It is almost time.
It is the dawn of the third millennium of man, and a long last we are seeing some real progress in the space program. A fleet of brand new Atlas III rockets, designed to carry extremely large, heavy loads into orbit, will be actively employed beginning this spring.
Two revolutionary unmanned devices are due to be sent up: the first being the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, a multi-spectral telescope 25 times more powerful than any previous one, that promises to take the sharpest and closest images of deep space ever witnessed by human eyes. The second is the Space Interferometry "Planet Seeker", a probe armed with two powerful telescopes and a 33 foot mirror that will scan distant star systems to spot and analyze any planets within such systems, including planets that may have oceans, forests, oxygen, and, therefore, life. The latter will be launched in 2005.
NASA has announced and published two separate but unconfirmed plans to land and establish permanent settlements on Mars. The very first ion propulsion system has been successfully tested on a probe named Deep Space One. This is a revolutionary new kind of engine that uses charge xenon particles to produce spectacular, and steady, forward thrust that has so far reached speeds of 8,000 mph (keeping pace with an asteroid!).
But, perhaps the most exciting of all, the International Space Station is currently under construction in high Earth orbit, two massive pieces already connected. When completed, this station will be the most state-of-the-art scientific research center ever constructed. Experiments in hundreds of fields form medicine to engineering to aerospace will be conducted there, and could quite possibly be the scene of some miraculous breakthroughs. It will be larger than two football fields and be visible with the naked eye from Earth.
And that is all within just the next six years. If I were to respond to all these intriguing facts with a single, all-inclusive phrase, it would have to be this: It's about bloody time.
Never in the history of the space program have we ever been able to claim so many advancements, so many steps to the future. And there can be no doubt that those breakthroughs will spawn more, in the coming decade, and those will then spawn twice as many as before, and on and on exponentially, until, at long last, dare I suggest it,space travel is widely considered an attainable and believable alternative to choking on our filth fast consuming Earth and making it uninhabitable.
How many years, or decades, have it been since you've been able to smile excitedly at the prospect of space travel? No, I'm not talking about John Glenn and the nine-day geriatrics theatre we all had to endure recently. I mean REALLY be proud of what you were seeing; something that seemed to tear a hole, however minuscule, in the fabric of time and let you peer into the future.
It wasn't during the Reagan-era "Star Wars" garbage.
It wasn't when Challenger vaporized in the stratosphere.
It wasn't when NASA announced its 18th shuttle mission, crewed almost entirely by apes and crickets.
Fact is, the last time you were able to beam with pride at man's achievements in space was in 1969, when Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon. Old news footage once showed me what I believe to be the greatest example of innocent wonder about space exploration I've ever seen: Walter Cronkite, reporting the landing live, and the look in his eyes made that veteran reporter nine years old again. It was priceless.
And it was thirty years ago!
What have we really accomplished since then? The moon landing was a decade long project of immense cost and devastating complexity designed entirely to prove to the Soviets that the Americans were superior to them. he knowledge discerned from these landings was minimal, and it was determined long ago that the moon had nothing worth going back for. To be fair, it was a tremendous morale booster for the nation in a time of great darkness, but was soon overshadowed once again by Vietnam.
The generation preceding over our own waged the Cold War, and chose to abuse space as nothing more than a platform for weapons of mass destruction, or as a means to destroy said weapons (the a fore mentioned "Star Wars" garbage). On every other possible opportunity stretched out before them, the "baby boomers" remained complacent and grievously short-sighted. I have always been confounded by the baby boom generation and their opinions of the space program as a whole. It would seem to me that the generation that witnessed the first manned orbiting flight and several moon landings would be pretty open to the future space travel represents, a future that is both bright and inevitable. Yet, every time I broach the subject with anyone over 40, I am met with a dismissive wave, sometimes with an accompanying chuckle.
They tell me that there are more important things to spend time and money on than space travel. Then, they give me the proverbial pat on the head and send me on my way, my crazy theories about space stations and colonies forgotten.
This is the kind of attitude that gave us practically squat in the filed of space travel in the last thirty years.
The world has a lot of problems. Yes, we do need to spend hundred of billions of dollars every year on social programs, foreign aid, environmental preservation, etc, etc, etc.
But, it is the height of ignorance to try to make up the difference by dipping into NASA's already low well of cash, as some members of Congress would just as soon do... more on that in a minute.
What we do in the next hundred year in the field of space travel will be looked upon one day as one of the most crucial times in human history. For decades, it seems that no one would recognize this fact. Space was a novelty. Many of the astronauts were reformed fighter jocks and the boys at NASA were wiry geeks everyone snickered at in high school -- how could anyone expect to take that seriously? Ha. Ha. See paragraph 1 of this piece -- no one's laughing anymore.
And then there is Congress. There is an oppressed minority in Congress today that not only recognizes the vitality of the space program, but actually pushes legislation that would further its cause.
If you study this minority closely, you will notice two factors common to most of them: 1) They are almost all Democrats. 2) Most of them are young. You will also notice that these young Democrats are seriously outnumbered by old Republican and other naysayers who treat the space program with about as much respect as a circus midget with a bladder control problem.
More than engine malfunctions or micrometeorites or power failures, these small-minded bureaucrats are the single greatest threat to the space program ever.
We at DFFQI believe that the majority of the American political machine treats NASA with a barely contained contempt, like a cruel master tossing his starving dog a tiny bone just to shut it up.
Issues of space are breezed over with some snorts and snickers and then passed aside to some peon committee, forgotten. And when the time comes to shovel more money to MediCare of the Pentagon so they can set some small country on fire from the air, it'll be NASA's measly pocket they'll be reaching into. Years ago, the government cut all fund to SETI, deeming it unnecessary, even ludicrous. If is wasn't for Project Phoenix, the air waves would still be silent with the forgotten efforts to discover and contact other sentient life.
But this is the stuff of science fiction to them. They refuse to step into the future. They don't care. And the poor people at NASA are constantly walking a tension wire that straddles the line between reluctant acceptance and utter oblivion. If one major incident, just a single one, occurred that endangered or took the life of an astronaut, all government funds would be cut off with the swiftness of a lightsabre. It almost happened with Apollo 1 was incinerated on the launch pad. It will happen again if something else goes wrong.
God help us.
Space has the answers. The more of us that go into space and the more frequently we go, the more we will all see that it holds the key to absolutely everything here on Earth. Cures for diseases. Sources for power. Thousands of fresh natural resources. Population control. Deeper meanings into the origins of life. A greater understanding of ourselves, our Universe... even God.
Space is the future.
Space is hope. It only the rest of us could see that. It took decades to get into space, and as soon as we did the news magazines and various blow hard journalists had the arrogance to call this "The Space Age". Humanity is not even halfway to the Space Age. Humanity right now is dabbling in a prospective time period that has the potential to turn into a hopeful era that might lead to the Space Age.
Yes, or ascension into space is inevitable, but how successful it ultimately is depends on how soon we attempt a true ascension, and how progressive we are one we get there.
It's going to take decades more, probably longer. It's going to cost trillions of dollars. And it's going to cost lives. But, and this is skirting dangerously around a terrible cliche, space is the last great frontier. And just as sail-driven schooners pounded across unknown oceans to pioneer new lands on Earth, ion propelled space ships with rotating hulls will pound through expanses of space and dense planetary atmospheres (probably backed by heavy warships) to build humanity's empire in the stars.
And when Sol goes supernova and the Earth turns black and scatters to dust across the cosmos, humanity will be watching from afar, safe and sheltered; bidding an emotional farewell to the planet which sheltered it, raised it from the primordial ooze, and carried it to the stars.
When Sol has collapsed in on itself and Earth is gone, we will still have George Lucas, and Franklin Roosevelt, and Saint Peter, and Robert the Bruce, and John Wayne, Rowan Atkinson, and Matt Groening, and Harrison Ford, and Ewan MacGregor.
We will still have them in the recesses of our culture and our minds, because we had the courage to move behind this tiny blue marble. We will live on.
But, as Star Wars: Episode One - The Phantom Menace's Trailer A says: Every journey has a first step. Our first steps begin now, with this new generation of humanity. The baby boomers and conservative congress are fading away. Their day is gone. Now, it is time at last for us to look to space, not as science fiction or an amusing novelty or an impossibility, but as the next step in our evolution, and as, ultimately, the salvation of our race. Our scientists are no longer marked as daydreaming geeks clinging desperately to some radical notion doomed to failure. Our astronauts are no longer fighter jocks or bench pressing test pilots. And we are no longer a generation of people who will let the ascent to the stars be overshadowed by a war of greed or fear. We are smarter and stronger than we have ever been. We are experts and artists and we learn from our mistakes.
It cannot be denied that there will always be opposition to this philosophy. Some poor, tragic Philistines will remain stuck in the past forever, and be it a year from now, ten years from now, a century, or a millennium, there will always be people labeling space expansion as the cause of decay and the conclusive reason for rickets. DON'T BELIEVE ANY OF THAT.
Such naysayers are going to go the way of the dinosaur, are are the acid-lined arguments they spew out so they can forget about space and go to the nearest bookstore and buy the latest weight loss book and Microsoft instruction manual.
All of civilization is, in fact, moving forward. Even the narrow minded conservatives are far more "forward" thinking than they were just 50 years ago. Perhaps it is a good thing that some of them will always be with us, to be the voice of experience.
But none of us must let pessimism and doom saying cause hesitation or fear ever, or ever again.
We are moving forward to space faster than ever before, and the world's opinion on the issue is at last starting to broaden. But man, do we still have a long way to go. Have heart. Have faith. Have patience. But remember: It is almost time.
It is almost time.
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John Paige
5.9.1999