Phoenix - The End of Exile? (Part 1)

As I write these words it seems like we’re doing a pretty good job of “exploring space”. After all, every time I go online I can see brand new images of Saturn and its moons and rings, taken by the Cassini spaceprobe. I can enjoy high definition video of the surface of the Moon, taken by a Japanese satellite. I can rove and roam the ruddy rock-strewn fields of Mars by looking at images taken by not one but two “rovers” trundling across its surface, and there are several orbiters whirling around the Red Planet too, taking and sending back stunningly good images of its mountains, craters and valleys. And looking at the calendar I can see that we’re less than a month away from the landing of ANOTHER probe on Mars – Phoenix, which will land in the martian arctic to look for evidence that maybe, just maybe, that part of Mars was once a friendly enough place for life to exist…

Yes, the solar system seems to be full of space probes. They’re everywhere! And they do a great job, such a great job that many people believe that space should be the exclusive domain of machines like them, because they are better at exploring it than human beings ever will be. Why? Well, machines don’t need expensive life support systems, like human explorers do. Machines don’t get “personal problems”. Machines are cheaper to fly than human beings. “Leave space to the machines,” many people insist, “it’s just too dangerous for us…”

But these people are missing one basic point: machines might be more reliable, cheaper and safer to fly than humans, but they have no heart, no soul, no imagination. Space probes are dead. They carry cameras to take photographs, spectrometers to measure chemistry, magnetometers to measure – well, magnetism. But they can’t – and will never – take the place of a pair of wide-with-wonder human eyes or a rapidly beating, excited human heart when it comes to really seeing, really experiencing, really “getting” a place and making it seem real. If pictures taken by machines were “good enough”, if all we needed was to ‘see’ a place, then we’d send flying cameras everywhere, and no brave explorers would haul themselves up Everest anymore, or hack their way through the Amazon jungle, or trudge across the Arctic or Antarctic ice, they’d be happy and content to just flick through copies of National Geographic or do a Google image search instead. If photographs were good enough to allow us to ‘know’ a place, then people wouldn’t pay to go on holiday to see the Pyramids, the Taj Mahal or Times Square. If pictures were good enough to make us feel like we’ve “been” somewhere, then walkers and hikers here in the beautiful Lake District wouldn’t pull on their boots, heft rucksacks over their shoulders and head up Cat Bells, Skiddaw or Helvellyn.

You can take a photograph of a sunset – whether it’s taken on the edge of the Grand Canyon, the top of Everest or the shore of Lake Windermere – and show it to a million people, but that picture couldn’t possibly hope to convey what it felt like for you to stand there and WATCH it, to feel the warm, golden sunlight on your face, to look up and see the huge sky, to feel the air start to grow cooler, chillier as the Sun dropped lower and lower…

No. Real exploration requires a human presence. Eyes, ears, heart and soul. Even if they had been around in those long ago days, machines could not have taken images with as much passion, drama and beauty as the writing we find in the travel journals of explorers Lewis and Clark...

Photography did exist in the times of Charles Darwin and Shackleton, and yet we still devour the words in their journals. And that’s why many people – myself amongst them – believe that true space exploration is only carried out by people. Exploring space means exploring it In Person, with boots on the ground and eyes on the sky.

But as you read this, how many people are in space? Three. Yes, that’s right. Just three. As you read these words, only threepairs of eyes are looking down from Earth orbit; only three wide-eyed astronauts are searching for their hometowns on the surface of the spinning globe below their craft; only three hearts are beating faster at the sight of Earth shining beautifully oh so far beneath them. But for their quiet conversation, and the background electronic chittering of comms satellites and spy platforms, Earth orbit is silent.

And sitting here at my computer, looking out the window as the cold rain slants down from a grey sky on this windy Sunday in the Lake District, I can’t help thinking that that’s wrong. Just wrong.

And I can’t help feeling angry, too.

This isn’t a new feeling by any means. One unusually balmy night last month I was in my yard, quietly putting away my trusty telescope after using it earlier in the evening to view a small group of sunspots spattered across the golden face of the setting Sun. Nothing special about that, I know. But an hour later, as I watched a satelliteflaring in the north east, instead of feeling inspired by the celestial sights I had seen, as I usually do, I found myself feeling depressed. And lost.

I hadn't expected to feel that way on such a beautiful evening. After the Sun had set I had turnedto see the Moon rising in the east, looking like a bloated yellow hot air balloon as it drifted up from behind the hills... a short while later ISS crossed the southern sky, very low, an orange spark scraping the treetops and church steeples as it sped eastwards, fleeing from the sunset... as ISS faded Mars shone over to the west, with a paler light, a steely glint of pale pink in a lavendar-hued sky... then the Iridium flared into life like speeded-up film of a supernova projected onto the dome of the heavens...

In just an hour or so I saw all those things, and more, but as the magnesium-bright Iridium-light faded from the sky I literally froze on the spot, suddenly aware that what I was seeing above and around me mirrored something bigger, something... deeper, darker. The sense of depression that washed over me then took me by surprise, and the longer I stood there the deeper my despair became. Because the sky was… quiet… lifeless… nothing was happening Up There above me.

Wrong. Just wrong. By now, I thought, and think today as I write this, I should be looking up and seeing not just one but half a dozen space stations arcing over my town. Space shuttles and space-planes should be scooting back and forth from low Earth orbit like airliners crossing the Atlantic. Flares of light should be appearing and then vanishing after a few moments asanother expedition set off for the Moon, Mars and worlds beyond. But no. The sky of 2008 is quiet, lifeless. And instead of witnessing a Hegira-like human expansion out into the solar system, we’re witnessing a period of what feels very much to me like withdrawal from space.

If any proof of this was needed, it came last month, when it emerged that NASA was seriously considering switching off one of the Mars rovers that have revolutionised our view of the Red Planet and increased public awareness and appreciation of Mars a millionfold. Thankfully the proposal evaporated away under the combined hot blasts of media attention and public protest, and both rovers remain safe – if weary and worn down – on Mars, awaiting the arrival of the Phoenix lander on May 25th. But the fact that shutting down a still-working, data-gathering probe on Mars was even being considered was a sign that Something Is Wrong. That news story, repeated on hundreds of websites across the net, was proof – evidence, like a blood-stained knife found at a murder scene – that as we approach the end of the first decade of the 21st century, we have, physically, mentally and spiritually, Exiled ourselves on Earth.

It is now four decades since the first Moon landing, an anniversary celebrated around the world every year with joy and nostalgia, although every year it seems less fuss is made than the year before. On a big “round number” anniversary, for a couple of days every TV and radio show, newspaper and magazine reminds us that it is x years since Armstrong and Aldrin bounced and bounded across the ashen lunar landscape. Perfect-smile presenters - who hadn't even been born when the first footprint was pressed into the lunar dust - reflect on how wonderful the Glory Years of Apollo were, and emotionally declare how, for one wonderful day, the Universe seemed ours to explore and command...

But when I go into schools today to give Outreach talks I actually find kids who don’t believe we went to the Moon – or worse than that, didn’t KNOW we’d been to the Moon. They don’t know that forty years ago the people of the world looked up as one, in awe and wonder, and, seeing the Moon, knew that there were two of them, two human beings, standing upon it, looking back at them.

I pity those kids, in some ways, but in others I envy them, because their ignorance means they don’t have to suffer the same sense of loss that I do. They don’t have to look up and feel the anger I feel. They don’t have to look up at a fingernail clipping thin crescent Moon and think: “That should have a face scattered with lights, pinpointing the locations of bases, laboratories, observatories and outposts.”

Yes, poets still wax lyrical about the Moon, country singers still serenade their darlin’s beneath it, and artists still feel inspired by its silvery light. But for people like me, frustrated by our Exile, moonlight isn't romantic, it is like salt, pouring into wounds cut into our hearts by years of apathy and lack of vision. I look up at the Moon and my first thought, every time, is “We went there, and ran away.” How pathetic does that make us? The Man in The Moon should smile down at us with a face decorated with twinkling lights. Instead he stares down at us all with a look of pity and contempt on his dark, abandoned face - pity for our lack of ambition, and contempt for our delusions of grandeur.

Then there's the ISS, still orbiting the Earth proudly and defiantly, despite everything the Universe, politicians and even space enthusiasts throw at her. Okay, so she has her faults – too expensive, limited science capability, small crew – but I still am amazed and fascinated by the ISS, and I’ve become very fond of her. She's become a familiar and welcome sight in my sky, and I go out to watch her arc across the southern skyat the end of my yard every chance I get. The most complicated machine ever built by man, the most ambitious construction project in history, the greatest example of international collaboration ever, her place in history is assured and more than justified... But even I have to admit that sheis going nowhere as a resource, and is underused and neglected shockingly, almost criminally, by the very people she should be wooing.

It’s almost unbelievable, but before she is even completed the Powers That Be are discussing how to abandon and destroy her. I mean, how stupid is that? I’d like to get all those Powers into a room, lock the door, grab each one by the throat and bang their heads against a wall, shouting “LOOK AT WHAT YOU’VE GOT! You’ve got a space station! A real space station! You can use it to make new medicines! Study how the human body is affected by being in space! You can use it to study the Earth and the climate! You can use it as a hangar for building spacecraft to go to the Moon and Mars! You can use it as a safe lab for studying rocks from Mars! Why can’t you SEE that?!?!”

But already some people look at ISS and can't help thinking of it as a sick and old family pet that is suffering needlessly and should be put out of its misery for compassion's sake. I disagree. She’s a marvel and it’s us who have let her down, not the other way round. But as I write these very words, ISS is orbiting the Earth almost empty of crew, her modules echoing to the sound of only two voices, the laboured electronic breathing of her already-ageing computers, and the creaking of her hull as she circles the globe every ninety minutes. ISS circles the Earth as a monument to our species' (or rather, our species' politicians') short-sightedness and cowardice. ISS flounders in the sky behind schedule and looking for a reason to exist, a plaything at the mercy of US and also Superpower Politics, a pawn in the tortured game of Monopoly which masquerades as NASA's annual budget round. When its crew are sleeping I’ve no doubt the ISS echoes to the mournful whispers of the Ghost of What Might Have Been...

If it had been supported properly, ISS would have been a wonder, a marvel; as it crossed the sky, a Venus-like beacon, children would have been able to stare up at it and know it was a place they could go to in their future, when they "grew up". They would have been able to gaze up at the stepping stone from where Mankind will begin its journey out into the cosmos, the door we will open and step though into the Milky Way. Instead it orbits the Earth like an illuminated “Space: Off Limits” sign for those kids, because by the time the children of today grow up the ISS might not be there. It’s infuriating to think that in just a few years she might be instructed to burn up in the atmosphere, Enterprise-like, watched by millions. Make no mistake: if she does, no phoenix will arise from her ashes. Even as the sooty remains of her cremated corpse spread around the world, a second International Space Station would be many years – probably decades - away from completion.

And although I didn’t see it that night, my mind wandered to the space shuttle, and how it provides further evidence of our Exile. Each awe-inspiring shuttle launch is merely a prelude to another orbital delivery run or ISS service call. The shuttle takes things up to the ISS, fits them to it, and comes home again as fast as it can. How desperate it must feel to be an astronaut floating in the shuttle’s payload bay watching another module or pallet being bolted onto a space station already under a death sentence, and to look up and see the Moon and Mars, the stars themselves, almost close enough to touch...

Yes, standing outside on any clear night now I can’t help thinking that we have turned our back on the stars, on the Universe itself, and are becoming content in our Exile. We've grown used to sitting here in our safe, quiet little corner while the Universe blazes all around us. The Universe is calling out to us, beckoning us... but we tell it "no thanks, we'll just stay here and watch this paint dry..."

It's wrong, it's all so wrong. Nature has evolved us into curious creatures, inquisitive creatures; we have eyes to see things, hands to touch, feel and manipulate them, brains to make sense of them. We need - we are driven - to look what's over the next hill, and the next one, and the *next* one. But instead we're turning away from the horizon, ignoring the lure of the hills. We're suffocating here, shaking and shivering as our world shrinks around us and telescopes and spaceprobes show us that the Universe becomes bigger and more beautiful every day.

It has been said many times, in many forums, that "We need a new Frontier!" We don't. We already have one. The Frontier is just a couple of hundred miles above your head, and is called Earth orbit. It's the Frontier because we can't go beyond it. But beyond it lies wonder upon wonder, all of them just waiting to be walked around, touched, painted and drawn: first, the craters and cold-ash plains of the Moon... then the ancient volcanoes and canyons of Mars... beyond them, the wealth of the asteroid belt... further on, the Jupiter-lit, honey-coloured ice plains of Europa and the frozen-coffee deserts of Ganymede and Callisto... further out, the slowly-lapping methane seas of Titan and the sooty-mountains of Iapetus call to us too…

But no. We prefer to explore the Solar System from the safety of our armchairs, over the Net, through the unblinking eyes of our robotic ambassadors, not in person. We are content to study the cosmos from our own "back yard". We watch shuttles go marching up to the top of the gravity hill, then come marching down again, and convince ourselves we're "exploring". We pour over fantastic paintings of imaginary astronauts exploring lunar and martian landscapes, yet shackle our real astronauts to Earth, with invisible chains just a few hundred miles long.

( ** Part 2 of this post can be found below, or by clicking here if you have been brought to this post ** )

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