Survival May Depend on Exploration

As I’ve stated before on this blog, our purpose here is to communicate to the world the importance of exploring more than just our tiny planet–large as it seems to some.  The universe is a big place–too big to ignore forever.  Ignoring what surrounds our world may ultimately be fatal to the human race.  Many members of our species have been imbued with a curiosity that drives them to find out as much as they can about the nature of reality, as the Star Trek series suggests: “to boldly go where no man has gone before.”  That applies not only in terms of exploration, but in terms of seeking all they can find about how natural processes work on this planet.

Others are happy to live their lives in a tiny shell, not caring about anything that doesn’t directly and immediately affect them.  The former are responsible for the majority of scientific and technological progress that has produced such comfortable lives for us all and that the latter enjoy, often not caring or even thinking about the source.

So we urge our readers to reject all forms of thinking or believing that don’t yield productive results, that is, results that don’t further the knowledge and/or well-being of humankind. We urge them to support research and education in the hard and soft sciences.  And, most of all, we try to point out the good that will come from humans moving out into what we loosely refer to as “space.”

In this endeavor, our governments, private industry, and ourselves all have important roles.  National governments (not just the U.S.) can pay for cutting edge research, the kind that doesn’t lead directly to profit that would sustain a private enterprise.  Business entrepreneurs can follow with investments in transportation and mining, tourism, or colonization when the possibility of sustainable profit becomes real.  And the rest of us can support such efforts by demanding that a reasonable part of our taxes be invested in government research as well as by supporting science education and companies that invest in space.

Right now, the primary goal should be research stations on and eventual colonization of Mars.  In 1492, it took Columbus 3 months to sail from Europe to the new world.  A journey to Mars today will take about 6 months.  That’s not so much extra time, especially when you consider how much improvement there has been in crew  survivability since then.  Both public and private funds should be being devoted to engines that can cut that 6 month time to 3 months and less, just as clipper ships and then steam power shortened the time to cross the ocean.

We can’t know today all the benefits in terms of new jobs and heightened spirits that will come from exploring Mars, the asteroids, the moons of Jupiter, any more than Columbus could have predicted all the benefits that accrued from exploring North and South America.

Currently, NASA’s funding is being cut.  It is floundering without any purpose that will fire people’s imaginations.   NASA spends about one half of one cent of every tax dollar Americans pay in.  As Dr. Neil Degrasse Tyson has pointed out over and over, increasing that amount to just one penny per dollar would give this organization enough money to revitalize it and set goals it might actually be able to reach in less than half a lifetime. So write your congressman and senator and demand that space research be taken off the back burner and used to revitalize America.  The eventual fate of the human race may depend on it.

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Posted in exploration, Mars, NASA, science, Space
Tags: asteroid mining, deep space, education, propulsion system, technology, the future, universe