the dream, Man's legacy will be "what if". "What If" the two saddest words in all the Universe. Let's don't allow it to be our epitaph.

Occasionally I like to revisit this thread, especially after some article or thread here on ATS revives the interest I have in what's outthere.


Mars in 2033??


Why not? To be sure, there are going to be obstacles in this first step to the stars. But the problems are, in the grand scheme of things, no more insurmountable then when our ancestors set sail across the vastness' of Earth's oceans only a century or two ago... Some of my ancestors came across from Europe in the late-sixteenth century, surely our going to Mars is no more daunting a trip than the North Atlantic in a rickety ol' sailing ship like this one. Bobbing like a cork in the middle of a storm...

Or a falucca sailing around the southern cape of Africa...

Imagine, if you will, standing much like John Carter did in the stories of Mars...with out stretched arms beckoning to the Red Planet and his lost love Dejah Thoris... Only you'll actually be there!! Barsoom!! Unfortunately, it's unlikely there'll be any slinky red martian women, or barely dressed swordsmen...Or great white apes.

The dry deserts will be waiting though! Waiting for us to make them bloom, waiting for us to make them home.

Once we're there, that'll only be the first stop. The asteroids, which will hold wealth enough to choke Midas, will be next. The moons of Jupiter/Saturn perhaps?

Or who knows? A breakthrough may bring us the stars!

Either way, Mars will be the stepping stone--the red jewel that begs us, beckons us out there. Our first faltering, brave steps into the larger, grander Universe that we've only caught glimpses of through the cameras of Voyager, Pioneer, Viking and all the other little ships that could.

I'm hoping, almost praying, that I live long enough to see those first steps...I remember Apollo, and hopefully in centuries to come others will sit at a desk/table or something else, and write words much like these remembering the first colonies on Mars or the moons of Jupiter, perhaps Charon/Pluto...or some gorgeous planet out beyond that somehow or other is suitable for humanity.

Who knows maybe there is a Barsoom out there?! Wouldn't that be cool?

Come and go like a comet,
We are wanderers.

Say no more.

The stars still beckon...

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has revealed the first known system of seven Earth-size planets around a single star. Three of these planets are firmly located in the habitable zone, the area around the parent star where a rocky planet is most likely to have liquid water.

Seven earth-sized planets orbiting around a single star. Think about that for a moment. Three of them are in the Sweet Spot of a solar system--the habitable zone. Where water is liquid, or can be. Life, as we understand it, can--and surely will--exist where liquid water stands.

That, my friends, is an "OH, MY ((((BLEEPIN')))) GOD!!!!" moment. Three!! From there, it's a short, though exciting, trip to the thought "Where there's three, there are more."

Allow me to introduce to you...Trappist 1 system.

Otherwise known as "OH, MY ((((BLEEPIN')))) GOD!!!!" system--if I may be allowed to practice some hyperbole. ...and in galactic terms, it's right next door. 39 Light years away.

Life, or the possibility of it--read absolute likelihood--just keeps getting better nearly by the month.

The planets, the stars, beckon brighter now than ever they have before.

Is there really much difference between this, and this?

Or this settlement, and this one?

The voyages are comparable. So, too, are the reasons for going.

My feelings on this are obvious, I should think...it's time to shed our downy little pin feathers and step out on the branch and see what we can do.

Ultimately, we may fail in our efforts. ...and become nothing but a "what might have been", then again, maybe we won't. We certainly won't if we don't try.

There's glory in trying and failing, there's nothing but shame in refusing because we're too chicken-hearted, too cowardly to set aside our, ultimately, petty differences.

In the face of what could be out there in the Universe beyond this little blue marble, all our differences are less than petty. Time and past time we realized it.




Which road will we take? ...and will our children thank us?

Houston...Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed.





Later this month, on July 20th, it will have been fifty years since Man first set foot on another world. Albeit, one that is just about as inhospitable as they come--but it's another world!!

I've related the tale of my sitting with my parents, older sisters, and my grandmother watching the landing. A five year old boy, one who hadn't even started school yet, who was confused as to why my parents and my grandmother were so emotional...

I've had years between then and now to try, and mostly fail, to understand what that must have meant to them. These are the two generations that saw the end of the wind driven sailing ship, the beginning of flight, the burgeoning atomic age, and now the Space Age...all within their lifetimes. Lindburgh soloing the Atlantic, to Armstrongs one small step.

In my lifetime, we've, in the form of robotic emissaries, have reached Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus, and Pluto/Charon. Who among us didn't marvel at the pictures sent back from all those places? So near, yet so very far away... Those were amazing days, days when anything, and everything, seemed not only possible, but likely.

Oh, my goodness, the first Shuttle launch, and return in conjunction with the building in orbit of the ISS. The dreams of my young childhood were coming to fruition. Then Challenger...later Columbia put the reality back in the dream. Icarus come crashing back to Earth, if you will.

Death is a fact of life. Space travel and death will be constant companions. Sailing on the tides of the Universe will be much like sailing on the tides of an ocean--death an ever present possibility.

Fifty years ago, three men, backed by thousands of technicians knowledge, and the prayers of countless millions, risked it all to begin the opening of the Universe. Micheal Collins. Neil Armstrong. Buzz Aldrin. One small step. One giant leap. They were the first.

Others followed.

Apollo Twelve--Charles (Pete) Conrad, Richard F. Gordon Jr., and Alan Bean.
Apollo Thirteen--James Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise.
Apollo Fourteen--Alan Shepard, Stuart Roosa, and Edgar Mitchell.
Apollo Fifteen--David Scott,Alfred Worden, and James Irwin.
Apollo Sixteen--John Young, Ken Mattingly, and Charles Duke.
Apollo Seventeen--Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans, and Harrison Schmitt.

I have to wonder, sometimes, in my more pessimistic moments, if any one will follow these brave men?

Since I first wrote this thread, over 11 years ago...(good God, that's over a fifth of the time since man's last steps on the Moons surface...I hadn't realized 'til just now.) nothing much has changed. Petty differences still divide us. Differences that only serve to hold us back from what I view as our destiny...the stars.

But that's also something that hasn't changed... The stars still beckon to us, calling for us to reach out and grab 'em. To follow them to whatever it is that's beyond that New Horizon.

Yes, we certainly have our old-fashioned romantic notions of space and space travel that have been around since we first considered other planets and stars to be actual places rather then just sparkles in the sky.

As for us actually physically moving away from Earth and living there, I think that's a bit of a fantasy for some people. Thanks to our space program, we now know exactly how big and harsh space really is, and how incredibly difficult that would be. We try to load more fantasy into the picture -- like what if Einstein was wrong and what if we create warp drive, and so on -- to keep it alive, but the cold, radiation filled facts are hard to beat.

Even doing something "simple" like establishing a Moon base is so fraught with difficulties that it's likely to be impossible to maintain for any length of time. The dust problem alone could be simply insurmountable. Like living in a giant dusty ashtray with microscopic electrostatically charged dust that get into and ruins everything. "Oh, but airlocks and cleaning procedures etc!" No, that will have minimal effect.

So our best option will probably always be to send out intelligent robots in our place. Very unsatisfying for most people, but who but a small few will ever leave the planet, anyway? We'll get our cool pictures. The scientists can mull over the arcane data most people won't care about. The military will always be jockeying for the "high ground" because that's the paradigm that they're locked into.

No, the reason we maintain a space program is because that is what life on this planet does. It seeks out every possible little nook and cranny to live in, like a fungus or bacteria, to see if it might help us continue life through time. We just do it with machines, but it's the same motivator. And we have the time and money and intelligence to do it, so what the hell.

It's a dead end, but it's a sparkly dead end. And we love sparkles! We aren't really even that interested in finding ways to live in the environment covering 75 percent or more of the surface of the very planet we're already on.