Space — the final frontier
Stephen Hawking is dead. A tsunami of goodbyes and R.I.P.s on social media followed, a level of emotion usually reserved for actors and singers who leave the world prematurely. But this man was a star in his own right.
Hawking’s official website describes his as a ‘cosmologist, space traveller and hero’. Well, today I want to talk about space travel. That thing which we see in the movies. But which is nowhere at the centre stage of world attention.
When I was 8 years old I got a book on my birthday called ‘Charlie Brown’s Great Book of Science Questions and Answers’. The cover showed Charlie Brown in a ‘space helmet’, exploring the moon. Or some other desolate planet.
I read the book once, twice, and then almost every night. Imagining what the future might be. It was obvious (at least to me) that we would set out on bigger, bolder missions to learn about the world beyond our planet. That human beings would soon be living on space stations. Or planets with more than one moon.
My romantic idealism had something to do with the fact that my father was an astrophysicist. At that time, he was working for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. I looked up to him and idolised him. Wanted to be like him. But not sit in a laboratory.
I wanted to actually be among the stars.
These thoughts come to me every time I watch a sci-fi film (and I watch a lot of them). One of the best ever made is Christopher Nolan’s ‘Interstellar’. In the first few minutes Cooper says to Donald, “We were meant to be explorers, adventurers… not caretakers (of this planet).” It echoes what I feel exactly. About our world today.
The situation on screen, of course, is worse than the current reality. The world as we know it has been destroyed. Human beings are struggling for food and air. The earth has turned against us, necessitating the search for ‘another habitable planet’.
Looks like it will take a crisis of such epic proportions to turn our face towards the sky again. Not in wonder, but in desperation. Powered by the will to survive. This is exactly what Stephen Hawking has predicted:
“Due to climate change, Earth will become a sizzling fireball by 2600 and humanity will become extinct… humans must ‘boldly go where no one has gone before’ if we fancy continuing our species for another million years.”
The article goes on to say that astrophysicist believed humans will need to colonise another planet within the next 100 years to survive climate change, asteroid strikes, and overpopulation.
So money spent on rocket science is not a ‘waste of money’. And yet…
Ever since the ‘space race’ of the 1960s, investment in exploring the universe has been packaged as a matter of national’ pride. India’s recent MOM mission gave us a high because of what ‘my country’ can achieve. As if the next logical step was to establish ‘little India’ on planet Mars.
The lack of viable competition has, in fact, slowed down the American space program to the level of invisibility. All we can hope for now, is that Elon Musk can pull it off. When he’s not building flying cars, AI powered humanoids and Hyperloop.
Meanwhile, it seems like the only way we’re going to get to another galaxy is with 3-D glasses…
The film 2001: A Space Odyssey was made in 1968. But in the 33 years that followed we have not expanded into the sky — or into any higher dimension of thought. Human beings are still busy, fighting, killing and subjugating each other — with improved technology and wireless firepower.
In fact, the key event of 2001 was the destruction of the World Trade Centre by Al Qaeda. 17 years later there seems to be no end to pain and suffering, and there are new ‘enemies’ like ISIS. We are intent on destroying each other. Because ‘what I think’ is different from ‘what you think’. And both of us cannot co-exist.
Imagine the chances of co-existing with extra-terrestrial life (should we ever find it).
The underlying message of ‘Interstellar’ goes beyond searching for water, organics or breathable air. We must first search within ourselves for that which sustains the human race. Spiritual masters talk of love — transcending time and space. It is an ‘energy’ which science will perhaps one day quantify.
And somewhere on this planet is a little boy or girl, looking up at the stars. Building a universe in that powerful mind, following the footsteps of Hawking.
