Taking Note Of Time

Much has been written this week about the historic Apollo 11 mission of forty years ago. Happily, all three of the men who flew that mission-- Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins-- are still with us, and Buzz Aldrin, at least, is still extremely active in trying to push space exploration forward.

The best historical analogy to spreading into the Solar System is probably the European exploration of the world beyond Europe during the Age of Discovery. That thrust led directly to the world we know. The parallel with a coming age of expansion into space is far from perfect, but we might still be able to learn some things from it. One of those things might be the speed at which history can move. To take one example-- in 1600, there were no English colonies on the North American mainland. Two centuries later, on the North American mainland, an independent nation of roughly four million people, based on former British colonies, elected its third president, Thomas Jefferson.

Two Earth centuries is a cosmic twinkling-- and not so terribly long on the scale of human civilization, either. When people argue space exploration is really something for the far future, we may do well to remember the future can occasionally pounce upon the inattentive. Where might humanity be in space two centuries after Apollo 11? Maybe nowhere-- but maybe living in comfortable, prosperous communities throughout the Solar System, on the worlds we know and on worlds our descendants build for themselves, perhaps preparing to spread to another star system.

With any luck, our future will be entirely in our own hands.