We Can Get Up Close and Personal--If We Dare
Space has become old news in the last decade, with shuttle flights barely making the national press. But two space stories have actually made the news in the last two months. Though seemingly unrelated, they are in fact intertwined and important to the human race’s hopes and dreams for the future.
The first and more visually spectacular was the May landing accident of the unmanned DC-XA or Delta Clipper test vehicle in New Mexico. This program is designed to provide cheap access to space. The DC-XA is designed to work as God and Robert Heinlein intended a spaceship should: It takes off on a pillar of fire from any concrete landing pad and lands on its feet, whole and ready to be refueled and flown again. The prototype’s offspring will operate like airplanes: cheaply, safely, hauling cargo to low Earth orbit daily.
The second story is that a meteorite found in Antarctica, probably from Mars, contains fossil bacteria. We’re not alone in the universe; as close as the Red Planet next door, there once was life.
The passengers of the real-life unintentional spaceship were nothing more than bacteria, not nasty man-eating shape-shifters, and were probably killed when a passing comet or asteroid sent them on their long trip to Earth. But life met science fiction the moment the investigators went public Tuesday.
How are these two events related? Since the announcement, we have been spreading the good news: Man is not alone. From members of the scientific community to the staff of the TV show “Babylon 5,” the joyous response has been “About time! When can we look for more?” The answer is “not soon.” Even with an Apollo-size commitment of the national Treasury, it would be 10 to 15 years before we could send a manned mission to Mars.. In this so-called era of limits, that level of commitment is politically unlikely.
But exploration missions are expensive primarily because NASA has made it so hard to get to space. The energy cost of flying to low Earth orbit is about the same as flying from L.A. to Sydney. There are no engineering reasons why we aren’t having “airfare” wars to orbital Hiltons instead of to Columbus and St. Louis. And once you’re in orbit, you’re halfway to anywhere. With cheap access to space, the manned expedition to Mars could be made for a billion dollars, less than the motion picture “Independence Day” and its licensees will probably gross. If we’re willing to shell out $7.50 to see a movie about aliens, shouldn’t we spend four bucks each to find out if they’re on the next planet?
There is another, deeper reason why we need to go to space. Mankind has always explored, whether to find a new cave or the New World. We have a deep-seated need to explore the unknown, and literally nothing can be more unknown than life that didn’t share our planet.
The burning human question is no longer “Are we alone?” but rather “What form do our fellow creatures take?” DC-XA and research programs like it will forge the vehicles for answering that question. Since this path also leads to the dreams and hopes of breaking our earthbound chains, to a nearly limitless future among the planets, it’s a bargain at any price. It would be tragic if that hope were to smother under the mistaken idea that we cannot afford the future.
