It’s not about YOU, it’s about THEM (whoever or whatever they are.)

To many, the thought of space exploration is a joke.  It is an out-dated and unrealistic dream that offers no rewards other than to inspire school children to study hard in science class.  To many, it is a wasteful and altogether pointless endeavor.  To them, tax dollars should be spent at home, not thrown away into space.  And I understand exactly where these viewpoints come from and it’s hard to argue against them.  Never-the-less, to see our once mighty space program dwindle down to a shell of it’s former self; to see the program’s budget cut again and again and again, I can’t help but be upset.  Mankind was meant for greater things… right?

It’s moments like this, when I’m truly upset and utterly frustrated with mankind’s absolute reluctance to reach for the stars, that I find refuge in the optimistic and inspiring words of the late, great Carl Sagan.  And, on most occasions, the work I turn to is Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot. Written as a follow up to his critically acclaimed novel and television series Cosmos, Pale Blue Dot picks up right where its predecessor left off: with Mankind’s first few steps into space.  And it’s the last chapter in particular, “Tiptoeing Through the Milky Way,” that I often flip to and read.  It’s in this chapter that Sagan, always reluctant to speculate too far into the future for fear of being ridiculed, does just that.  And it’s within those pages that I find comfort and reassurance.  It’s in those pages that I’m reminded of something so simple and basic that I feel silly for ever being upset in the first place:  It’s not about me, it’s about them (whoever or whatever they are.)

To paraphrase Dr. Sagan, it’s naive and foolish to think mankind would be capable of leaping off its home world in a single bound.  It takes trial and error… and time, most likely centuries.  And, in the present day, it’s only natural for there to be doubters and pessimists. But to those who think the idea of space travel is a pointless and wasteful endeavor, Sagan offers this thought: billions of years ago, the majority of fish in the sea probably thought the idea of crawling out of the safety and comfort of their dark and murky waters  and on to dry land was also foolish and wasteful.  And yet, billions of years later, here we are.  Millions years ago, Sagan also points out,  the majority of monkeys probably thought it was a pointless and wasteful endeavor to leave the safety and protection of their tall trees and walk upright on solid ground.  And yet, millions of years later, here we are.

Sagan’s solace to me, and other hopeful optimists, is this: evolutionary advances don’t happen in an individual lifetime.  They take place on unimaginable timescales spanning thousands of generations.  And that’s exactly what space exploration is: an evolutionary advance.  So for all of us that stress and worry over the NASA budget in 2010, in a million years, something (and if history and evolution has taught us anything, it probably won’t be “human” by our definition) will look back at these past few centuries, and the handful of centuries to come, as fondly and matter-of-factly as we look back at the first fish to crawl on to dry land and the first monkey to climb down out of the trees.  And, undoubtedly, they will be just as thankful as we are of our ancestors for taking their risks and facing those dangers.  We wouldn’t be here without them.

So, my point is this: don’t be upset that Obama has cut the space program down to a joke…  because this isn’t about him.  And don’t be upset that your grandchild probably won’t be born on Mars… because it’s not about her.  It’s about them, whoever and whatever they are, a thousand, a million, a billion years from now.

Note: You can read Pale Blue Dot online here, along with many of Sagan’s other books, courtesy Google Books (something Sagan would undoubtedly approve of.)  And you can read my favorite chapter here!

Pale Blue Dot: An old favorite.