Today’s poll at CNN is:

 

How should the US proceed with the exploration of space?

 

89% say Manned and unmanned missions: 54,752

6% say unmanned missions only: 3,429

and

5% say Not at all: 3,284

 

Thirty two hundred souls think that exploring space is the wrong thing to do.  Why?  Why would anyone think that expanding the human race is a bad thing to do?  Why would any…  no, I think I’m wrong here, the real question should be why believe in science?  Isn’t that right?  If we are standing face to face with one of these people that say we should not leave the confines of the blue marble we now find ourselves on, what do you think their argument would be?  I’d bet dollars to donuts that it would a religious argument on the merits and powers of god.  Or it would be an argument against humanity, saying that humans ‘think’ themselves so superior to the rest of nature.  Or even an argument about the selfless fear of the individual whom thinks that only evil exists outside of what is readily known.  In other words, the argument would be from some one that hates humanity.  I’ll state this more plainly if it is possible. 

 

Once upon a time there was a boy that did nothing but hide under his bed.  For he feared that a monster would eat him the moment it laid eyes on him.  He spent his long dull life under the bed, never realizing the beauty of a sunset.  Never hearing the glory of an opera.  Never experiencing the gentle stroke of the wind on his sprinting face.  Never living, instead only waiting to die.  Low and behold, he eventually did.  And what great secret did he take with him?  What great glory did he create for himself?  Nothing.  He had nothing to offer and only took from the world.  He was evil, the evil that he so desperately hid away from.

 

Science and space are both necessary parts of the evolution of reason.  They are part of the process of humanity’s search for meaning and the eventual growth of what we are.  To stand up and say that it’s wrong to explore is to hide under the bed.  Nothing good can come of such thinking.  Nothing but eventual death…and let’s face it, that bastard is already headed down the long dark hallways anyway, shouldn’t I spend the few moments I have trying to be something…anything? 

 

It is this constant fear of the uncontrollable that angers me the most about human beings.  It would be better if we were born like the animals, who don’t seem to recognize the passage of time, and the inevitable exchange that will occur.  But yet, we are in a position to learn things that no pet could even hope to explore and what do we do with this gift?  We squander it acting as if it were to valuable to even use.  We hide it.  We flirt with it.  We do everything that is within our power, using harangue to ebb its passing tide.

 

To you the 5% that think space is a no mans land I say only this.  Find the darkness.  Go search the emptiness for it.  Hide away and die.  Leave those of us willing to challenge the very feet of god himself into a fight.  We move into the universe, willing to accept our destruction, because we have hope in that such a great plan as our existence will in the end have great merit and timeless meaning.  All your type does is bleed poison into the hearts of the rest of us.   All your type does it glorify cowards and childish hearts, with no hope, with no love.  You burn fear into us with your branding irons feigning them as magical wands of great intelligence, but they are not.  It is nothing but fear and fear is a blight on the true heart of great men.  So again, please shuffle off now, leave the world to those that wish to enjoy it.  Leave the world to those that search out the darkness for hope of actually finding demons to fight.  Leave us now.