Thousands of years ago, our ancestors saw the night sky as a gigantic ceiling, an everlasting barrier between Heaven and earth, impassable except after death.
It wasn't until Galileo's earth-shattering discovery that the so-called "heavens," for so long a mysterious and unattainable faraway place, began to unfold. Within a few centuries, the rest of the developed world came to know the earth, in fact, rotates around the sun. There are people even today who still think otherwise, but the truth is, our earth is one of many clumps of dust in an unfathomably large paradigm.
It became only natural for humans with their larger-than-life imaginations to ask each other, what's really out there?
Riding on the science and romance of this question, countries around the world including Russia and the U.S. began building probes, shuttles and satellites to launch past the atmosphere, to gain a foothold in the newly-accessible territory of earth's outer orbit. Today, almost 50 years after the first human moon walk, there are over 2,200 satellites orbiting the earth, probes have poked around far past our own solar system, and perhaps most exciting of all, NASA has an International Space Station, a fully-operational complex where real people live and work.
It's almost like science fiction. Almost. For all that humanity has accomplished so far, we still haven't caught up to NASA's long-term plans to build human settlements in outer space. Space sure is cool, but why would anyone want to live there?
Maybe it's just a romanticized vision of what space life would be like. As a kid, one of my favorite shows and franchises was "Star Trek." I think for me, and millions of other fans, the true wonder of "Star Trek" was its picture of a utopia that felt completely possible. It painted a fantastical future in which humanity overcame its 20th-century troubles and came together in peace to boldly go where no one has gone before. Surely, if we can dream it, then we can do it, right?
Well, going to space at all, let alone conducting our day-to-day business out there, is not so simple. Star Trek came out of an escapist desire to live beyond the political ugliness of the sixties. It was a time of Cold War, an era when McCarthyism ruined the careers of many actors, politicians and producers. The children of the baby-boom generation were becoming disgruntled adults, and the possibility of death by nuclear fire loomed in the background of everyday life. Yet it was during those hard years that humankind found the strength to leap out into the Heavens like never before.
It was actually because of our trans-Atlantic rivalry that we became involved in the Space Race. Back in 1957, after a great deal of laborious research, the Soviet Union sent Sputnik I, the first man-made satellite, into orbit. And then just four years later, they hit another world record when they sent the first human up there. To Americans at the time, the enemy's proud technological achievement was hard to take, not to mention unsettling; for all we knew, if the Reds could send probes into orbit around the entire earth, they could have the capability to launch missiles at us. So, said our leaders, we'd better get up there, too!
Within the next ten years, our government poured billions of dollars into a series of cutting-edge projects which culminated in NASA's famous moon landing in 1969. One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind. But after decades of research, dozens more risky exploration missions (some of which ended in tragedy), progress to the skies has reached somewhat of a standstill. As the Cold War came to a close and the Soviet Union disbanded, the U.S. government took its eyes off the skies and instead sank funding into more domestic matters. Could it be that after we "beat the Reds," there was less motivation to keep going?
But money and politics aren't the only reasons we aren't living out there yet. Outer space might have cool new isotopes, gorgeous nebulae and maybe even secrets to the origin of the Universe, but there's just not much for us out there. Space missions take years of training and preparation, so anyone who could go there would have to have a good, well-funded reason for it.
But wouldn't it be awesome to go to space for fun? I know I'd jump at the chance! Consider something for a moment, though: what's the longest amount of time you would spend camping out in the woods, on earth? Now imagine that scenario, but the whole time you're confined to a 20-foot area, the only food you have to eat is hyper-processed and freeze-dried and you have to exercise every day or your body will turn to jelly. Oh, and you have to bring your own oxygen. That's what going to space would be like. It doesn't mean it would be a bad time, but it sure wouldn't be a convenient one.
We probably won't live to see the day when we can make livable space for ourselves beyond earth. But I have a feeling someday, maybe even centuries from now, we'll get there. Until then, the cosmos is as close as it ever was for our ancestors, in the endless expanse of the night sky.
