Last week, NASA announced a plan to begin sending astronauts back to the moon by 2018. For $104 billion, NASA plans to build and launch a craft that resembles a combination of the Apollo rockets and the current generation space shuttles.
While the engineering behind these proposed flights is ingenious, the public relations for the project has gotten off to a rocky start. NASA decided to announce the plan in between two major humanitarian crises – Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita. From a PR standpoint, that is a major no-no. As a result, some in the media have balked at the price of the project and questioned its value. How, they ask, can we possibly afford to go back to the moon while we are busy fighting a war abroad and trying to rebuild a major city back home?
However, the first thing we need to understand about the new moon project is that NASA is not asking for more money in order to do this – the money is already there. The new moon voyage is one component of the new space program first announced by President Bush on Jan. 14, 2004.
This plan has been in the works for a while. Despite the unfortunate timing of the announcement, the moon missions are already in the budget.
Furthermore, we need to understand that space exploration has major benefits for our daily lives. While most of us will never leave Earth’s orbit, the general advancement of human understanding has immensely practical benefits. There are, of course, the numerous biological and chemical experiments that can only be conducted in space. Moreover, there are numerous unintended consequential byproducts of space travel.
History has shown that whenever you put a group of smart people together to solve a problem, they end up inventing or discovering some pretty useful stuff in order to solve that problem. Research for space travel has already brought technological advances in medicine, communications and transportation. If you have a relatively new car, there are most likely several components in that vehicle that have their origins in space research.
Perhaps the most important thing to understand about the new moon voyage, though, is that it is an investment that will ultimately save billions of dollars on future space voyages.
The idea is to use the moon as a lily pad from which we will leapfrog further into space. By establishing a presence on the moon from which to build, launch and supply ships, we will ultimately save money on voyages to Mars and beyond. Also, the moon is an ideal place to conduct certain phases of training and research for future space voyages.
For all these reasons, I enthusiastically support NASA’s plan to return to the moon. This weekend, though, I was reminded of another reason.
I was in Portland on Friday and on my way back, I decided to stop by the IMAX theater at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. It was opening day for a new documentary produced and narrated by actor Tom Hanks, who played astronaut Jim Lovell in the movie “Apollo 13.”
Using a combination of NASA archives, re-enactments and computer generated imagery, “Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon 3D” showcased our journeys to the moon in an astounding light.
Dedicated to those who have given their lives in the exploration of space, this documentary shows the viewer what the moon might have looked like for those few explorers who received the chance to take the “ultimate road trip,” as astronaut Buzz Aldrin calls the lunar voyages.
As I watched this film, I was struck by the words on the plaque that the Apollo 11 astronauts left on the moon. “We Came In Peace For All Mankind -“
Journeying to the moon was once the province of science fiction. Now it is fact. Establishing a moon base to launch longer voyages is currently the province of science fiction. Soon, that will become fact. Science fiction is becoming science fact. But in science fiction, space is usually a battleground. So far, that has remained science fiction. Space is not a battleground. Space is virtually the only sphere of human influence that has not been scarred by war.
Space is international territory. And efforts like the International Space Station seek to keep space exploration as a joint, peaceful venture with benefits for all humanity.
In order to fulfill and continue that noble vision, we ought to journey not only the moon, but beyond.
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