Anthonares

This week’s selection of articles in The Space Review is predictably excellent. Sam Dinkin, in “The High Road” makes a really important statement about the necessity for cooperation among the ranks of the space advocacy community. He suggests that no one publicly make derogatory or divisive statements because the greater cause is to encourage members of the non-space community to come into the fold.

Though I appreciate and agree with his sentiment, I don’t think that not making divisive statements is the most important step to greater public acceptance of space goals. Rather, I think it is important to tell the greater public why we want to go to space. Daniel Handlin, in an excellent Part 2 of “Just Another Apollo?”, reminds us all (well, at least me) that the real reason we’re doing all of this is because we see the Earth as Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot, or perhaps as our civilization’s cradle on the way to a future much greater and larger than any we can today imagine. In a fine blog entry over at Spaceflight Sandbox on this very topic (pointed out to me by FlyingSinger), the author urges us all to answer the question “Why Space?” with what space means to us personally, rather than what it might mean to society.

Whatever way we choose to do it, it’s clear that we need to get our friends and relatives to understand why we devote great chunks of our time and our lives to this cause. Because I don’t know about you, but my best and most honest critics are those very people. If we can make them understand, and perhaps even support, the cause of human exploration and settlement of space, then we can get anyone to.