Answer: No. It didn’t just happen. It happened 40 years ago today. It really happened, you wacky conspiracy theorists. Oh, it’s cool, just ignore the mountain of evidence debunking every tired point you make. If you believe those, I’ve got some black helicopters I’d like to talk to you about.
40 years ago we set foot on the Moon after an epic race to the heavens. It boggles my mind to think about how much we accomplished as people. Everybody won – it was the peak of a nonviolent progression of technology and science, and though I wasn’t there, I feel like we haven’t achieved something like that since. I truly hope that we use the same energy and genius to get to Mars.
Space never ceases to amaze me - to quote Carl Sagan (apocryphally, I might add – he claims he never uttered the phrase) but there are billions and billions of galaxies, stars, planets, who knows what else. I love reading about bizarre quantum theories and strings and parallel universes even though I can’t even come close to comprehending them.
The idea that people like Galileo, Copernicus, Einstein, and Hawking could (and can, in Hawking’s case) look so far beyond the immediate world around us, seeking to understand what else is out there, the why’s and how’s of our universe, speaks volumes about the rarity of their minds. We need to make sure that these rare minds never go unappreciated – we need to encourage the study of maths and sciences, we need to push future generations to pursue careers in these fields.
If things keep up the way they’re going, Earth just isn’t going to do it for the human race. We’ll need new places to live, new technologies, and new resources. Maybe it’s because I have an overactive imagination or I read too much into sci-fi, but I firmly believe that someday we’ll be colonizing other planets (if we don’t all kill each other off, that is. Or bird/swine/horse/people flu gets us. Whichever comes first). If we’re going to make room for everyone, there had better be other places to do it.
Technological development will also spur changes in our everyday lives – some great things like getting freeze-dried ice cream from the Air & Space Museum (Neapolitan = dry, grainy, yet strangely compelling deliciousness), and some not-so-useful things like Space Pens, which seem like they’re so awesome at first but then you realize you are never in a perfect vacuum often enough to justify paying that much for a ballpoint pen that writes in a perfect vacuum, and it invariably winds up getting lost about two weeks after you bought it. Yes, I’m still bitter about it.
Anyhow, it seems that I was probably one of the few people that thought the idea of sending manned missions to the Moon or Mars (alliteration is fun) was a good idea. Sure, we’ve done the Moon before, old news. I still think it’s a pretty exciting prospect. I think we as a society take it for granted just how insane of a prospect it is to have people hopping around on the Moon. I still think there’s a lot to be learned from manned exploration of the Moon.
Mars is an even more intriguing prospect. We’ve found water ice in a place we never really expected to find it. The implications this may have for life developing on other planets is pretty amazing. The rovers we sent to Mars sent back more amazing information than we ever expected to get. The technological marvels that will be required to propel a spacecraft there, keep the crew alive, land on Mars, and then get everyone back in one piece, are fascinating to me.
I think having a goal of getting to Mars will help us harness the same ingenuity that got us to the Moon in 1969. Thousands of the smartest men and women in the world working against nearly-incalculable odds to get men to the Moon (and to really stick it to those godless commies – go USA!). I believe that we still have the spark necessary to get us back on the track of space exploration.
I sincerely hope we have leaders with the vision to get us to Mars in my lifetime. Just don’t expect me to be on the shuttle, I’m not a huge fan of flying as it is. Someone else can have the glory of being the first man on Mars.
What I think is so cool about the space program is that beyond the amazing idea that humans are tramping around that big white spotlight in the sky, we got huge technology advancements never conceived before we had to solve problems of miniaturization and zero gravity. Where would we be today without lasers, for example? Where would Lance be without modern composites? All developed first by NASA.
By: Jody on July 23, 2009
at 4:31 pm