Smart Art: Space Exploration

Some thoughts on space exploration

For a brief time, "space exploration" was synonymous with "Soviet threat" (in the USA). But by the end of the 1960s, after the USA repeatedly sent men to the moon and nobody else did, it was synonymous with "Kennedy Space Center" and was almost uniquely an American area of expertise. It was certainly an American area of dominance.

By the end of the first decade of the 21st Century, the USA was spending more on its military than all other nations combined were spending on theirs. This insanity pretty much destroyed any hope of properly funding a space program. Consequently, the USA got out of manned space flight.

That said, the USA and many other nations send unmanned space probes all over the solar system (and beyond). It takes far less money and other resources to work with unmanned space probes, so the scientific (and other) return on the space exploration dollar is far, far higher than with a manned program.

This doesn't settle the popular imagination, however. The popular imagination, especially in the USA, isn't fired up by scientific discovery. It's fired up by romantic images of human discoverers boldly going where no man has gone before. That theme has been drummed into the popular culture in many ways, not just through William Shatner's voiceover.

Despite being tossed about by changing political priorities and the politicians with their mission challenges that largely do not make sense, NASA is, for the time being, still recognized as the authority on space exploration via sending man or machine into space. The NASA Website is an awesome resource for anyone interested in space exploration.

We do explore space in ways other than by sending machines out there. Any kid with an optical telescope can be a space explorer. Optical telescopes are very limited in their use, however. One reason is that because many bodies in space reflect electromagnetic radiation that isn't in the visible spectrum. In many cases, these bodies are invisible to users of optical telescopes.

Radio telescopes are the frontrunners today in seeing the far off reaches of the universe. One of the largest such telescopes is the  Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory (HartRAO), which covers a vast tract of land west of Johannesburg, South Africa. Many people think of a radio telescope as a big dish on a mountain, but that's really not the case. They often consist of widely separated elements spread over significant real estate. And scientists don't really "see" those spectacular images you find in magazines and on Websites. These are re-rendered from their original "appearance" to look as if they were photographed in the visible light spectrum.

There's recently been talk of human colonies on the moon and on Mars. The sheer cost of this, not to mention its many other constraints, makes it a non-starter. That won't though, put a damper on the meaningful exploration of space. Those efforts will continue and are worthwhile not for colonization but for helping to unlock some of the deepest mysteries of the universe.