On the 40th anniversary of the first Lunar landing, we celebrate what was accomplished and lament what is yet undone. The event and its sequel show how much we can do when we have the will, and how little we can do without the will. The Apollo project developed wholly new technologies; nurtured them from theoretical speculation to successful application; and built enormous new facilities and towering apparatus to accomplish John Kennedy’s mandate with time to spare. To those of us of the “Sputnik generation”, Apollo was to be the prelude to a magnificent era of space exploration, leading to the permanent human habitation of the solar system – and beyond. Yet our Nation’s space program was doomed to languish for lack of will the instant Neil Armstrong placed his left foot on the Lunar surface at 2:56 UTC July 21, 1969. The reason is that we never fully understood the absolute necessity, both material and spiritual, for humankind to ply the byways of space and claim all the habitable worlds for our own. We will reclaim the will to reach for the stars only when we understand the true reason for so doing.

Man on the Moon

Numerous reasons have been advanced. Many of them cloak our deep yearning for awe and wonder beneath the claims of fear, ambition and greed. Space exploration to advance national pride and to assuage our fear of hostile nations was what fueled Apollo. The ephemeral nature of this motive is amply demonstrated by the subsequent history of the space program. Once we had beaten the Soviets in the “race to the Moon”, there was no obvious reason to continue the journey. NASA struggled mightily but unsuccessfully to devise alternative motives. Some suggested that commercial ventures involving resource extraction or space tourism could be the basis for a space-faring society. However, this has proved chimerical since space exploration will remain an expensive, unprofitable and dangerous undertaking for a long time to come. Of perhaps greater merit is the claim that continued space exploration will result in technological and scientific advances benefiting society as a whole. To a restricted extent, this is certainly true; although space-related technology development primarily benefits the enterprise of space exploration itself – “spin-offs” are a secondary effect. Of signal importance, however, is the fact that once we refrain from such technological advances, we do not stay in place, but rather move backward. Retrogression has indeed occurred. As Michael Griffin rightly remarked, “What is most striking about this 40th anniversary of the first human landing on the Moon is that we can no longer do what we’re celebrating. Not “do not choose to,” but “can’t.””

Once we reject military, economic and technological motives, what is left? First there is survival of our species. The ultimate threat to an Earth-bound species, of course, is that in five billion years, the Sun will exhaust its hydrogen fuel and become a red giant, incinerating the Earth. Less frequently noted is that, in its progression through the main sequence of stellar development, the Sun will steadily increase its luminosity, until, a billion years hence, the Earth, its oceans having boiled away, will become uninhabitable to all but microbial life. The same main sequence progression will likely doom large-scale human civilization within a quarter to half a billion years. Of more immediate concern, a gamma ray burst or the impact of a large asteroid could happen almost any time within the next millennium. There is less time than we think. To survive such events, we need to build bridges to other worlds and it is not too soon to start. So, survival of external threats is a real and powerful motive to become space-faring.

But our survival faces a more immediate and deeply rooted peril. The extinction of humankind may turn out to be, not a case of murder by external calamity, but a case of destructive stagnation. What we have most to fear is the loss of nerve, the narrowing of perspective, and the spiritual poverty that follow from the lack of a frontier. The yearning to explore new worlds appears to be a fundamental human trait – one of the most noble of human traits - and it is a portion of our humanity that we deny only at our peril. The best way to understand this yearning is to examine the motives of the explorers themselves. Wyn Wachhorst (The Dream of Spaceflight – Essays on the near edge of infinity, Basic Books, 2000) asks: “What motivates those who venture over the edge, who trek over barren plains, through tangled jungle, or across the Arctic waste; who ride on fire over the rocks of the moon, only to yearn for the relentless red desert of Mars?” It is certainly something more fundamental than any of the motives so far listed. In Wachhorst’s words: “What the biographies of most explorers reveal, in fact, is a sometimes selfless obsession with reaching the pristine edges of reality. At the heart of exploration, it seems, is the attempt to complete the grand internal model of reality, to broaden the context of meaning, to find the center by completing the edge.” One is reminded of the transformative impact of the Apollo photos of the Earth seen from the Moon on many people’s concept of our planetary home. To know truly who we are and where we come from, it is necessary that we leave our home, look back, and see it from a cosmic perspective.

To summarize: The true and enduring motive for space exploration is the value and necessity of the enterprise in itself. It is absolutely necessary to our physical and spiritual survival that we become space-faring. My personal view is that behind this necessity there is a teleological imperative: As stewards of the Creator, it is our sacred duty to spread life and consciousness throughout the cosmos. Understanding and accepting this imperative will be a most difficult challenge because a true change of heart is required. But our young people are up to the challenge and I am confident they will find the will to go forward. I maintain that the basic technologies for human habitation of the solar system exist now and wait only for the will to muster, perfect and harness them. The path ahead will be long, difficult, and dangerous, not the clean, convenient romp of a Star Trek adventure. But it is certain that our journey to the stars will be ennobling; will change us for the better. In the end, curiously enough, it may be that in claiming many worlds for our own, we may attain the insight and courage to resolve our perennial, down-to-Earth problems. But this is, perhaps, the subject of another essay.

David Hyland

July 23, 2009