Going above and beyond
By the time many of you read this, Artemis II will have gone up toward the heavens, starting its journey to the moon. It won’t land there, but it will go around it, and that’s just the first step on a new series of moon missions.
I was born just after the years of the Apollo program. I missed it all and then awaited the space shuttle program. I was there for the Challenger explosion, Columbia breaking up on re-entry, and the first images from Pathfinder on Mars.
I missed the first like Sputnik, the Mercury program, Gemini, and I don’t remember anything about Skylab.
Still, space holds a mystery and romance that I’m never going to get over completely. Why? Because I want to see humanity last.
There’s a joke among some that every near-Earth asteroid is just nature’s way of saying, “How’s that space program going?” There’s some truth there, because we all know what happened to the dinosaurs, and no rational person can claim it can’t happen to us.
It can and probably will…unless we’re not dependent on this one planet.
While many on the left think that space programs are a waste of resources, that we would do well to spend that money here on Earth, addressing problems like poverty or climate change, every single one of those people is so ridiculously short-sighted as to never be taken seriously again.
Why? Because new worlds mean new opportunities.
People came to America because they wanted a chance. They wanted to build a life, so they came to this untamed wilderness, where, for nothing but the sweat of their brow, they could build a home, a farm, a family, and a life. They could make it on their terms and no one else’s.
The problem is that while we’re still the Land of Opportunity, those opportunities are a lot less appealing in some ways. Many of us just want to be left alone, and too many people have a vested interest in doing the opposite. We have no choice but to fight back as best we can, because there’s nowhere else to go. We’re in an existential fight just to exist, and if we lose, we’re screwed.
On the same token, those who think private property is evil likely see it the same way.
But what if whoever loses can just board a rocket to the stars, find a new world, and settle there? They can try their ideas and see how they work out. They’ll either thrive or starve—and we all know which is which—but they won’t have to infect the rest of us with their drivel.
On the same token, those who think even the status quo in the early 20th Century was too far could do the same.
Artemis II won’t make that happen. That’s not its mission. It’s not the mission of the Artemis program, nor really what Elon Musk is doing with Mars at SpaceX. Those are small-scale goals. Bases on the Moon and colonies on Mars will likely be dependent on Earth for an awful lot. If the planet-killer comes, they’ll probably be just as screwed as we on Earth will be.
But each step to the stars is something we can build on.
As we identify planets with a possibility of supporting life, we take other steps. Someday, probably in my lifetime, we’ll find worlds we can colonize. We can protect humanity by simply not existing somewhere that we need Earth to keep us alive.
In the process, we’ll create opportunities for people here. As some leave, land will be available for farming by new hands. Jobs will be available for new people to take on. Solutions for colonization problems may well be applied to terrestrial issues. Yes, even cleaning up the environment to a greater degree.
And tonight, we take an important step in that direction.
After tonight, we need to take the next step. In fact, that needs to happen regardless of what happens tonight. I pray all goes well, but I remember too many disasters to just assume it will.
It shouldn’t matter one way or the other as to whether that next step happens. At worst, it should delay us long enough to figure out what went wrong so it never happens again.
One way or another, we should continue. NASA and SpaceX and Blue Origin and literally anyone else who wants to take to the stars should be encouraged. Make it happen. Do it. Don’t let just one entity handle everything, because space is and has always been part of our future.
The doomsayers think it’s either space or humanity. It’s not. Space exploration is human. It’s just the next thing. We left the cave and discovered fire, then built boats and discovered islands and other continents. We discovered new resources for our development and new people to trade with.
Now, we’ve explored most of the places here. We’ve looked almost everywhere a person can live, and a few places where they really can’t, and now space is there for us to start all over again.
Even if we’re alone in the cosmos and there’s no one to trade with or learn from, we should still strive to cover as much of the universe as possible. We should learn, live, and thrive in every corner we’re capable of reaching, then we need to figure out how to reach even more.
What we do and what we learn won’t be in vain. It’ll benefit everyone, even if they never leave this particular rock, because that’s how striving for greatness works. That’s how exploration works.
And those who think we should leave it alone are the people who really want to see mankind doomed.
After all, the universe isn’t going to stop throwing rocks in our direction, asking, “How’s that space program coming?”
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