Portrait of Alan Shepard hitting a golf ball on the moon.
Painting by Apollo 14 astronaut Alan Bean.

There are numerous arguments in favor of space exploration, both manned and unmanned.  Fundamentally, space exploration increases our knowledge, and knowledge is good.  It induces innovation, which leads to new technologies and products back on Earth.  The perspective of space allows us to better see our own planet and its changing environments.  The space program has benefits that touch nearly every part of American life.

There are those who complain that space exploration is a waste of money.  The Federal budget is over $3.5 trillion.  NASA has a budget of 18.4 billion, around ½ of 1% of the total budget.  Compare that to the Department of Defense, which has a budget of $743 billion, HHS at $880 billion, and Social Security at $750 billion.  Wall Street got $700 billion.  Even GM got more money than NASA, and they just make cars (which are far cheaper than rockets).  [For other examples of how we spend our money in comparison to space, click here.]

There are numerous scientists who have pointed out that the long-term survival of the human species is dependant upon the exploration and colonization of space.  Life on Earth could be destroyed by asteroids, plagues, nuclear war,  and environmental collapse.  The only way to ensure that our species continues is to have robust, self-sustaining colonies throughout the solar system, and eventually on nearby worlds (nearby being those you could travel to in, say, a few hundred years or so).  As Robert Henlein said, “Earth is too small a basket for mankind to keep all its eggs in.”

These arguments are sufficient reason to fund space exploration, and to encourage it by private firms.  The problem is that all of those reasons are abstract, and removed from the daily struggles of everyday people.  Distant dangers and distant benefits are not enough to galvanize a nation.  In order to revitalize the space program, there needs to be an argument that speaks to the American mythos.

From the moment the first ships landed in the 1600s, until the end of westward expansion around 1900, America has been defined by its relationship with the frontier.  Our early heroes were frontiersmen, and our national identity as explorers and pioneers, along with a healthy distrust of authority, can be traced to the trials and travails of moving constantly into the unkown West.

[Westward expansion also left a terrible legacy of oppression and violence towards blacks and Native Americans.  We struggle with this legacy here on Earth, and may one day have to deal with it with respect to an alien species.  There are no little green men on Mars, so we should be okay for the next few hundred years.]

The national identity began to change around 1900.  As the Industrial Revolution took hold in the late 1800s in large cities of the East, more and more people moved from a traditonal agrarian lifestyle to the cities to work in factories.  A different strain in American identity took hold: that of the American as innovator.  The national purpose changed as well, to focus on business and industry as national pillars.  As Calvin Coolidge said in 1925, “The chief business of the American people is business.”

For the generation that lived through the Great Depression in the 1930s and fought World War II, America became a nation deeply involved in world affairs.  We were greeted as liberators across the world.  From 1945-1991, the US and the USSR engaged in an epic struggle for world domination.  American identity changed again.  Following our experience in WWII, we reimagined ourselves as the defenders of democracy around the world (nevermind if we had to topple a few along the way).

The early parts of the space race were seen as part of the Cold War, and another way to demonstrate our superiority over the Soviets (who were first into space, with Sputnik in 1957).  Even the Apollo moon landing in 1969, perhaps the greatest accomplishment in the history of mankind, was done as part of the Cold War mythos.

The Cold War is over.  Communism has collapsed, and for the first time in many years, America is left without a national purpose.  We tried shoot-first unilateral terrorist warrior as a national identity, but it thankfully didn’t take.  Multilateralism and diplomacy have returned, but careful compromise does not fill the need for a national identity.

What is America’s purpose in the 21st Century?

The exploration and eventual colonization of space provides a new goal, and a new American mythos.  It ties into those American values of exploration and innovation (with a touch of rebellion- what’s more rebellious than leaving your home planet?).

Space exploration allows us to reimagine ourselves yet again, to harvest the positive traits from the West, while integrating our new ideas of tolerance and environmental stewardship.

Mars allows us a revisionist future history. We look out on the red world and see familiar vistas, from our own environs or from the movies of our youth. But this time there are no Indians to massacre, no salmon runs to obliterate, to desert towns to nuke, no Army Corps of Engineers to dam everything wet and pave the rest.

We Americans look on Mars with the hope of national salvation, with the fresh lessons of our own past, and the desire, this time, as the Navajo say, “to go in beauty.”

This is the value of the analogy of the West.

The stars beckon us.  It is our destiny as a species to leave our beautiful green and blue cradle and step into the great emptiness of space.  What are we waiting for?