Why We Go On

The news out of California isn't good. Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo apparently broke up in mid-air on a test flight. One pilot is in the hospital, and the other, Michael Alsbury, didn't survive.

I want to pause for a moment to send my deepest condolences to Michael Alsbury's family and friends. His loss is a terrible one.

After such a loss, it's natural to step back, to wonder if we're on the right path. Some people are asking if it's worth the risk just to send tourists into space for a brief thrill.

But it's so much more than that. Perhaps it will begin with space tourists, but that most certainly won't be the end of it. Is that where we stopped with airplanes? Boats? The wheel?

Invention and progress aren't things we can stop. They continue, no matter how many people say, "No, we've gone far enough. We can't do any more."

Space travel is no different. We'll persist, we'll keep reaching, we'll keep trying, even after tragedies that make us all bow our heads and weep.

Perhaps no one said it better than Ray Bradbury in his story "The End of the Beginning":

       Tonight, he thought, even if we fail with this first, we'll send a second and a
     third ship and move out to all the planets and later, all the stars. We'll just keep
     going until the big words like immortal and forever take on meaning. Big words,
     yes, that's what we want. Continuity. Since our tongues first moved in our mouths
     we've asked, What does it all mean? No other question made sense, with death
     breathing down our necks. But just let us settle in on ten thousand worlds spinning
     around ten thousand alien suns and the question will fade away. Man will be
     endless and infinite, even as space is endless and infinite. Man will go on, as
     space goes on, forever. Individuals will die as always, but our history will reach
     as far as we'll ever need to see into the future, and with the knowledge of our
     survival for all time to come, we'll know security and thus the answer we've
     always searched for. Gifted with life, the least we can do is preserve and pass on
     the gift to infinity. That's a goal worth shooting for.
       (The Golden Apples of the Sun And Other Stories, New York, Harper Perennial, 2001)

We must go on.