Important Note:

Opinions are fun. My friends tell me I am someone with lots of opinions and that's fine since I don't get mad at others when they disagree with me. In this same spirit I am interested in hearing yours views as long as you are able to share your views without boiling over. I look forward to hearing from you. I tend to write in the form of short essays most of the time, but contributions do not need to be in this same format or size. Some of the content here will date itself pretty quickly, other content may be virtually timeless, this is for the reader to judge.

Displaying 1 - 1 of 1

Is Man Done Exploring?                                                                                    

Posted at: Sep/06/2012 : Posted by: mel

Related Category: Historical Insights,

A few days ago, Aug 25th of 2012 to be exact Neil Armstrong passed away at the age of 82. He is most remembered as the first man on the moon in 1969 with his famous words, “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” It has been over 30 years since mankind left any new footprints on moon. I don’t really want to eulogize Armstrong, though I will recount some of his exploits. Instead I am going to visit man’s exploration of his world and beyond asking whether this chapter in our curiosity to visit and chart the unknown, may be fading into the yellowed pages of history books.

The dictionary defines exploration as “an act or instance of exploring or investigating”, or “the investigation of unknown regions.” Clearly, going to the moon would qualify as an unknown region, but it is hardly the first chapter in man’s history of exploration.

Most text books say the “Age of Exploration” or “Age of Discovery” began in the early 15th century and lasted until 17th century. There is now doubt that a great deal of new land was opened up during this era. Most of this era is characterized by Europeans exploring the world beyond their borders and shores by sea. This exploration was necessary for trading purposes because the Ottoman Empire was tightly controlling overland trade from the Middle East and Asia into Europe. While the reasons may have been for financial gain, the result was a tremendous advancement of geographic knowledge and territory as new trading partners and trade routes were established. Since this history was written by European’s and their ancestors it would be more correct to call it the “European Age of Exploration;” such is the nature of history.

I personally have never been good at accepting everything I read in text books. I believe the age of exploration is marked more by when man was willing to take risks to go look for and explore the unknown. In the 6th century BC (now called BCE) Greek explorers first began charting North Africa and North African’s first started sailing to the southern shores of Europe. While not well known in the West, Hyecho of the Korean peninsula was exploring and mapping Central Asia to Persia and India during the 8th century. By the 10th and 11th centuries Erik the Red and Leif Ericson has explored and established colonies in Greenland and Newfoundland respectively.

In the 15th century European exploration of the globe really expanded. With the exception of Christopher Columbus, it is doubtful these explorers were seeking glory or bravado. Vasco Balboa is credited with ‘discovering’ the Pacific Ocean (European perspective). Balboa was rapidly followed by Ferdinand Magellan who circumnavigated the globe in the early 16th century opening up sea lanes previously not known to Europeans.

North America was explored by men such as John Cabot, Thomas Cavendish, Verrazzano, Louis Jolliet, Henry Hudson, Lewis & Clark, John Fremont and John Wesley Powell. None of these men appear to have been seeking glory and a swashbuckling place in history with a romantic personal legend. Obviously, fame comes to those who do something special or go somewhere first. Nevertheless, most of these people avoided public life in favor of continued expeditions and the chance to document their travels. Powell is most remembered for his 1869 river trip down the Green and Colorado rivers that included passage through and documentation of the Grand Canyon. He also led a number of other expeditions that explored the Rocky Mountains and the American West. Based on his knowledge of the region he fought for years with Congress to restrict the vast railroad driven expansion of the west. The railroads were granted large tracts of land in exchange for their west ward expansion. Unfortunately, Powell was largely ignored until his vision of an overdeveloped west proved true with the dustbowl era of the 1920s and 1930s.

By the late 19th century even the headwaters of the Nile River in central Africa had been mapped. Many newspapers reported that exploration was only history as the entire globe had been charted, but explorers have more imagination and zeal than most newspapers. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries exploration became less about new lands and more about going where no one had gone before. Men like Robert Bartlett, Albert Markham, Richard Byrd and Robert Scott led expeditions to the North and South poles braving the harsh environments of the Arctic and Antarctica regions. There was no wealth to be made in these expeditions, only the advancement of knowledge.

Typical of the explorations of the 20th century was Edmund Hillary and his Nepalese Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay who became the first climbers to reach the summit of Mount Everest in the Himalayas. Despite the fame he garnered from his Everest assent he devoted most of his time after that to a trust he had set up to help the Sherpa people of Nepal building hospitals and schools.

Going in the opposite direction, in January of 1960, Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard descended in the bathyscaphe Trieste to the bottom of the Marianas Trench. Considered the deepest place in the oceans, the Trieste recorded a depth of 35,814 ft (6.78 miles). If these names are new to you it shows that exploration seldom leads to sustaining fame, fortune or glory.

The age of flight and space travel opened up a new realm for exploration. Pioneers like the Wright Brothers and Charles Lindbergh helped to take aviation from a dangerous novelty to the routine, fast & safe mode of transportation that it is currently considered. The space race of the late 20th century created pioneer explorers such as Yuri Gargarin John Glenn, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong.

Being men of my lifetime I know something of Neil Armstrong and the other astronauts of the Apollo-11 mission. On their return to Earth, the astronauts of Apollo-11 were mobbed by kings, prime ministers and presidents. While being showered with awards and medals, schools were named after them and the cameras never stopped recording the handshakes with dignitaries. Despite all this attention, none of them considered themselves to have performed some great heroic act such as hard charging into the face of danger. Shortly before the Apollo-11 flight Armstrong remarked to a reporter “For heaven’s sake, I loathe danger.” In an address to the America’s National Press Club in 2000, Armstrong offered the following self-portrait: “I am, and ever will be, a white-socks, pocket –protector, nerdy engineer, born under the second law of thermodynamics, steeped in steam tables, in love with free-body diagrams, transformed by Laplace and propelled by compressible flow.” He sure doesn’t sound much like the flamboyant adventure seeking heroes of our favorite movies. I suspect that most of the explorers that came before Neil Armstrong would be similar, methodical, nerdy and maybe even a little shy, but still very focused and driven.

By the early 20th century man had crossed every ocean and climbed nearly every mountain on our planet and exploration seemed passé. Technology and aviation has allowed man to visit the deepest reaches of our oceans and leave footprints in the lunar dust. As a result of these endeavors sea travel has become routine and safe in just the last 100 years. In a similar way, air travel is no longer reserved for an exclusive few and in its brief history has opened up the world to millions of travelers.

While the desire to expand knowledge of new flora & fauna is admirable, exploration has traditionally been driven by the desire to overcome trade barriers, create new trade opportunities and expand the lands a society populates, develops and exploits. The world’s population has more than doubled in the last 50 years and yet we have mapped the entire globe leaving no new places to colonize. Fresh water, arable land, food and natural resources are at a premium. These key items for life will only get scarcer with time.

While there was a great sense of national pride that came with sending explorers to the moon, this is not likely to lead to a solution for our dwindling space and resources here on earth. Despite the optimistic content of science fiction novels, there is currently no realistic way to create large enough colonies on the moon or Mars to relieve the challenges we are facing on earth. It seems clear to me that exploration for the traditional reasons has reached its end.

I began this discovery with the intent of arguing that Neil Armstrong’s lunar footprints represent the end of our “age of discovery,” but I now see that as wrong. If traditional exploration still exists, it will be to open up previously inhospitable regions of the earth's poles, oceans and continental interiors to human habitation.

Our exploration of new places is not done, new technologies will make Mars, Saturn and Jupiter accessible to explore, but only for their scientific value. Our current understanding of science makes the possibility that these extra worldly places will solve earth’s problems very slim.

The passing of Neil Armstrong does not mean exploration is at an end, but his legacy is not likely to be remembered for opening up new lands. He will instead be remembered for challenging the limits of where man has been and expanding our knowledge of the universe.

The chapter on man’s history about exploration for expansion appears to be at an end. Fortunately, curiosity lives and we will continue to visit new places beyond earth to expand our understanding.

Comments (0)                                                                                                                                                    [Add Comment]