A Cosmonaut's View of Earth

I was lucky enough to view both an annular eclipse  and the transit of Venus over the last three weeks. I find it incredible that I was at the right position at the right time to witness both of these rare cosmic events. Viewing these phenomena really got me thinking about our position in our universe, and where we stand in our pursuit of its exploration. It also got me thinking a lot about Cosmonauts and the Cold War.

I often wonder what it must have been like living through such a risky power struggle during such a turbulent period of time as the Cold War, when everyone’s gaze was pointed up towards the heavens not only out of fear of attack but also out of a desire to explore.When William Winfield Wright read his chapbook at Cal Poly Pomona I remember seeing the arms/space race in a new perspective that made me really consider the growth that came out of the danger of the war (if you haven’t already, you need to check out Cosmonauts). The Cold War has since seemed like an intriguing point in history to me; as our culture was tottering between both great destruction and great discovery, our species rapidly developed and fought its way off the Earth -- and we may have even found some peace in space.

One of my favorite parts of Wright’s title poem, “Cosmonauts,” separates a space explorer from the rest of the inhabitants of the Earth.  Here is “Perestroika”:

“Up in space it is still

the Soviet Union, the idea

however broken that

this blue world is all connected.

Perhaps they will leave me here,

an icon at my little window

passing over what once were

our 2½ oceans,

resetting my watch

for each of our 11 time zones.”

What I find most amazing is that after all of the tension that existed between the two powers of the Cold War, the scientific community has put aside all differences to come together and operate the International Space Station. Perhaps because they saw that it was silly to struggle over things like imaginary lines and 11 different time zones in outer space, or perhaps leaving the Earth allowed them the opportunity to look back and make some kind of sense of the things we can’t see from our terrestrial seats, or perhaps they saw in space that we’re simply all the same.

It’s sad that our culture doesn’t possess the same desire to explore the cosmos that existed during that time, and it's disturbing that the U.S. Military budget for the last 2 years is more than the total amount of funding for NASA's 50 years of operation. It seems that we would much rather stay and fight each other than go off to explore and learn from the universe.

Working together to move our species to space will allow us to look at the messes we’ve made on Earth, and hopefully when we look down from the heavens we will be able to also see the greatness and potential that we have as a species. Getting back into space will re-position our culture and will likely cause us to rapidly adapt like we did the last time, but in order for us to get there we must first choose to explore rather than stay and struggle against one other. We must always choose to take another giant leap.

                                                                                                  --S.pine