Race to the Stars

It’s a well-known, if not totally understood psychological condition. Confine any amount of people in a small space for a long period of time, and, sooner or later, you’ll be washing blood off the walls. It’s called cabin fever, and I reckon it’s the primary motivation for the Space Race.

Of course, NASA would have us believe that it’s really a scientific endeavour, or perhaps our modern equivalent of mankind’s need to explore new horizons. Rubbish, say I. There are three reasons for our race to the stars.

The first is already given. Mankind simply cannot live with itself. Correct me if I’m wrong (and I’m sure someone will), but I don’t think there has been any period after 1913 when there hasn’t been at least one major war raging on our planet. Perhaps the theory is that, if we move far apart enough, we won’t be able to fight with each other. Nice plan, but I reckon, as per cabin fever, two human beings could start a war in a broom closet. Would a planet be big enough? Would a galaxy be big enough?

Then we have the one-upmanship (lit: the need to be better than someone else) that characterises the human psyche. It happened in the 1960’s, with the real space, when Russia (or, to be more historically correct, the Soviet Union) was going head to head with the Americans to be the best at aeronautical activities. They were the first to get a man into space (Yuri Gangurin), as well as the first to get a satellite into space (Sputnik). The Americans tried (bless their cotton spacesuits), but all they managed was a small thing that went up thirty feet and went *putt* and fell back to Earth. “Kaputnik” remains, in my mind, the most laughable space mission in the history of ever. Those of us over forty will remember man’s first landing on the moon. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and…err… the other guy… have gone down into history as the members of Apollo 11, and as the men who stepped on the lunar surface (except for Michael Collins. He had to stay on the Command Module). Imagine the kudos a nation will get when their astronauts are the first to step on another planet.

Finally, it’s the get-or-grab situation, which I probably can’t blame on the human mind, but which I can blame on plain old greed. Imagine what you can squeeze from ownership of a planet. Mineral rights, custom duties, tourism charges, even the rights to film an alien landscape. Mars isn’t a new frontier of exploration, it’s a goldmine.

That’s a very pessimistic view, I’m sure. The next era of humankind will be marked by the day we begin to live on surfaces other than Earth’s. Already, there are people living way, way above our heads in the International Space Station. They’re surviving the vacuum of space, the fact that said vacuum hovers around -200°C, and cosmic rays which are more radioactive than sixty thousand x-rays. Oh, and as a sideline, the fact that the sunlight up there is able to cook a turkey in no small amount of time. As a species, we’re proving that mankind really is the most adaptable animal on our planet, if not in the Milky Way. That’s certainly something to be proud of.

It’s worth bearing in mind that there are over a billion stars in our universe. As specialized as Earth is (a certain chemical make-up, the right distance from the right type of star, not currently undergoing an ice-age or located near a black hole etc.), the odds are good that, somewhere out there, Earth II is awaiting our call.

Look to the skies,

Bontage

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Tags: Exploration, Science, Space

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