This week I’ve had the privilege to preview a new series that will debut on the Discovery Channel on Sunday, June 8th entitled When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions (click here to read my review). The six part series traces the first fifty years of NASA’s missions to explore outer space.
While watching the series I was struck by how we no longer consider the exploration of space as something that is important for our country to invest in. It does not seem to hold the same interest for us as a nation as it did when I was a kid growing up in the late 60’s and early 70’s. Perhaps that is because we don’t have bold leadership any longer in Washington.
On May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard became
the first American in space by piloting his Mercury spacecraft on a
twenty minute sub-orbital flight. A little less than three weeks later,
President John F. Kennedy declares
before a joint session of Congress that the United States will land a
man on the moon before the end of the decade. At the time, many in the
space program thought Kennedy was crazy to make such a suggestion. But
as audacious as his boast may have been, he inspired thousands of
individuals associated with the program to work harder to ensure that
his goal was met.
President Kennedy said it best in another famous speech that he made about why we must explore space:
We
choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade
and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they
are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best
of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are
willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we
intend to win, and the others, too.
We need a leader who is willing to challenge us to do hard things.
I think there are many reasons NOT to explore space:
1. Return on investment is low
Especially compared to the returns we get investigating the LIFE forms here on earth, esp. places we know little about, like the oceans, and to a lesser extent, the jungles.
Of course, people might retort that our modern satellite networks and handy gps are two very valuable technologies that came out of the space race. But owning the space around the earth is different than owning the space around, say, Mars.
2. Because we could be spending that money alleviating poverty and suffering – guaranteed results vs. speculative.
3. Theologically speaking, because God gave man the responsibility to govern and take care of the earth, not the wilds of space. The EARTH is the only place we can (and should?) live as a human community. In his book For Time and Forever, the late young earth creationist Henry Morris makes this very point. Note that this does not necessarily mean that we should not care for and manage the space around the earth, but the rest of the galaxy? Perhaps not. But perhaps there are resources out there that could really make a difference here – like maybe mars is filled with gold, or fuel for our cars.
There are also many reasons TO explore space:
1. Return on investment
2. Political and military advantages over other nations
3. World leadership (at least, inferred)
4. Continued assurance that, as the Bible teaches, we ARE alone in the Universe, as far as life is concerned, because it did not evolve, it was created with Man as the caretaker.
In Is Space Exploration Worth the Cost? A Freakonomics Quorum, some interesting ideas about why we SHOULD invest in space were given, but my favorite is the ‘hopeful atheist view’ (though I’m not sure if G. Scott Hubbard is an atheist)
Now there’s a reason to spend billions – to disprove the Bible’s contention that we are created specially, and that all creation stands and falls with the fall and redemption of mankind.