Space is the Place: Mars and American Identity

In 1893, historian Frederick Jackson Turner published “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” a paper which detailed his theory that the persistent westward expansion of the United States had given the country a unique identity and had been the major force behind its willingness to do things its own way. The introduction of Turner’s theory came on the heels of the 1890 U.S. Census proclamation that the American frontier was now closed—an occurrence that Turner believed would have detrimental effects on the American psyche and future societal progress. There was a pervasive fear that the American experience would be significantly altered without the pull of the unknown West. Of course, the story didn’t end in the 1890s; the nation continued to expand, adding Alaska and Hawaii as states at the end of the 1950s, and the country further turned its efforts toward technological frontiers, using innovation to create airplanes, automobiles, nuclear weapons, and new devices that enhanced communication, health, and human efficiency. The American frontier had not in fact been closed, but had morphed from the deserts of Nevada to something more conceptual and less geographical in nature.

Another, larger frontier opened up during the Cold War, when the U.S. and the Soviet Union both began to look skyward to one-up each other in attempts to be the first nation to ________ in space. Once again, Americans had a new frontier to reach towards. Space, being infinite, provided endless possibilities for exploration and discovery, not even 70 years after the first manned airplane flight on Earth. But after beating the Soviets to the moon, the U.S. has lessened its emphasis on space exploration and in the process its people have largely lost interest in advancing frontiers up above.

This past Monday, while much of the United States was sound asleep, a NASA rover named Curiosity hurtled through the Martian atmosphere and landed safely on dusty, rust-colored soil inside a crater millions of miles from Earth. Hours earlier, while Curiosity began its final descent onto a planet named for the Roman god of war, the nation was left picking up the pieces of yet another mass shooting—this time at a Sikh temple outside Milwaukee. Few 24-hour periods could more aptly display the American tendencies for both pushing boundaries and for self-destruction. The tragic shooting was also a stark reminder that while investing in a space program may be an achievement worthy of praise, we have many more pressing issues to deal with domestically. Some have questioned the prudence of spending $2.6 billion on a trip to a red planet to look for rocks when back home we are faced with a shaky economy, high unemployment, and an endless list of grave problems, ranging from gun violence to crumbling infrastructure to homelessness to global warming. Couldn’t such a gargantuan sum of money have been better spent here on Earth? Shouldn’t we take care of business at home before sending our precious resources into outer space?

The budget of any governmental unit can be viewed as a reflection of the priorities of its people.  We invest in roads because we, as a people, value ease of travel. We fund schools because we believe educating young people is a critical tool for improving society. We fund national parks because we want to protect our natural resources for the future. The reasons for spending billions on a space program are somewhat more ambiguous—largely because they don’t materially affect the average person—yet they are still quite substantial. We fund missions to space because we believe it is in the national interest to advance the field of science, to promote human achievement, and to seek answers to the great mysteries of the universe. While we have often sought to expand our presence outside our own atmosphere due to nationalistic urges, to one-up a rival, excelling in space doesn’t need to be viewed as an agonistic pursuit: we merely must continue to explore uncharted territory because we are Americans and that is what we do. To echo the words of President Kennedy, we must continue to press on in space not because it is easy to do so, but because it is hard.

While much has changed about the world since humans first reached the moon in 1969, what has not changed is how monumental a feat it was for our species, still easily ranking near the top of a short list of human accomplishments. It was indeed a giant leap for all of humanity, not just the United States. Just as Olympians at the ongoing Games in London have shown, there lies a beauty in pushing to the limit what we humans can do. To use the mind and body to accomplish what people once believed impossible. It is often a herculean task to do these things; they are frequently criticized, usually expensive, and always time-consuming. But we must keep our eyes on the astounding value that the end results can give us. While there is no way of knowing what we will find or not find on Mars—elements that make up the building blocks of life or nothing but lifeless, red dust—the potential for what we could learn greatly outweighs the costs. Discovering concrete evidence that life has existed elsewhere in the solar system would be a watershed moment in human understanding about our place in the universe, shedding greater light on who we really are.

This is not to say that funding the space program should be the first or only priority of the United States government. Planned cuts to the space program in the coming years may indeed be necessary, but we should never stop seeking to strike a balance between meeting America’s needs at home—creating meaningful opportunities for all of our people and living up to the lofty ideals espoused in our constitution—while also giving people something to look up at and feel a sense of pride— to not just wonder if little green men inhabit the upper crust of some faraway red-tinted sphere, but to be able to say that humans are capable of reaching that place and actually finding out what is there. We need to continue to push ourselves to these heights, reaching Mars through technology and one day, sending ourselves there (and points beyond) to provide for future generations an extension of the dream that anything is possible.

Though Turner was wrong that American identity would be permanently harmed when the Western Frontier was pronounced closed, he was likely correct in saying that America won’t be what it once was if we take our focus away from the ‘frontier’—regardless of its form or location in the universe. If we cease to innovate, to reach beyond what has been done before, to search for answers, to push the frontier further, we will cease to be who we are. No matter the economy, no matter the current political climate, no matter how difficult things may seem, we must never lose sight of that.