Why We Choose to Go to Space: Human Imagination
Troy Morris, Director of Operations
3 minute read
In the many times I’ve listened to, reviewed, and reflected on JFK’s “Address at Rice University on the Nation's Space Effort,” I am often left pondering and contemplating. It’s stuck with me so assuredly that I’ve quoted it many times, most recently in my previous column, Ascension to Space, which ended with the following, my own elaborations:
“Heaps of ideas are added on by an innumerable collection of humans who dream and look into the distance above our heads. Humanity heads into space for reasons held within, lifted on banners, or debated aloud. We explore that unknown outside our world in the same tradition as upright-humans expanded outside their cave-bound communities. We go to space, because to go above our world and beyond our atmosphere requires and provides in wonderful repetition the call across our human history, that we go above and beyond in all our efforts.”
Inspiration, imagination, and a continuous drive. All elements that strike me when a conversation or topic turns to space activities. Whether fantastical fiction, scientific speculation, admirable announcements, or factual mission reporting, the advancing reality of all science, especially space science, plays into and from imagination with ease. It is from an initial foundation of imagination that many technologies are dreamed in science fiction, discussed by interested organizations, pursued by inspired scientists, and made possible through continued development, until the technology enters the world as a banal fact. Radio, airplanes, cell phones, personal computers, space flight, space stations, and intersolar system missions, all modern realities that have been teased and kickstarted in many imaginations.
While admiring the shoulders of the giants on which we stand, the question is asked of whether innovation fuels imagination, or if imagination drives innovation. While it may be an interesting prose piece for another time, I’ll offer the stopgap answer of equal merit. With significant support of both innovation and imagination, each continues to improve the other. As many areas may lay claim to entailing both ends of this cycle, few stand as strong as the exploration beyond our atmosphere.
I believe there are many reasons for why humanity should go to space and I am often a proponent for the pursuit of space due to the enrichment and development of humanity. This enrichment, whether as songs on space (Space Oddity by David Bowie in 1969), songs in space (Space Oddity by Chris Hadfield in 2013), or any number of creative expressions, flows back into the well of human imagination, inspiring the next wellspring of innovation in many fields. In not just science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (or the STEM fields), but in the arts as well, adding an essential element to make STEAM. It has been said that while a stem brings support, steam brings life into a rigid object. As Robin William’s character expounded in Dead Poets Society, “Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits, and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”
As the beauty overhead has led to stargazing from the earliest humans on, it becomes apparent how the engagement in orbits can entangle the heart and mind; form beautiful creations of engineering prowess, drive a calculating Command Module Pilot to poetry, and be the object of reference for ‘star crossed’ lovers. That ability to travel through space was only a dream of our ancestors, only a possibility for the previous generations, and potentially a regular occurrence in our lifetimes. But as we expand our reach to match our imaginations, the specter of debris threatens this potential. As such, the imagination of innovators is utilized to attempt solutions to the problem. Thus, keeping possible the ability to go to space, and in turn supporting and relying on that spinning cycle of innovation to imagination.