Why Space Exploration is Important
March 23, 2008
Quick quiz: name one event that happened between 1400 and 1500. Given the state of American education there is a very possible chance that you couldn’t name anything but that is a story for another day. For now, I would say that it is relatively safe to assume that you correctly remembered that in 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue and that the event you named was Columbus’s “discovery” of America. Now a slightly harder question: name any war that happened between 1400 and 1500. In the unlikely event you were able to name one well then congratulations, in the more likely scenario that you drew a blank (you couldn’t remember the War of the Roses?) then you are one step closer to realizing why Space Exploration is necessary.
Quick quiz: Who were the first people to climb Mt. Everest? Who were the first people to land on the Moon? Who invented the Astrolabe that made Columbus’s voyage possible? In what country is the first Democracy believed to have existed? The answers are Sir Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, Hipparchus, and India. If you were only able to answer the first two questions it is completely understandable. You are one more step closer to realizing why Space Exploration is necessary.
Quick quiz: Which duo explored the Louisiana Territory for President Jefferson between 1804 and 1806? Who wrote “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, published between 1776 and 1789? The answers to these two questions are Lewis & Clark and Edward Gibbon. If you were unable to remember Gibbon as the answer to the second question well than you are one more step closer to realizing why Space Exploration is necessary.
I was recently asked what the most important single event of the 20th century was. Instantly I thought to WWII and the Holocaust, because nothing could have affected as many people as that. I thought of the event that started it all and was about to say “Hitler invading Poland” when I thought to myself, “Surely, WWI was the most influential event.” And so I got to thinking and was about to say “The assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand.” Then the computer nerd in me woke up and screamed, “Hello! The invention of the computer!” to which the physics nerd in me responded, “Uhh duh! The invention of the Atomic Bomb!” I even considered the possibility that it might be the writing of the Marshall plan for reconstruction after WWII or the destruction of the Berlin Wall signifying the end of Communism. After mulling these options I finally said that it must have been the splitting of the atom because it lead to the invention of nuclear weapons.
I was quite happy with my answer until I was asked the first question that I asked you, “Name one event that happened between 1400 and 1500.” I, like most others, answered Columbus’s discovery of America. “Aha!” said the person who had originally sought my opinion. I realized that while there were wars, inventions, and atrocities during the 15th century, the one event that everyone remembers 500 years later was an accidental discovery. This got me thinking about what event would be remembered 500 years from now. While we study the American revolution, when there is no more America, all students will remember is the people who “discovered” the west. When England is long gone, few will remember its Kings and Queens but many will remember its great citizen who conquered Everest. And in 500 years when people look back on the 20th century they will remember those brave men who first made it to the Moon.
Whenever the question of funding for space exploration comes up someone inevitably asks why we spend millions of dollars to explore an area with no practical application. ‘Why should we go to Mars? We’ve been to the Moon? What is the benefit to the people?’ naysayers will ask. There isn’t one. The direct benefit to the people isn’t there, but we do it anyway. Why, because it is what’s next. Because we’ve conquered the lands that came before it. The history of civilization has been a history of discovery. Why should we explore space? Because we can. It is as simple as that. In 500 or 1000 years when people look back upon our civilization our wars and our inventions will be forgotten, the 21st century will not be remembered as the century in which a country called America invaded another one called Iraq. It will not be remembered as the century in which terrorists killed innocent people by flying a plane into a building. Those invents will become mere footnotes in the annals of history.
It has been almost 40 years since we reached the moon. In that time space exploration has stagnated and eventually ground to a halt. We have not set foot on the moon since 1972. Sending probes into space to measure comets and photograph planets is fine, but it is time for manned space exploration to return to the forefront of our national goals. In the 1960s America was inspired by the race to the Moon. The American people watched in anticipation as the finest minds in the world worked to reach a place that had no practical application for the nation. We have the capability to achieve greatness. We can “boldly go where no man has gone before.” It is the calling of man, to discover what lies just beyond the horizon. We conquered the high seas and the West, we conquered the North Pole and the South Pole. We looked upward toward the heavens and conquered the moon. It is high time we took the next step. We have the capability to achieve greatness and to not do so will be our biggest failure.
Quick Quiz: How much is NASA’s yearly budget? How much is the budget for the war in Iraq? $16.25 billion and approximately $60 billion.
