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Man can get too comfortable on terra firma. It’s cozy here, familiar, solid underfoot. Personally, I like earth because it’s near.
But Beyond Reason considers near and far. That’s why it’s time we consider… space. I’m not talking about elbow room or square footage or personal space. I’m talking about space. Like outer space.
Space is in the air. No, not literally. But figuratively space is in the, well, let’s say, zeitgeist. And just what do we know about space? First, it’s big. You could go for miles and miles in any direction and feel like you’re not getting anywhere. So, it’s like driving across Nebraska. But exactly how big is space? Well, let’s just say that space is so big that someone decided the word “big” wasn’t big enough so instead they say space is vast.
Where is space? By my calculations – all right here on this cocktail napkin – space is up. Some say it’s 62 miles up because then you’re past all those annoying particles, aka, the atmosphere. But others say, why does the arbitrary and changing density of our atmosphere define a word like “space”. One thing both camps agree on is that a cocktail napkin is not the best place for this kind of math.
Space is in the air, err, zeitgeist again because NASA just announced it’s going to send astronauts to the moon. This is perhaps very exciting news for those who might have missed the news that a couple of men went to the moon back in 1969. But this trip to the moon is different. How so? Well, one of the men on the moon will be a woman. That’s good. One man on the moon will be a person of color. That’s good. And one man on the moon will be Canadian. And two out of three is not bad.
In effort to get closer to the action, I went to the Kennedy Space Center and learned a lot there. For example, did you know there are a lot of alligators in the surrounding wildlife refuge? I would imagine reptiles nipping at your heels is a good motivator to make man go up. Yes, there are amazing rockets and shuttles and command centers and moon rocks and all that, but I was also amazed by the gift shop. I bet that gift shop has more patches for sale than any other gift shop in the world.
They say that astronauts are the best of the best. And maybe they are. (Well, and, of course, one Canadian.) But my question is: why would we send our best, you know, away. Don’t we have things for our very best to do here on Earth? I mean, I look around and see quite a few things that could use some attention. Why not considering sending our second best? Perhaps more Canadians?
NASA says they’re going to the moon so they can ultimately go to Mars. And I get that the moon is closer to Mars than earth. But the moon is about 250K miles away from earth and if we’re really going 40 million miles to Mars, who’s really sweating 250K?
Then, let’s say we get to Mars? After we look for little green men, what’s the plan? Colonize the place? Really? Have you seen what we did to this planet?
Nonetheless, we head into space… the final frontier. Or the penultimate frontier. Or the just another frontier. We can’t know for sure until we have a closer look. And for this kind of mission, we must send our very best. And, just in case, one Canadian.
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