Bring Us That Horizon: An Open Letter to the People and the Policy Makers

“Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, ‘Because it is there.’ Well, space is there, and we’re going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there.” So spoke President John F. Kennedy on September 12, 1962 at Rice Stadium, initiating the second half of the 20th century that would launch the greatest of human achievements: We would for the first time in history, become an interplanetary society. We would do the research, the work, the science; we would develop the technology, the engineering, the hardware; we would develop the courage, the will and dig deep into the innate pioneering spirit; we would struggle, we would break…some of us would die. But we would forge ahead. We would, as we always had before, conquer this new domain. Nothing had changed, we just did what we had done for centuries: We looked to the horizon and wondered what was on the other side. In record time, seven years after JFK’s speech, Apollo 11 landed on the moon…just one small step. It was the costliest scientific program ever undertaken by the US government, both before and after, costing about $206 billion in modern currency adjusting for inflation. It’s purpose? Because we could. Some rocks, some samples…nothing enormous was accomplished on the Apollo missions (beyond the fact they gave us great new understanding of technology that would go into spaceflight later on). But what was accomplished was breaking the next barrier of human expansion. We went to space. We crossed an inky blackness so devoid of anything that even sound can not escape to set foot on a new world. In an incredible bi-partisan leap we made history in record time, setting the stage for future generations to explore, discover and inhabit these worlds. New sources of income would be found from interstellar mining; jobs would be created from all the new industries; worlds would be colonized and new governments would be formed. The fantasies of Star Trek were being realized as NASA grew strong and capable from a glut of funding. The American Dream was taking on a whole new meaning…

Today, the story has taken a dark turn. A series of economic crashes and destabilizing militarization efforts left NASA crumbling, unable to get funding. Projects were cut one by one. Rocket designs were accepted, but scrapped as money pools dried up. A series of deadly shuttle crashes wasted money and caused people to wonder if the risk was worth it…if we should be funding something with such far-fetched gains anyway. As late as the ’90s, NASA had planned Mars missions by the 2020s…now, these plans are all but pipe dreams and the only remnants we have are a few scattered robots wandering the red deserts at the base of Olympus Mons still hopeful for their human counterparts. The space program is all but dead and Kennedy’s dream of the ’60s is lost somewhere under a pile of political muck. In an effort to revive it, the mantle has been handed off to private companies. Sometimes these efforts are successful like in the case with SpaceX. Sometimes they are not. In 2014 Virgin Galactic’s VSS Enterprise exploded mid-air, putting a hard stop on the company’s space efforts for the time being. CEO George Whitesides tweeted “space is hard” in reaction to the incident.

And for some reason, space has become a politically divisive issue. It’s not on par with something like gun control or immigration, but it is divisive none the less. In an era of strong opinions based on the whims of the nextdoor neighbor, it’s a frightening thought that we’d be taking pitchforks to the topic of human discovery. Few politicians seem willing to throw money into the space program…the US hasn’t even had an independent means of launching astronauts since 2011, much less anything more advanced. And many people seem to think that the billions it would take to reopen a viable space program would be better spent on the here and now rather than some starry eyed dream of the future. Education, military, environmental science, social security and wellfare…take your pick. I fear we are the budding cusp of another Dark Ages for when humanity cowers in its present and forgets to explore, we always sink to our worst. The Age of Discovery of the 15th-17th centuries was also one of the most glorious times for expansion of philosophy, science and technology. Human curiosity creates new opportunity and pushes civilization forward. The way ahead is never to stay put and the way out of a sinking ship isn’t to keep bailing water.

To the policy makers I implore you, do not forsake innovation. Do not turn yourself into shills willing to bow out of the pioneering will that made the world what it is today. To our next president, whoever that may be, do not be the president that goes down in history as the one that turned down the Louisiana Purchase. Look to history and let it be your guide. Do you want to govern through a Dark Age, ignoring science, blacklisting technology, regulating innovation and defunding exploration? Or do you want to govern through a Golden Age, encouraging discovery and creating the next generation of Megellans, DaVincis and Newtons. North Korea is a country that feigns greatness, thumping its chest, flaunting its military, building giant structures that look impressive only to be skeletal on the inside. It’s also a country crumbling, devoid of innovation with a public devastated and ruined by years of ignoring human achievement. Do not aspire to greatness; do not pretend to be great. Don’t feign anything…there is no need. Instead, simply be great. Allow your public to foster ideas and grant them valuable services to aid in that process. And no matter what, remember that it still says “we the people” last I checked. I, along with several hundred million others, pledge allegiance not to you or your peers, but to the nation, to the country, to the society in which we live. Do not vote to please a backer. Vote to better the society in which you have been granted a governing position. You don’t need to think space is great; you don’t need to understand the science. Leave the hard stuff up to someone else…just give them the tools to make it happen.

To the people I say don’t be afraid. Space is hard. It will kill. There will be far more deaths, far more destructions, far more incidents and mishaps, far more failures. But there will all at once come success and from that success, however minor, there will spring a new dawning of future successes. We conquered land, sea and air. We saw the horizon and we fell over the edge of the earth getting there. Do we stop now? Do we give up? Is this as far as we will get and no farther? Space is also expensive. It’s expensive for a society to deal with it. But from that expense will come new jobs, new innovations, new technologies and a viable future for humanity. The best things to come from space haven’t even been thought of yet and like all great feats of discovery, from the wheel to the internet, there is no way to tell just how fully it will revolutionize humanity until we take the plunge and see. I remain unsure if we will live to see it, but I promise you, this is the final frontier. This is the future of our species. This is the new wilderness and like all wildernesses, it will take a hard kind of person to fully conquer and subdue it. The civilizations that survive are not the ones that become complacent, apathetic and comfortable, forever looking to patch holes and tweak their current situation. Think bigger than that.

The time is now to bring back that chromatic vision of space from another era: A glistening future of hope for otherwise bleak situations. Forget the grayscale apocalyptic despair that science fiction has become…this is the greatest time technology has ever seen. Make good use of it. Let’s go to Mars and the next time anyone asks you why, just tell them because we can.

I fly a starship across the Universe divide. And when I reach the other side, I’ll find a place to rest my spirit if I can ~Jimmy Web, “Highwayman”