Back to the moon, back to our destiny
As you watch Endeavour float above the earth at a staggering 17,500 MPH I think it’s important to remember who we all are and where we came from. We, as humans, are explorers. We are curious. We are adventurous. We are daring and sometimes foolish. We are capable of uniting the planet over magnificent accomplishments and warring over petty words.
In 1969 Apollo 11 landed on the moon. In 1972 Apollo 17 was the last craft to take any humanoid to our neighbor in the stars. No one has been back since. No one has set foot on anything other than the Earth and our moon.
Did we lose our curiosity? Did we get caught up over petty words and wars so much that we forgot who we were? Who we are?
While NASA aims to put humans again on the moon as well as Mars many question the costs both financially and from a risk standpoint. Many wonder why we should even explore a planet that we can not inhabit, that many see as a fools errand. Even back in 1969 when Apollo 11 landed on the moon, many people asked much the same question.
I started this site to educate people on the value of space travel. To get people excited about putting humans on the moon again. Putting humans on Mars. We are explorers, we belong out there in regions we have never seen before. The rain forests, the oceans and of course the stars. This will come at a heavy price, but the cost of not exploring, not advancing is far greater than that of forging forward.
Space flight has brought us amazing advancements in the quality of living for many across the world and it stands to continue to do the same. Poverty, global warming, recycling and feeding the planet are just a few areas that space travel stand to help us. Once we get over the petty quibbles and problems, take off the blinders we all wear, I think it will become clear that we belong out there, amongst the stars.
Starting directly after STS-123 SpaceVidcast.com will begin a weekly live videocast exclusively on Ustream.tv. The sole purpose of this videocast is to get all of planet Earth excited about space flight and living amongst the stars. Help us spread the word. Help us advance the human race. I hope we’ll see you there.
March 18th, 2008 at 11:37 pm
Great post - I couldn’t agree more. If people watch the video they’ll hear the old guy referencing Columbus even though he didn’t say his name. That’s exactly what I’ve always thought - we need to take the risk to explore the unknown and hopefully dumb luck will help us prevail. If we as humans don’t continue to explore other places, or worlds I feel we might hit a giant brick wall in the realm of technological advancement. Sure our processing power is doubling over and over again a extraordinary rate, but if we don’t put that power to use what good will it do?
At this point we’ve explored the vast majority of our world, save for the deepest parts of the ocean and some remote parts of the polls. While we should keep exploring our world we need to take off now and go somewhere else.
It does suck that we haven’t been to the moon since 1972, but at least we’ve learned a lot about long term space missions through Mir, the Shuttle program and the ISS. These last 30 years of research, even with a couple of tragedy’s have been incredibly positive.
Now, it’s going to be a long 6 years until we can see Orion take off, but man I can’t wait for that to happen!