Boots Of Exploration
#OTD 15 May 2009: my boots at Everest Base Camp; Scott Parazynski's boots up on Everest and John Grunsfeld's boots in orbit. @AstroDocScott @SciAstro #Namaste #adastra pic.twitter.com/pLIprmpZ0Q
— Keith Cowing (@KeithCowing) May 15, 2022
And there is an article in ‘The Hill’ today quoting Gwynne Shotwell that Space X will have boots on Mars, ten years ahead of any date NASA is even thinking about, and probably within ten years.
Sounds like Glynn is channeling a little too much Elon.
No way it it’s going to happen within 10 years.
Gwynne Shotwell
I don’t mean to belittle or dismiss any impressive achievement miles (literally) above anything I could ever dream to accomplish, but when does reaching any particular location no longer qualify as exploration?
The 10th person? The 100th? The 1000th?
I go ‘exploring’ every time I go for a hike in the neighborhood woods but would never label my weathered boots as boots of exploration. Chesterton (rightly, I think) described every inconvenience as an adventure wrongly considered; I am curious what people think in this matter.
When does going somewhere become…just going somewhere?
I think NASA needs to directly deal with this. What exactly is their mission? What should the government be financing? Is it exploration? technology development? in situ resource mining? colonization?
At what point does it become industry or the private citizen’s job? Right now we have Elon Musk who thankfully has the resources and he is leading the way not for purposes of exploration but to expand humankind’s presence. If he is building the technology and sending tourists and colonists, then why does the US government need to send a few select individuals to ‘explore’? Its a lot of money to invest and yet the technology is in private hands and anyone with the cash can now buy a ticket.
Maybe NASA has a role; but if we’re exploring the Moon for exploitation purposes why isn’t it the USGS or the Department of Commerce? With as little as NASA is doing, it looks like NASA is getting out of the space technology development business.