JOHN OSTRANDER: Our Final Frontier
SPACE: The final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.
We’re a frontier nation. Always have been. If you weren’t happy were you where, if you looked for new possibilities, new challenges, there was always somewhere to go. That concept, that feeling, brought people from other lands to this one, from the pilgrims to the later great European migrations. As late as the Dustbowl and the Great Depression, people uprooted from where they were and went somewhere else, often California. African-Americans, seeking a better life, made an exodus from the Deep South into the Midwest, to Chicago and Detroit and other cities. Someplace else has always held promise to us as a people and, I think, helped define us.
Star Trek also evoked the concept of frontier with its opening narration. It’s the first thing we heard when we first saw Star Trek. Later shows and movies would alter it slightly, changing “five year mission” to “ongoing mission” and “to where no man has gone before” to “to where no one has gone before”; both, to my mind, improvements. By now we know it so well that we hardly ever really listen to that invocation anymore but it’s worth looking at.
Think of hearing those opening words for the first time – ever. There is a promise of adventure, of hope – they define frontier. They reflected an aspect of America at the time – a belief in ourselves and our ability to achieve great things.
I saw Neil deGrasse Tyson, the director of the Hayden Planetarium in NYC, on The Daily Show this last week. I love watching Tyson – he is a terrific cheerleader for the manned exploration of space, not only enthusiastic but able to communicate that enthusiasm. He was selling his new book, Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier, but he was also decrying how we, as a people and a nation, have given up on space. After the moon landings, he noted, we settled back into the space station and the shuttle, boldly going over and over again where lots of people have gone.
Don’t get me wrong – I think the space station is a remarkable achievement and the shuttles were important and the loss of two of them and the lives within were tragic. Neither program, however, really ignited our imagination the way that the race to the moon did or the opening to Star Trek did. There is no reach outward. There is no frontier.
I think we need a frontier. I think that we, as a nation, have fallen inwards and are devouring ourselves. A frontier makes us look outward and upward; it demands the best from us if we are to survive. What we currently slog through in our lives is far from our best – and offers damn little hope of reaching something better than what we have.
Reaching outwards, to other planets, to other stars, presents risks and problems but we find ways of solving those problems and overcoming those risks and, in the process, makes us better.
I know there are those who say it is too expensive to explore space with people. Manned probes can get us there cheaper and without the risk to human life. However, I think that risk is what’s important. It’s humanity against the elements and, without that risk of death, is there really an achievement? However sophisticated the Mars’ probes are, they are not humans. They are machines. There is skill but there is no courage.
Some people have said we shouldn’t go back into space until we solves our problems here on Earth. That’s not going to happen; there will always be problems here on Earth. Solve one and another pops up. Many of these problems are hardwired into us as human beings. However, so are the virtues and strengths of us as a people and they are never better on display than we reach outwards – to another planet, to the stars, to one another.
We, as a people, need frontiers and, as Star Trek pointed out, space is the final, the ultimate, frontier. Let’s seek out new lives and create a new civilization. Let’s unwrap our imaginations and explore possibilities.
Warp factor baziilion, Mr. Sulu.
MONDAY: Mindy Newell
He was also on the Bill Maher show Friday and, IMO, even more eloquent about exploring.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson wrote one of my favorite travel books. it was called The Pluto Files. Well- if by travel book I mean book about a place that while reading it I had the urge to drop everything and head there immediately. Only the lack of cheap public transit to the kupier belt stopped me.
I don’t think Pluto has done well by DeGrasse Tyson. I’m a big fan of his (Tyson’s, not necessarily Pluto’s), but, damn, c’mon. Why dump on Pluto?
I suspect the big, invisible hand of the Disney Empire lurking here.
Saw Dr. DeGrasse Tyson on Bill Maher Friday night, too, Martha and John. Love that guy!
P.S.: I am SO pissed off about the cuts to NASA and the end of the shuttle! The one thing that I’m really disappointed in Obama about. (Yeah,yeah, I know that’s lousy syntax! But so is “Where no man has gone before.” :-D )
Mike Gold: Pluto Files makes Tyson’s argument very well. In fact he points out Disney might play a part in why America is one of those countries uncomfortable with Pluto not being a planet. The fact that their might be Kupier Objects bigger than Pluto makes things a lot more interesting. Pluto goes from being a small, dinky, awkward and oddball planet to the prototype for finding something new and different. It’s not the end of the solar system but the beginning of the frontier.
What I miss about the various Star Trek TV shows is the sense of wonder of space and of space travel. The more recent space TV shows (like BSG, Caprica, and Firefly) they seem only show the dangers and never the wonder and beauty of space.
I also like Dr. DeGrasse Tyson and Derrik Pitts they seem to be the only 2 that try and make a case for the human race to return to space.
Not to belabor a point, but to thrust it in a somewhat different direction:
http://mdwp.malibulist.com/2012/03/getting-to-tom…
Manned probes can get us there cheaper and without the risk to human life.
They can? Well, that’s a neat trick.
;)