Space

Humans Must Return to Space

This post may be alternatively titled "Why Don’t We Do Anything Cool Anymore?"

Since I’ve spent most of my life after the fall of the Soviet Union, I’ve never really had the chance to live through any of the grand events in space exploration.  These days most of what we do is routine.  It may sound odd to say that – after all, we get data from the surface of Mars daily, along with all of the other probes we’ve got flying around out there.  However, the advances and successes that we achieve now are basically nothing compared to the early days of the space programs.

I am awestruck by the accomplishments of the early days of the space race.  The fact that Sputnik 2 had a living passenger boggles my mind.  (Before you ask, yes, the fact that Jonathan Coulton wrote a song about Laika started me on this kick in the first place.)  Once I began to dig deeper into that history, even crazier things emerge.

The Lost Cosmonauts theory is something that I was completely unaware of until the other day when I was Wikipedia-hopping.  Basically, the concept is that the USSR attempted to send several people into space before Yuri Gagarin, and Gagarin was only the first person to make it back alive from space.  It’s another one of those things that’s not easily proven, and the facts may never be completely known.  Fueling the conspiracy theories are other incidents in the Soviet space program that were covered up (such as the fire that claimed the life of Valentin Bondarenko); if they covered up something like that to save face, why not cover up other accidents or failures?  The mere thought that people were curious or brave enough to climb into a tin can attached to a rocket is incredible.

The Americans rushed to accomplish the same goals.  The Mercury Project served as the push to get an American in space, and Project Gemini was developed to test procedures and technologies for the farther reaching Apollo program.    The accomplishments in technology and even human spirit were amazing, and they still hold up in my mind as some of the greatest things the human race has ever done.  For crying out loud, human beings landed on the moon multiple times!

The space shuttle and stations have been incredible, but nothing compared to the moon missions and the early missions to get into space.  They’ve locked us into a routine – we’re no longer progressing and exploring, just using what we already have to make advances in research.  The plans put in place to return to the moon and even to go to Mars are a good start, but as with everything these days, there is no guarantee that those projects will go ahead.

I’m not too familiar with most of the Soviet program, which is something I’d like to rectify.  However, I have learned a lot about the U.S. space program in the last few days.  They serve to highlight why I want us to return to space.  Exploration is in our nature.  Instead of stagnating here on our own planet, we should push as far as possible to explore and learn.  Ideally, what I think this planet really needs is an international organization that can draw on everyone’s resources to get us back into space.  Every problem or unknown can be overcome with investigation and work.  All you have to do is examine the early days of the space program – at that time, the things we take for granted as history were flights of fantasy.  Who can tell what history our imaginations can create now?