Even as you read, SpaceX’s ‘Polaris Dawn’ mission is underway, which is breaking new ground in a number of ways: first ever privately-funded spacewalk, the farthest into space humans have been since the last of the Apollo missions in 1972, the farthest women have travelled into space – ever.
The spacewalk component took place just moments ago, over 500 km above the earth’s surface, moving roughly 26,000 km/h, with billionaire crewmember Jared Isaacman and his crewmate, SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis, venturing out into the void from the relative safety of the modified Dragon capsule to perform a number of tasks wearing the new SpaceX spacesuit – another first, the use of this particular suit in the harsh environment outer space represents.
On top of all that technological complexity, over four million people tuned into scenes from the astronauts’ helmets, from the capsule itself and from mission control via livestream on X. Presumably, many millions more around the world watched through live news feeds. Without fail, humanity’s extraplanetary exploits draw the eye as little else, which is what makes space exploration so valuable in an age of disenchantment and division.
Everyone’s heard variations of the hackneyed exclamations, ‘You can’t see borders in space’ (you can, check out the very clear border between North and South Korea) or ‘If only everyone could experience this [the sight of Earth from space], there’d be no more wars’ (we’ve seen increasingly HD pictures and there are still plenty of wars). And yet, it’s not so much the content of the phrase that’s of interest as the sentiment inspired in the hearts of the utterers.
We can draw a real distinction between the incorrect conclusions arrived at by people’s intellects and the spiritual quickening that occurs in their depths as they behold something, really and truly, wonderful. The former can be argued with, the latter can’t, for it is the inevitable response of finite humans encountering a sense of the infinite, and it occurs regardless of the predispositions of the beholder.
When I talk about the effect of space exploration on us, I’m not talking about any one, particular sight or experience so much as I’m talking about the re-situation of humanity that takes place, a refocusing that can, potentially, carry with it some serious benefits for a people who are ailing in many ways.
Taking people out of the multiplicity of the world and immersing them in the all-encompassing expanse of the cosmos is almost something of a literary trick, or at least, so it has been used by writers and directors for decades now; in our eyes, it moves astronauts from being this or that particular person that we may like or dislike, to being man.
As this takes place, our minds are raised from mundane questions – which of course have their time and place, and rightly occupy the majority of our waking hours – to questions that nevertheless have to be asked by a healthily curious mind: What are we doing here? Where did we come from? Where did all of this come from? Is there anybody else out there? Engagement with these questions is important, regardless of whether or not we perceive them as being immediately helpful or practical.
Weathering a crisis of meaning as we appear to be, with an increasing number of lives marked by either a conscious or unconscious nihilism, every opportunity to ask meaningful questions should be grasped, and clearly adventuring in space provides these in abundance. It matters little whether we’re sitting upon the rocket personally or not, especially when social media’s reach extends so far, right into the capsule of those who do venture forth.
A popular meme 10 years ago or so, right as I was due to leave school, had it that we were perfectly unfortunate in the timing of our births: born too late to explore the world, but too early to explore the universe. This is obviously silly, perfectly exciting and meaningful lives being lived now as ever, but it did speak to the sense that the depths of the world had been plumbed, while the heavens remain out of reach.
Funnily enough, in this writer’s opinion, the greatest utility of space exploration is not even that it provides us with very interesting information about the world, the universe, that we occupy, but that it gives us a sense that we don’t know everything, that our map of the world isn’t completely filled in. As was the case with early maps, where the edge was the domain of monsters and mystery, so too is it for us. It is possibility itself, and an endless opportunity to ask questions and come to better and better answers, about ourselves and the world we live in.
Which is why ‘Polaris Dawn’ is such a suitable name for this mission, at this time. ‘Polaris’ meaning the North Star, which has guided people since our journeying began, and as a result of which, has worked its way into the vernacular to signify something or someone that sets you right. In many ways, human affairs are set all wrong, and any opportunity to ask questions that might undermine our erroneous thinking is to be welcomed. Space exploration affords us one of the best of these, as today’s groundbreaking successes demonstrated.