Space Exploration

Space Exploration

Since the Beginning

Shuttles, and space stations, horrific disasters, collaboration – but all from the tether of Earth's gravity. For us in the future, though, things might finally be about to change. Firstly, NASA have committed themselves to returning to the moon with humans by 2024 as of today, and they've been busy bees, designing the Space Launch System to launch in 2021. It could get us back to the Moon, Easy. But now we have commercial projects taking off: SpaceX, Blue Origin, Boeing – all of them vying to get us back on the lunar surface. Things are occurring! Obviously, going back to the Moon for science is attractive, but science probably won't be enough to keep us there, because cha-ching-ching, etc. 

There are plenty of resources for mining on the Moon: gold, platinum, yadda-yadda, and, rather more unique, helium-3 – an isotope useful for nuclear fusion. But the real dog's gonads to go back for is more spacing. The moon would be a perfect base of operations for, A : serving as a practice ground for learning how to live in hostile places for when we go to certain other planets soon – which we will – and B: fueling up and maintaining vehicles leaving Earth on their way beyond to other spots in the Solar System – when we go, which we will!

We could build mass drivers to shoot objects elsewhere with no need for propellant, establish farms, schools, administration... Buzz Aldrin took a wee on the Moon first day, whatever... But, a beginning. A point of departure to the rest of the Solar System. And one day – long from now, but one day – beyond the Solar System, too.Perhaps. If this is what you wake up to every morning, if this is the view from your lunar window, how would you feel about our petty squabbles back on Earth?

 No astronaut has ever returned from space and said: "Yeah, the universe was alright... Not as good as a nice fight though, eh? COME 'ERE Y LITTLE-" Almost all of them came back more placid, more prudent, and more inclined to see our planet as the fragile marble that it is. And as those lunar humans would look down on our fragile condition, we'd look up at them every night, and it would be a constant reminder not only of the power of human endeavor, but that we're out in the universe now. And surely that would change all of us down here. 

And if we're very lucky, maybe even change us for the better. Fifty years later, we're still living in the shadow of the Apollo program, when hundreds of thousands of men and women came together, spent a titanic amount of money, utilized an ungodly amount of brainpower to achieve something that was, by any estimation, impossible – and they did it. Some days It feels like we've forgotten how to do this: to dream crazy big – together, to reach for something – together, to look out beyond bickering and this "my team-your team" rubbish. There's an infinite playground just waiting out there for us, to explore as brothers and sisters.

 Obviously, the Apollo program came directly out of the "Space Race" between the US and the Soviet Union. It's not like the US went to the Moon just 'cause they fancied a nice view. but the solidarity inside the Apollo program and the directed attention of the American citizenry towards space was like nothing we've ever seen before. Many of you watching this, and me – we weren't alive to see the Moon landings. We didn't grow up with a single event in media that was a human project, on behalf of the entire species.

How will we feel when we see that first man or woman putting that first boot down on the red sands of Mars? I, for one, will be crying my eyes out, just happy I got to live long enough to see my species at the beginning of leaving its cradle and finally learning to walk. And then we will learn to run: to the orbits of Venus, Titan, Ganymede – wherever we feel like! Because that is us because audacity is what we do. Sometimes violently, sometimes misguidedly, but sometimes, every now and then, in solidarity – together, and for the love of reaching one mountain peak just the look to the next. In our solar system waiting – for us! – there are seven new mountains, with seven new sunrises and seven new sets of secrets. 

And if THAT doesn't unify us – Christ, nothing will. And it will all start with the Moon, our home away from home, as the springboard into the multiplanetary age of the human being. "We choose to go back to the Moon and do the other things – not because they are easy, but because they are cool!" To follow our evolutionary imperative, as it began with our emergence from the oceans and our many perilous diasporas across this great blue-green spaceship. "We've been on six dates together, Moon! Sorry we ghosted you, we've been going through some stuff! But we've changed, Moon – no more long distance, oh no, let's get it together properly. 

We're sliding back into DMs, baby! How 'bout it? Let's settle down together and raise a solar civilization, eh?" These are precarious times. So too were they precarious half a century ago, when those first explorers set off for space. If we can hold it together, this might be just the beginning of the beginning for our species. Because we are currently audacity monkeys, but we could be forever monkeys, if we wanted to. And the moon is clearly our door... into that forever.