February 8, 2003
LEKH LEKHA:
Why we go "out there" (Alan Caruba, February 3, 2003, Enter Stage Right)Out there was where Marco Polo went, discovering the civilization of China. Out there was where Drake and Cook took their wooden ships into the vastness of the Pacific Ocean. Out there was where Christopher Columbus went. Out there used to be beyond the Mississippi, so Lewis and Clarke mapped it for President Jefferson. Out there was the North and South Pole.Now "out there" is outer space.
In his excellent book, The Gifts of the Jews, Thomas Cahill talks about how profound an idea this kind of going forth represented. In Genesis, God speaks to Abraham and sends him "out there":
Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee:and I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing:
and I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.
So Abram departed, as the LORD had spoken unto him...
Since at least that time we've had a unique cultural impetus to look beyond our known world and discover the new, to leave behind country and kin and our father's houses and "go forth" "out there". When folks fret about how expensive it is to explore space, how dangerous, how robots could do the same thing...they seem to be missing the point: ours has not been an inner-directed culture, one that has us sit in our tents and pick at old scabs, ours has been a culture that drives us outwards, that tells us to "go forth". One might wish that we were better at returning to what is known and to our father's houses, but there's an undeniable genius to our mobility and the courage with which we explore. When we lose that we will lose what we are, what we have been. We will become another kind of people and--if the immobile, inner-directed societies of the world are any indicator--it seems unlikely that we'll become a better people. Posted by Orrin Judd at February 8, 2003 7:06 AM
And for the atheistic darwinists out there-- a certain species of plains ape has successfully invaded and colonized every possible land ecosystem on this planet, from the artic to equatorial jungles and deserts. They've even made inroads under the sea, although not much permanent (yet). Space exploration, is just the continuation of that process.
On a day in 1969, a unique event occured-- there was life, for the first time, on the moon. Someday soon life should be spread throughout this solar system, and maybe even beyond. It takes an enormous amount of self-hatred (a hatred of life at any level) to find fault with that.
Life isn't going to be spreading throughout the solar system. There are only 3 or possibly 4 places that life can even visit temporarily: moon, Mars, one of the larger asteroids and possibly the twilight zone of Mercury.
Unless somebody can repeal the laws of physics, everywhere else is out. And we know that.
It'll never fly, Orville
Posted by: oj at February 8, 2003 8:34 PMI think you're overlooking some moons that might be very useful, Harry, but that's getting very far ahead of ourselves. Right now, we should be moving very aggressively into low Earth orbit and then to the Lagrange points. The problem is that attempts to justify this move by appeal to science are fraudulent and any industrial return is too distant in time and uncertain to justify investment. The real reason, perhaps the only reason, to do it is because it's their, but materialists, who always undervalue intangibles like pleasure or daredevilry or wanderlust, never accept this justification.
Posted by: David Cohen at February 9, 2003 1:44 PM