Space Exploration and the Human Spirit

It's appealling that today the twin frontiers of knowledge are at the polar ends of our vision. Work proceeds apace to unravel the material basis of consciousness ; astonomers probe ever further back into the ancient realms of the universe. The images beamed back from Titan by the Huygens probe were both exciting and frustrating. If only a human had been there - to scan the horizon, take a few steps towards intruiging objects, throw a rock into a pool of liquid gas... in short, to perform the sort of intelligent exploration that robots can only approximate.

The tragic loss of the crew of the Columbia space shuttle closed down shuttle flights indefinately. That was a mistake. Regular shuttle flights were a more inspiring and scientifically productive venture than the space station, in which a pair of astronauts huddle eating rationed food and wasting time confronting emergencies. By its very nature, space exploration is dangerous, but as long as the risk is one that sane individuals are willing to personally accept, we as a society should accept it too.

In A Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell wrote

... why should physical strength survive in a world where there was never the need for physical labour? As for such qualities as loyalty, generosity, etc., in a world where nothing went wrong, they would be not only irrelevant but probably unimaginable. The truth is that many of the qualities we admire in human beings can only function in opposition to some kind of disaster, pain or pdifficulty ; but the tendency of mechanical progress is to eliminate disaster, pain and difficulty.

Now NASA is about to resume human space exploration after many years. First a moonbase, then Mars. The risks will be enormous and loss of human life inevitable. But at least in space exploration, Orwells' fears can be set aside. As we strive for more distant and magnficent goals, technology doesn't crush the human spirit, it allows it to soar.