Why Explore Space?

Today, all country is moving forward with a new focus for the manned space program: to go out beyond Earth orbit for purposes of human exploration and scientific discovery. And the International Space Station is now a stepping stone on the way, rather than being the end of the line. On the space station, we will learn how to live and work in space. We will learn how to build hardware that can survive and function for the years required to make the round-trip voyage from Earth to Mars. If humans are indeed going to go to Mars, if we're going to go beyond, we have to learn how to live on other planetary surfaces, to use what we find there and bend it to our will, when we came to an unfamiliar land, we didn’t know how to survive in its harsh environment.We didn’t know what food would grow and what wouldn’t. We didn’t know what we could eat and what we couldn't.


Image left: The International Space Station, the most complex construction feat ever undertaken, will teach us how to live and work in space.

If we are to become a spacefaring nation, the next generation of explorers is going to have to learn how to survive in other forbidding, faraway places across the vastness of space. The moon is a crucially important stepping stone along that path – an alien world, yet one that is only a three-day journey from Earth. Using the space station and building an outpost on the moon to prepare for the trip to Mars are critical milestones in the quest to become a truly spacefaring nation. Throughout history, the great nations have been the ones at the forefront of the frontiers of their time. Britain became great in the 17th century through its exploration and mastery of the seas. America's greatness in the 20th century stemmed largely from its mastery of the air. For the next generations, the frontier will be space.Other countries will explore the cosmos, whether our does or not. And those will be Earth's great nations in the years and centuries to come. I believe we should look to its future – and consider what that future will look like if we choose not to be a spacefaring nation.