We’ve lost our urge to explore the universe
FOR the men and women who have been into space it is often a spiritual experience but it is not only astronauts who feel the emotional pull of deep space. The drive to explore and to smash new frontiers is one that is as old as humanity itself.
Ever since the first homo sapiens left their native Africa around 60,000 years ago we have always wondered: “Where to next?” It is the question that sent Christopher Columbus to sea, forced Captain Scott and his men to set off for the South Pole and encouraged Amelia Earhart to climb into the cockpit of her plane.
George Mallory summed up this impulse for adventure when he said that he wanted to climb Mount Everest “because it’s there”. The appreciation of exploration for exploration’s sake is one of the things that sets us apart from every other creature in what is, for now at least, the known universe. And there is nowhere bigger to explore than space.
The problem is, we seem to have lost our nerve. I yield to nobody in my admiration for Major Tim Peake who last year became the first fully British-funded astronaut to undertake a mission aboard the International Space Station. But it has been 48 years since David Bowie sang about Major Tom “floating in a tin can”. A weightless laboratory in low-Earth orbit just doesn’t stir the spirit in the same way as a trip to the Moon (or even beyond).
Nasa does have plans to visit Mars but it doesn’t envisage getting anywhere even close until the 2030s. Meanwhile the European Space Agency has hatched a plot to build a “Moon village”, possibly for use as a stop-off point on the way to the Red Planet. But the man in charge, the ESA’s director Jan Woerner, seems to speak in vague platitudes and unintelligible buzzwords.
There is certainly none of the vision and clarity President John F Kennedy showed in 1961 when he told the US Congress: “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”
A mere 11 years later as Cernan, the last man to set foot on the lunar surface, prepared to climb back into his spacecraft, he said: “We leave as we came, and God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind.
“As I take these last steps from the surface for some time to come, I’d just like to record that America’s challenge of today has forged man’s destiny of tomorrow. Godspeed to the crew of Apollo 17.”
Of the 12 men who have walked on the Moon only six now survive. God willing, a space agency somewhere will see fit to add to their number soon.
FERGUS KELLY IS AWAY