I remember as a young writer of twenty-two writing to NASA. They had a policy of looking into the feasibility of sending a journalist into orbit as they could write about the experience with a better understanding of words than their astronauts. A policy that died or was shelved. I wrote to them as a writer telling them if they sent a children’s writer into orbit the resulting work would inspire generations of children to train as astronauts. They sent me a very pleasant package back with their entire educational literature. If I had been American I might have been given a better hearing.
The sadness of the shuttle missions is that they have ended without achieving the fire in the belly of the populations of the world for space exploration. It all seems to far, so distant. It isn’t the danger it’s just the inability to get anywhere in a lifetime that puts people off. But maybe that’s because we think of exploration in terms of finding things. Every explorer who has ever lived has always found out about themselves on their adventures.
Out there, without landing on anything, we could explore what it is to be extra-terrestrial. To touch infinity like Michelangelo’s Adam reaching out for the hand of creation. To float on a tide of history so immense it encompasses everything that will ever live. A place where no one turns anyone with a vision down because all visions become the possible.