“Such challenges arise in all the great works of human imagination, be they the creation of our world rendered upon the ceiling of a church, or the view of our world evident by making the voyage from the Earth to the moon.”
I wonder at what point the Earth ran out of mysteries. Archaeology and excavations deal with the past, a yesterday that constantly gets overlooked, miswritten, unfounded at times, while the technological development of our planet lies solely on the efforts of our scientists and engineers. We have to live here, for the time being, slowly letting go of the past, rapidly draining our natural resources necessary for future survival, and all the while squabbling about whether that’s a good or a bad thing.
All that’s left in our lifetime is moving forward, one year at a time. So when did our gaze turn towards the sky?
Not that our interest in what lays beyond the stars is a new one; before telescopes and satellites, before a man on the moon and a rover on Mars, you had mathematicians and astronomers such as Aristarchus of Samos and Eratosthenes, observing the orbit of the sun around the Earth and understanding that there was something greater out there, something that made us so small in comparison, and thus proved that, in fact, it is not the sun who revolves around us but rather the other way around.
Back in those days, when we knew so little about anything at all, these mathematical facts were an unimaginable discovery. We take for granted the existence of outer space nowadays and our ability to know of it (to the point where we can have online and real-life groups faithfully standing by the notion of a flat Earth; you do you, I guess.)
And yet isn’t it ironic enough that much of our modern understanding of space comes from the drawn-out competition between the Soviet Union and the United States? While the Space Race was carried out in part through the passion and genuine love of science of astronauts and astronomers, physicists and politicians alike, the race in and of itself was carried out through the antagonistic competition between several of the Earth’s most powerful nations.
It isn’t much of a comfort to know that, in much the same way our understanding of tectonic plates came about through radars developed during the Cold War meant to detect atomic bomb testing, our growing knowledge of the moon and space itself boils down essentially to a see-who-gets-there-first taunt.
Can you blame us, me, for not giving too much of a damn about the inner workings of the galaxy when so much needs fixing down here, on the planet’s surface? Is it truly a huge step for mankind when our first contact with the moon will forever be known as a race?
Will scientific exploration and our need for answers always boil down to lucrative gain?
But I digress; this piece originally came to me after sifting through my podcast recommendations and noticing that many of them take place in space.
You’ve got: Directive, Wolf 359, Strange Case of Starship Iris, Janus Descending, Girl in Space, Moonbase ThetaOut, EOS10, Oz-9, Tendril: The Banshee Chronicles, Jupiter Saloon…even podcasts based on tabletop games, their genre more fantasy than science fiction, dabble into the realm of space and otherworldly explorers. And these are just podcasts in a single language I can name off the top of my head, let alone the countless books, films, documentaries and tales woven even before said mediums came to be.
There are so many space-themed podcasts, stories that revolve around space travel, intergalactic wars, Star War parodies, routine research missions, to the point where working as an officer on a spacecraft becomes dull, just another desk job. Either space is a setting for war and conflict, or a menial workspace, surrounded by intrigue and hierarchy in a capitalist setting.
Yet there’s always an underlying wonder, a sense of grandeur in reaching beyond the Earth’s atmosphere, while also reminding us how special “home” is, not just your home city, your country, but the very earth that houses all those things, that houses your people no matter their ethnicity.
It’s the ultimate trip, the final frontier.
So why do we love space?
Is it the perpetual darkness? The true black of an eternal night glittering with endless stars, the promise of brand new worlds and life, lying closer than ever?
Is it the escape from Earth, a planet that’s constantly dying, constantly in conflict with itself? Like moving off to college or simply breaking free from our families, has Earth become so disenchanted, so routine, that a foreign country simply isn’t enough to satisfy the hunger for something new?
Or is it the humbling sensation that we experience upon looking beyond the stars? Knowing that we’re so tiny, just a blimp in the universe’s eons that our planet can endure or die in the greatest scheme of all and it wouldn’t matter? Do we worry over the death of a single ant? Perhaps, in a butterfly-effect kind of way.
I believe this love of space stems from nostalgia for the unknown. We’ve barely scraped the surface of our solar system, debating on whether Pluto is a planet or not (it shall forever orbit around my heart), and yet so much lies beyond and since we don’t know it, we don’t fear it. Scenarios such as exploitative aliens, warfare in zero gravity, complete planet obliteration remain confined to the realm of fiction. All that science fiction grants us is mere speculation, both the good and bad; yet for once, wouldn’t it be nice to simply observe the heavens without any fear, without any political gain or cynical viewpoint?
The one thing space still has, and will possess as long as it remains untouched, is an eternal childlike wonderment.
Perhaps one of my favorite things about space is the music it has inspired.
What sounds, what chords, do we connect with the majesty of outer space? It’s a strange, semantic phenomenon, in much the same way we attribute certain sounds for wintery music or for scalding desert tunes.
As 1960’s as the original Star Trek intro sounds like, you can’t help but feel wonderment wash over your body in less than a minute, a brave, upbeat melody that makes you feel as though you are being pulled towards the edges of the galaxy and beyond.
Space music sounds like a very innocent admiration, humility, old-fashioned people dressed in chrome and a helmet, gazing upon a desolate wasteland that reminds us of absolutely nothing at all.
It sounds like an adventure and the glittering of stars.
It sounds like that part in a film where the action is building up, with scene after scene of our characters coming together, preparing for the final act, simply waiting for that one moment to GO.
It sounds almost like I want to tear up, like a sudden pang for home, like knowing that there’s so much to be explored I may never get to know about in my lifetime, much less visit, yet still begging to be dreamt about.
And isn’t that what the vast expanse of space ultimately is? Fertile ground to dream upon?
Some people are in awe with nature, the depths of the ocean yet to be discovered or the flora that lies across the sea; some people are in love with the footprints of our ancestors, with the fading yet never forgotten evidence of life before our own. And others remain entranced by the light of dying stars, reaching our eyes a bit too late; maybe someday we’ll find them before they die
Mika is a Mexican writer and translator, pretender, pet-lover, and a mess at 1 in the morning. Follow her on Twitter @frequencymika.
