"We are going." Voiced by William Shatner, NASA's 2019 promotional video gives a voice to many team members contributing to the 2024 Moon mission. The sincere, even cadence of the narration, and sure-footed tone of the closing statements of the video video gives surety and credence to the concept.
However, in this post, I want to challenge the notion of travelling to the Moon, Mars, or anywhere else. What if we do not go? What will this do for humankind? What are the longer term prospects for us?
"We are going" NASA 2024 Moon Mission promotional video. Voiced by William Shatner, 2019. Credit: NASA
Paraphrasing Elon Musk, it is better to go out with a bang, than a whimper. And without inter-planetary spread of human life, exiting the cosmic stage in a whimper has a much higher likelihood.
With no focus on the human growth toward space-faring, development of advanced materials and technologies or missions to settle other planets and moons, humans can look forward to hugging the Earth ad infinitum. With this, comes a risk of stagnation. In the same way that avoiding opportunities for growth personally causes stagnation in yourself, so too the human race can fall in on itself.
Consider that when you set yourself a challenge, to learn a skill, to improve a skill you already have, you take steps forward. You plan and make arrangements and carefully step outside of then expand your comfort zone, having taken that step. We cannot look forward to this opportunity if we stay on Earth perpetually.
At a very basic level, by challenging itself to step onto other planets, as has been dreamed about in science fiction, written and on-screen, humans dare to seek adventure and pleasure and satisfaction. By doing this, we use more and all of ourselves:
Our Creativity to design solutions to engineering and operational challenges
Our Resilience to endure as a frontier species - taking life further into the universe
Our Consciousness to see, experience, wonder and dream - of ourselves, the universe and everything in it.
Just writing these aims raises spirits of excitement and satisfaction in me. Knowing that knowledgeable and capable exploring humans are preparing for this endeavour is reassuring. This tradition, ney, inherent motive force in humans is moving us forward. Ever since we stepped down from trees as upright apes, through our migrations as early tribes throughout the planet, we have been on the move. Together as one species.
By staying-put on Earth, our outward expanding nature that binds us together runs a risk of unravelling, leaving us more isolated and exposed to terminal risks. By this I mean, international cooperation breaking down and squabbles, wasting time in the short term - not seeing eye-to-eye, strong-man posturing while populations suffer. In the longer term, this breeding ground of resentment, intolerance and inward-looking gives a higher propensity for resource wars.
A tell-tale of the high likelihood of when, not if, we make it to Mars, comes with our uniting to recognise the mortal challenge of our biosphere breaking down. Much has been made of the climate change, global warming, pollution, resource shortage challenges that we face as a species, albeit with the negative consequences borne unequally. By more and more individuals waking up, they are driving change to a more sustainable future.
I see more and more stories indirectly linking the development of clean technology on Earth, the quest for environmental restoration and protection, to the exploration of Mars and beyond. It is more clearly expressed through the recent SpaceX carbon capture prize of $100 million offered by Elon Musk.
Shot from the Prize website - touting the $100 million quite attractive prize for achieving a scaleable Gigaton carbon removal technology/ project. Credit: Xprize
The prize has a clear application on Earth - to gather specific masses of Carbon Dioxide from the atmosphere, and store it aware for geologic periods in a stable manner. By achieving this, Earth citizens can buy time to move to more sustainable energy systems without suffering the most extreme elements of climate change. The portents of which we are already seeing in regularly unseasonable weather globally.
There is a thinly veiled side-quest baked into this prize. It would be churlish to ignore Elon's Martian ambitions which sit alongside everything he does. Taking this into account, we can look side-ways at the prize and see it as a vehicle to accelerate the open-sourced development of a critical system for Martian colonists. I've written about the prototype oxygen plant aboard Perseverance rover right now, shortly embarking testing along a series of planned oxygen generation sessions during it's years-long exploration mission.
In another example, the billionaire Japanese artist has bought up a first commercial crew mission to the Moon, around and back to Earth. Courtesy of SpaceX, this mission opens the doors to space tourism in something amounting to a reasonable commercial endeavour. Virtuous circles will feed off this activity and further lower the cost of such actions as more humans get involved and invest to expand their own horizons.
Contrasting with the spirit at the start of the article, there are some clear actions which reflect an ambition to expand the human race. At the same time, there are forces of scepticism and vested interests which do not have a use for such action. You too, notice such forces are at work in ourselves day to day.
By stepping out and growing yourself, you champion the spirit of "We are going" and in your and my small part, we together support this mission in the wider human community.
You can reach me on Twitter: @Ronnie_Writes
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