Pale Blue Dot - Carl Sagan [100]
These recommendations add up to a fraction of the full cost of a human mission to Mars and—spread out over a decade or so and done jointly with other nations—a fraction of current space budgets. But, if implemented, they would help us to make accurate cost estimates and better assessment of the dangers and benefits. They would permit us to maintain vigorous progress toward human expeditions to Mars without premature commitment to any specific mission hardware. Most, perhaps all, of these recommendations have other justifications, even if we were sure we’d be unable to send humans to any other world in the next few decades. And a steady drumbeat of accomplishments increasing the feasibility of human voyages to Mars would—in the minds of many at least—combat widespread pessimism about the future.
THERE’S SOMETHING MORE. There’s a set of less tangible arguments, many of which, I freely admit, I find attractive and resonant. Spaceflight speaks to something deep inside us—many of us, if not all. An emerging cosmic perspective, an improved understanding of our place in the Universe, a highly visible program affecting our view of ourselves might clarify the fragility of our planetary environment and the common peril and responsibility of all the nations and peoples of Earth. And human missions to Mars would provide hopeful prospects, rich in adventure, for the wanderers among us, especially the young. Even vicarious exploration has social utility.
I repeatedly find that when I give talks on the future of the space program—to universities, business and military groups, professional organizations—the audiences are much less patient with practical, real-world political and economic obstacles than I. They long to sweep away the impediments, to recapture the glory days of Vostok and Apollo, to get on with it and once more tread other worlds. We did it before; we can do it again, they say. But, I caution myself, those who attend such talks are self-selected space enthusiasts.
In 1969, less than half the American people thought the Apollo program was worth the cost. But on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Moon landing, the number had risen to two thirds. Despite its problems, NASA was rated as doing a good-to-excellent job by 63 percent of Americans. With no reference to cost, 55 percent of Americans (according to a CBS News poll) favored “the United States sending astronauts to explore Mars.” For young adults, the figure was 68 percent. I think “explore” is the operative word.
It is no accident that, whatever their human flaws, and however moribund the human space program has become (a trend that the Hubble Space Telescope repair mission may have helped to reverse), astronauts and cosmonauts are still widely regarded as heroes of our species. A scientific colleague tells me about a recent trip to the New Guinea highlands where she visited a stone age culture hardly contacted by Western civilization. They were ignorant of wristwatches, soft drinks, and frozen food. But they knew about Apollo 11. They knew that humans had walked on the Moon. They knew the names of Armstrong and Aldrin and Collins. They wanted to know who was visiting the Moon these days.
Projects that are future-oriented, that, despite their political difficulties, can be completed only in some distant decade are continuing reminders that there will be a future. Winning a foothold on other worlds whispers in our ears that we’re more than Picts or Serbs or Tongans: We’re humans.
Exploratory spaceflight puts scientific ideas, scientific thinking, and scientific vocabulary in the public eye. It elevates the general level of intellectual inquiry. The idea that we’ve now understood something never grasped by anyone who ever lived before—that exhilaration, especially intense for the scientists involved, but perceptible to nearly everyone—propagates through the society, bounces off walls, and comes back at us. It encourages us to address problems in other fields that have also never before been solved. It increases the general sense of optimism in the society. It