The End of Exploration

As the Economist noted, this coming week will mark the final space shuttle mission. It is unlikely to be replaced by anything American, and the Russians seem content to continue to build the same old space capsules they have been for 30 years. The international space station will cease to exist after 2020. What then? Maybe the Chinese. Maybe not. The world is bankrupt. No, not jjust economically so -- but the world is bankrupt of nobility and morality.

The world, or maybe just the world's politicians, have decided that space is not worthy of exploration. For what could be worthy of exploring in the infinity that is space? The hundred billion stars that exist in the universe? Nothing can be learned from that. Black holes are completely worthless. Wormholes too. Social security is far more important, right?

Exploration has driven man to dream, to build new technologies to reach further and higher than ever before. Whether it be on the mountains, the sea or the sky above, the act of exploration has been the de facto driver of human progress. More importantly, exploration allows us to focus on progress, instead of focusing selfishly on ourselves. While most all explorations were intended to provide riches, glory or both -- the end result is productive no matter how it was achieved.

The only thing that separates us from man 2000 years ago is technology and knowledge. The human body and mind are essentially the same -- evolution takes time, of course.

In that time, no magic formula has been unearthed to allow man to not work. No miracle system has been developed to allow everyone to live a happy life. Humanity has basically the same problems it did 2000 years ago. Diseases have been erradicated, but others still exist. People live longer, but do they live happier? People still get married. They still take vacations. They still like to eat food. And, ultimately, people still die. These things are unlikely to change.

So if humanity is the same at a basic level, why explore? Because of a basic axiom "if you're not going forward, you're going backward." If mankind is not exploring, it is left to focus on less noble causes, like the quest for human pleasure.

Yes, it is very clear that there is another dark age upon us. While we have instant access to all of the knowledge in the history of the world at every man's fingertips on the planet, we have failed to do anything meaningful with it -- and choose on a daily basis to ignore it. Instead, we play games, chat and watch pornography online. We watch Housewives of New York City and the NFL. Hardly noble, we do everything possible to not use our minds for progress.

Arthur C. Clarke dreamed that in 2001 we would be exploring the Moon and Jupiter, not Park Ave. His films inspired generations of humans to reach for the stars, not another Gucci. Unfortunately, humanity fell woefully short, as usual. And we are about to throw it away all together -- the most important exploration in all of the history of mankind, and we're giving up.

In the last dark ages the Catholic Church was the repository of knowledge that kept humanity from slipping back a thousand years -- instead it was only a couple of hundred years lost. Maybe google will perform that function for us this time. If we're lucky.