Reach for the stars
Fifty years ago this week, Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong spoke the words, “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” as he exited the lunar lander, becoming the first person to walk on the moon. An estimated 500 million people watched the event on television – perhaps double tuned in by radio: it was the defining moment of the time. Apollo 17, the final mission, took place in 1972; since then, no human being has ever gone back to the lunar surface.
Presently, exploring the moon, as well as the space beyond Earth’s orbit, is relegated entirely to unmanned probes, landers and rovers. These feats of engineering and mathematics are certainly mind boggling. But robots don’t deliver great lines while landing on Venus or Mars.
It may seem out of character for a curmudgeonly columnist to write about and advocate exploring “the final frontier.”
Indeed, many of my fellow low-agreeables’ attitudes are the reason funding for “where no man has gone before” was decreased dramatically over the years.
But I cannot shake the belief that the gravity keeping us here is partly the result of man’s fall from grace. Our Creator intended for us to reach the farthest stars – let alone neighbouring planets. Of the cosmos, the medievals wrote,“their wondrous order speaks to us and draws our hearts and minds to God.”
Galileo and Newton certainly agreed, just as modern Christian writers like C.S. Lewis and Madeleine L’Engle encourage us to reimagine an enchanted universe.
As to temporal matters, the single biggest obstacle keeping us from exploring away from Earth is the cost of getting men and materials off world. This has decreased significantly over time, but a pound of payload still takes about $10,000 US to get out beyond our stratosphere – not exactly free, same day shipping. What compounds the problem is re-entry; the wear and tear on the most hi-tech machinery in history adds astronomically to the price tag of spacecraft.
Supposedly this toll will go down after demand and competition increases, as well as better technology is used for liftoff.
Several private firms are experimenting with reusable rockets and seaborne landing pads – some are even planning for revenue from space tourism.
But if the discovery of fire was almost outdone by wheels and arches, so is earth-bound rocketry to one day be overshadowed by the completion of a “space elevator.”
This idea, first proposed by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in 1895, has evolved from “a tower to the sky” into a tensile structure with a hub out in space on the end, based on the centrifugal forces everyone intuitively understands after tying a rope to a water bucket and swinging it at high speed to prevent a spill.
This project poses many challenges. First, is the distance needed for the counterweight (bucket) on the line to provide the proper tension: by some estimates, it might have to be placed halfway to the moon. Second, is the tensile material (rope): nothing we currently manufacture is strong enough to withstand the forces involved. Lastly, a zone is required on Earth for anchoring: who will volunteer an equatorial Pacific possession, or take responsibility for funding
But I cannot shake the belief that the gravity keeping us here is partly the result of man’s fall from grace. Our Creator intended for us to reach the farthest stars – let alone neighbouring planets.
the project?
Added to all these problems are the unimaginable risks of such an undertaking. Failure would be nigh apocalyptic in scope, and even if everything went smoothly, there’s no guarantee this project would lead to “peace on Earth” – it might even become a modern “tower of Babel.”
But the human spirit’s desire to do the impossible has birthed all our major technological and logistical achievement, perhaps best exhibited to date by the moon landing five decades ago.
On this question of human ability and personal courage, I believe a unity can be found on all sides of the ideological spectrum: everyone, regardless of background, talent or foibles, must brave the unknown to come of age; that extends to our species and its place in the cosmos.