MESSENGER to space
January 15th, 2008
I don’t know why I’ve gotten hung up in the news about the NASA MESSENGER program. Its Macworld week — and visions of MacBook Airs should be floating in my head, but instead its space.
Once they said space was the final frontier, and indeed it still is. After colonizing the world, taming the West (and leaving it to grow wild again), the only thing we have left to explore is space.
Exploration is good. It proves we are alive. Our intelligence is what sets us apart from the rest of the creatures of the world, so it is only appropriate that we continue to push the limits.
I don’t know much about Mercury. Don’t let that fool you — I don’t know much about the rest of the planets, either, and that includes our own. My father is the space and science nerd. He grew up watching the first space trips, and even today I know he’s probably watching NASA TV at home in the family room, much to the displeasure of anyone else wanting a crack at the television. Space travel was something for his domain; I didn’t want anything to do with it.
Yet today, when so many other things in the news could be taking up space in my mind (like the primary in Michigan, or video rentals on iTunes), I keep tuning in only for reports about the MESSENGER mission. I zone out until the moment NASA officials come on and clap and cheer for the radio connection that takes 80 minutes to travel to Earth at the speed of light.
I’m reminded of an episode of The West Wing, when Galileo V is lost in space. President Bartlet goes out on the portico and waits for the sky to “speak to us.” He spent most of the episode harassing C.J. about her lack of enthusiasm, only for her to discover an intrigue, a curiosity about all it is we don’t know. I feel like C.J. today. And now I can’t wait until we know more.
