The exploration of space is a worthy goal, and we're glad that Brown is doing its part to help advance our knowledge of what lies beyond our small planet. The University's partnership with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration goes beyond including the NASA channel in our cable lineup. Brown, led by the planetary geosciences group in the Department of Geological Sciences, is involved in a number of ongoing research projects with NASA, including important work to explore Mars and other celestial bodies. Those trained at Brown are doing their part to advance our study of space, too - James Garvin '78 ScM'81 PhD'84 is now the chief scientist for NASA, responsible for overseeing all the agency's scientific endeavors and the lead scientist for Mars exploration, and Garvin lists Professor of Geological Sciences Jim Head PhD'69 in his official biography as an inspiration for his pursuit of the field.
So why does any of this matter? When Col. David Scott, commander of the Apollo 15 mission to the moon, spoke on campus last week about the importance of reaching Mars, one audience member commented that since there are so many problems here on Earth, it doesn't make sense to spend billions of dollars to explore another planet. That's not an uncommon perspective, nor is it without merit. But it is shortsighted.
The dividend from exploring space is tremendous - it's wrong to see it as money, time and effort thrown down the drain. Inconsistencies from one presidential administration to the next take a big toll on NASA, to which over $16 billion of the federal budget is allocated each year, but the very weight of the financial commitment our country is already making to space exploration affirms the United States' dedication to dreaming big and seeing where our dreams can take us.
It is not enough for us to sit in our classrooms, to learn and (eventually) graduate, go on to work hard and fall in love and grow old and die, and never find out more about what is out there. Why should the celebrated insatiable curiosity of the human genus be limited to what we find on our own tiny planet? Who knows what resources, medical innovations, new products or scientific knowledge could come from reaching for the stars? We must explore space not just to learn but eventually, maybe, to live, settling on other worlds and building new lives away from Earth. It sounds like fiction, but so did exploring and settling a distant continent, and today the United States, in all its beauty and faults, stands as the product of that spirit. Mars, the asteroid belt, the moons of Jupiter and Saturn and what lies beyond our solar system - they are the New World we must explore.
The challenge of exploring and settling space will force us to concentrate, to focus our efforts and energy and resources as a nation and as a species. For some reason, President Bush's Vision for Space Exploration doesn't ratchet up enthusiasm like the galvanizing words of President John F. Kennedy pledging to win the race to the moon, but exploring outer space shouldn't be seen as an unnecessary burden - it's an opportunity. As the founding declaration of the Mars Society, a group advocating the colonization of the red planet, notes, "Civilizations, like people, thrive on challenge and decay without it. As the world moves towards unity, we must join together, not in mutual passivity, but in common enterprise, facing outward to embrace a greater and nobler challenge than that which we previously posed to each other." That dream is worth our time, money and effort.
