When I reveal what my professional aspirations really are, I get this question a lot. -More than most would probably imagine.
What with the risks and the trials, the personal expense and the unknowns, why seriously work to venture into a frontier where so many of the necessities of life are nonexistent?
Sure, people talk and joke about being an astronaut when they grow up, but if-and-when one really considers going – when forced to really, seriously consider the realities of space travel in the modern era – people shy away.
The thought can be frightening. It’s new. For the most part, human space exploration is still in its infancy, and there are considerable (and likely unconsidered) risks.
Beyond the necessity of riding a controlled explosion out of the atmosphere, so much of what we take for granted, like air, water, food, atmospheric pressure, warmth… It must all be taken with you. Emphasizing the point, one of my closest friends (and a fellow astrophysics student at the University of Wyoming at the time) used to call me crazy for even considering leaving the comforts of planet Earth. It definitely wasn’t for him.
So, for the sake of what is perhaps only a little introspective clarity, here it is: Why do I want to leave?
Basically, I feel a compulsion toward the unknown. While the dark, foreboding abyss beyond our current understanding and knowledge is terrifying to many (most?) of us, there’s another way to look at the coin. For while the unknown may harbor risks and dangers, the unknown is also a place where anything is possible. That’s where the discoveries are made.
The sensation of true discovery, (which admittedly I’ve only gotten a taste of once or twice,) is particularly intoxicating to me. I don’t want to spend my life reading about others forging into the unknown; I want to be there, where the action is, where new history is being made.
Striking off into the blank spaces of our knowledge and experience, surprises are in store. -And in a word made so much smaller by our mastery of global communication and connectedness, where so much in life is now predictable, surprises are a rare thrill.
I’ve had enough of studying what other have studied before, seeing what countless others have seen before. For science, for posterity, for enhancing our understanding, and for sheer, personal desire, I want to be one of the ones to set human eyes on things for the first time.
A new life and everything that comes with it awaits above – new politics and policy, new science and new commerce, new challenges and victories – it is all ready and waiting for us to arrive to experience it.
That, my compatriots, is why I want to get off the rock.
I invite you to join me.
Chronicles of an Atomic Astrowright 