The Space Travel Phenomenon
I believe it is an innate tendency of human beings to travel as far as possible. Indeed, it is this trait which separated and pushed Homo sapiens across all seven continents over hundreds of millennia. Our urge to leave no stone unturned has manifested into every artifact crafted and each discovery made. Perhaps it is destiny, but it is definitely a complex evolutionary advantage.
However, it is only in the last sixty years of human history that we have begun the venture into space. In that time, there have only been brief periods where we as a nation, and our most intrepid international competitors, dared to send no more than a small lecture hall worth of people into that darkened void. Today, a few daring corporations take the monumental leaps envisioned by science fiction writers of centuries past - to allow elite citizens, and eventually our common neighbors, the spectacular opportunity of experiencing the greatest unknown arena, the universe beyond the shell of our planetary atmosphere.
A relatively recent quote from Elon Musk, co-founder of Zip2, Paypal, Tesla, and SpaceX, says, “I think, fundamentally, the future is vastly more exciting and interesting if we’re a spacefaring civilization, and a multiplanetary species, than if we’re not. You want to be inspired by things. You want to wake up in the morning and think the future is going to be great. And that’s what being a spacefaring civilization is all about.” (Sep, 2017) This quote exemplifies the renewed race to space, with similar precepts considered by United States President John F. Kennedy in 1962 at Rice University.
In that speech, JFK stated the following, “We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say the we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours….”
“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win….”
So it is in these spirits that scientists, politicians, and citizens around the globe collaborate in unified, intelligent teams with deeply instilled initiatives for the advancement of the STEM fields, indeed, for the benefits of all beings. Alas, I believe our humanity calls for us to expand our scientific and philosophic understandings of the cosmos, so we may gaze through both microscopes and telescopes, inwards to the atoms and outwards to the stars - purposely pondering and carefully calculating - the experience of traveling this great universe.
Nonetheless, the phenomena of travel occurs as a result of ancient genetic code, expressed in the most outward of ways. In fact, the outwardness seems to have no bounds, even as we strive to go places where it is unknown if any organism has been before. Or, perhaps those distant and darkened voids are the places from which we emerged, and to which we must return.
