Science Fiction and Adventure

July 20^th: The Lost Holiday

Today, while spending the day with my family, we had our breakfast together, I went for a quick swim and later in the day, my wife and I took our daughters to the beach for a picnic.  Yes, we watched some television but not a word was said about one of the greatest events in the history of mankind.  The flags that symbolized our great quest for freedom from the British Crown that flew in abundance just sixteen days earlier were absent.  No flags were flying to announce that this was the day America had overcome nearly impossible technological obstacles to achieve what just ten years earlier was considered not only by the general population, but also by many in the scientific community to be flatly impossible.  Yet, on this date, July 20^th, late into the evening, as a young boy, I sat in rapt attention, my eyes glued to a TV screen in my parents' home watching the grainy black and white images of a human being in a bulky spacesuit climb down a ladder and set foot upon the Moon, taking his “giant leap for all mankind.”

Today, thirty nine years later, it a almost tragic that America, the once great engine of technology has turned away from the challenge of space and the drive to explore and has, in a sense turned inward, seemingly lost in a sea of pessimism that holds us even firmer to the Earth than the gravity that has bound us here since human beings first became self aware. I cannot help but feel in a way, that we as human beings have been given a divine invitation to leave our cradle and venture out into the cosmos by our creator.  There are many profound coincidences about our world and our solar system and ourselves for that matter that add up to more than should have happened by just chance.  Everything from the Earth’s near perfect orbit, our tilt that gives us our seasons and most astonishingly, our moon.  For there hanging in the sky two hundred and forty thousand miles in space, a mere step away in the cosmic scale of the universe is our moon.  Here is an entire world one quarter the size of Earth that is close enough to be reached with chemically fueled rockets.  It is big enough to produce a respectable gravitational field and has all the necessary ingredients to provide all the resources humans would need to reach out into space and the other worlds of our solar system and enrich us in a way that has not been seen since the discovery of the Americas and the “New World” over five hundred years ago.  This time, we would go to worlds that are uninhabited, with riches for the taking and we will not repeat the tragedy of our conquest of the indigenous peoples that populated the Americas those many centuries ago.

Our Moon is remarkable in another way. What are the chances that an exact ratio exists in the distance and size of the sun, ninety three million miles away and our Moon that make them appear exactly the same size in the sky?  Could this just be coincidence? Or, is it possible in some way, like  parents that hang a delightful mobile over the cradle of their child, our creator has given us something to stimulate our insatiable curiosity and our intellect to drive us to discover the secrets of our universe? The Moon itself, hanging tantalizingly close, so close that with technology that had barely evolved from the weapons of Nazi Germany, we could actually get human beings there thirty nine years ago. The Moon is exactly where it should be for our first step out of the cradle, like a father or a mother placing a colorful bauble within crawling distance of a tiny infant, encouraging that infant to venture out on hands and knees to claim that toy for his or her self. This fills the child with a joy that is the hallmark of humans when they accomplish their first goals.  Would it be possible for humanity to dream about that first step into the cosmos if there were no moon, if the first goal was Mars, an almost impossible distance for our early technology to achieve? And what about our moon as the perfect launch pad for spreading our numbers out to the planets and one day to the stars? The riches of space, once harnesses by mankind will make every other “golden age” that had existed in the past, pale by comparison. For this will be an age of unlimited energy that can be harnessed from the sun using huge solar collecting structures built in space.  It will be an age of unlimited chemical and mineral resources not just from the Moon but one day from the asteroids, great orbiting mountains or iron and nickel. Just one small captured asteroid could provide the mineral resources for the United States for several years.  Someday the hydrogen gas of Jupiter, a world that could hold a thousand Earths will be tapped for fuel to power nuclear fusion reactors that will not only drive the commerce of a global and interplanetary civilization but will drive our first ships out to the stars, to new worlds in orbit about other suns.  But, before that, like the toddler that with love and encouragement from his or her parents, goes from crawling to walking, we will take possession of a world much like ours: the Planet Mars.  It will be a world that we can live on.  Already we have found vast reservoirs of water, frozen below the red soil.  Water, which will provide oxygen for those early colonists and hydrogen for rocket fuel. One day we will create a green house effect on Mars and make a world where we can walk about with nothing greater for protection from the environment than a heavy jacket and we will then become a two planet species. But before that happens, we must make an investment, yes, an investment of money but one that will repay us a thousand fold.  More than this, however, we need to make an investment in spirit and confidence and optimism that we as human beings, God’s children, we can accomplish great things and take to the stars using the stepping stones that have been give to mankind for just this purpose. We as a species are not just meant to survive but to thrive and to achieve greatness.                                            

Like the young child who was taken the fist steps to adulthood, and fills his or her parents with joy, I believe stepping out beyond the confines of our planet will give our creator great joy, that his children recognize his gifts and have summoned the courage and the will to take those gifts and use them wisely.

As I look back on the close of this day, July the 20^th, 2008, I see us as making many wrong choices in our technology and our terribly limited use of outer space.  We have forgotten the deeds of those who walked upon the Moon those thirty nine years ago and let ourselves slip into a pervasive pessimism.  We cannot turn our backs on the gifts set before us on an unlimited table.  We cannot chain future generations to a life shut off from the stars and we cannot disappoint our maker by refusing to use the free will, curiosity and intellect we have been given.  Let’s make July 20^th that day it should be: Not just a national holiday, but an international one.  A day that man, like a tiny child first crawled from the cradle to accept a parent’s first gift.

Chris Berman