More Small Steps
Americans should once again take the lead in space exploration.
Fifty-five years ago this week, President John F. Kennedy addressed a joint session of Congress and delivered his Special Message to the Congress on Urgent National Needs. In that speech, President Kennedy requested substantial funding in order to accelerate the U.S. space program, catch up to the Soviets, and eventually become the world’s foremost authority in space exploration. In his words:
Now it is time to take longer strides — time for a great new American enterprise — time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the key to our future on earth.
With that profound statement of purpose, President Kennedy set forth his now-famous goal that within the decade, America should “land[] a man on the Moon and return[] him safely to the Earth.” He correctly predicted that “[n]o single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important in the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.”
Though President Kennedy would ultimately not live to see the fruits of his dedication to space exploration, his country delivered on the promise he made. On July 20, 1969, after a journey of more than 400,000 miles, Neil Armstrong exited the lunar lander Eagle to take his historic first steps on the surface of the Moon. As he did so, Cmdr. Armstrong passed a plaque affixed to Eagle’s ladder. That plaque read:
Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon, July 1969, A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.
The world watched with bated breath as Cmdr. Armstrong took his “one small step” onto another world. On that day, there were no Americans, no Soviets, no capitalists, no communists — only humanity, united in pride and wonder. I can hardly think of a time when all the borders and languages and laws and traditions that separate us mattered less. How I wish I had been alive to glue myself in front a television to see it.
Though the U.S. would go on to land on the moon five more times between 1969 and 1972, I imagine the spectacle must have faded somewhat after Apollo 11. And nothing we’ve done in space since 1969 has been nearly as enthralling or inspiring. That’s left us with an entire generation whose sole contact with American space exploration has come from the Space Transportation System (STS, better known as the space shuttle). The shuttle was amazing, and I enjoyed watching its liftoffs, but it was no Apollo. Orbiting the Earth, even to drop off some pretty important equipment, was never as sexy as going to another world. I’ll also never forget how crushed I was during the most noteworthy event in space exploration in the past two decades: the loss of Columbia in 2003.
If you watch the news, you may have seen mentions of SpaceX and other private space enterprises, but they aren’t doing anything exciting enough yet to blow the public’s skirts up. You’ve definitely heard of American astronauts riding Russian rockets to the International Space Station. These programs are necessary because at this point, America doesn’t have its own heavy launch vehicle. We scrapped STS back in 2011, with the plan being to develop its successor, the Space Launch System (SLS). Assuming SLS reaches its goals, its Ares rockets will be the most powerful ever built, with a 20% greater payload capacity than the Saturn V rockets used to send the Apollo astronauts to the moon.
But what are we going to do with them once they’re built? NASA’s project Orion estimates a Mars landing by 2035, which seems a bit optimistic to me. The scale of the challenges we face in sending a man to Mars, even when compared to those confronted in the original moon shot, are nothing less than daunting. Just getting there is hard enough, and keeping the astronauts on board from dying from radiation exposure will be extremely tricky. Once they get there, Mars’ thin atmosphere will make a landing difficult. And God forbid there are any problems, because they will be at least months away from any possible help.
These are not trivial hurdles. Cosmic rays, for example, are so energetic that even if we put an immense shield around the astronauts’ living quarters (which would be prohibitively heavy), the rays would either penetrate it or scatter into different forms of radiation with equally or even more deleterious health effects. Oh, and cosmic rays also fry integrated circuits, so the navigation computers would have to be heavily shielded too. We’re probably going to have to invent some kind of Star Trek-like magnetic shield to deflect the rays away from the ship entirely. Such a shield would have to be engineered to be ridiculously powerful, but also precisely directed so as not to lobotomize the astronauts under its protection. It is not the type of thing I see being cooked up anytime in the near future.
Even if it works and we get there, we’ll have had several decades with little to show from space exploration. My generation has had only fleeting experience with space; the next will have virtually none. It would be all too easy for me to rant about the Boomers’ priorities, and how they failed to look to the future and invest in space after Apollo. If they had, we would undoubtedly be much closer to Mars by now. Instead, we’re left with what is ultimately a vague plan in Orion, and a public that has to be reminded by movies like The Martian (2015) that, yes, space exploration is still a thing, and is yet as relevant to our lives as it ever was.
Arguing about the past isn’t going to get us anywhere, though. Instead, we should again take inspiration from President Kennedy. In 1962, during his Address at Rice University on the Nation’s Space Effort speech, he explained that:
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…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.
Overcoming difficult problems is at the core of what it means to be American. It’s been part of how we have defined ourselves going back to the challenges faced by our first colonists in the 16th century. And during the 20th century, when we championed freedom over tyranny and pushed the boundaries of science and technology, we cemented our place in history.
Though we were not always a superpower — and perhaps we no longer are — Americans have always dreamed big. But in the past few decades, we sadly seem to have lost the sense of wonder and optimism needed to strike out into the unknown. In his book The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli infamously wrote that “it is far safer to be feared than loved if you cannot be both.” We’ve taken his advice and spent the 15 years since the horrors of September 11th, 2001 building meaner weapons and a more terrifying surveillance apparatus. The resulting blanket of security may feel warm and comforting, but has ultimately proven ineffective.
Machiavelli was certainly pithy, but in the end, I don’t think he was right. We’ve flexed our muscles for a decade and a half, and we’re no better off now than we were when we started. In many ways, we’re actually doing much worse, both domestically and internationally. Experience has shown that the world doesn’t give the U.S. whatever it wants simply out of fear. Nor would it be appropriate for a self-described champion of freedom to hold a gun to the world’s head and extort concessions even if doing so actually did work.
We would do better giving ourselves, and the rest of the world, something about which to dream. And truly, what is more inspiring than charting the unknown? Even if space exploration had no practical benefits — which it clearly does — and even if it was not an absolute imperative to ensure the continuity of our species — which it unquestionably is — it’s just part of who we are as human beings. Curiosity, audacity, and perserverance are in our genes. Recall that after George Mallory climbed Mount Everest and was asked why it was worth risking life and limb to do so, he laconically retorted “because it’s there.”
Americans, we must stop threatening and cajoling and bombing and embargoing the rest of the world in a vain attempt to make them fear us. Our enemies, who are usually born from such tactics, will never be defeated by tightening our grasp on the world’s throat. All that has and will accomplish is to alienate our allies and make more enemies. The only way for us to win is to show the world that American exceptionalism is not a thing of the past.
Let’s inspire ourselves and the rest of humanity by renewing our commitment to discovery and exploration. Let’s go to Mars and become heroes once more.
