'If you could see the Earth illuminated when you were in a place as dark as night, it would look to you more splendid than the moon...'
Galileo Galilei
On a recent trip to Moscow, a workmate and I paid a visit to the Cosmonautics Museum where the 'Conquerors of Space' that had blasted off in the name of advancing the Soviet cause were celebrated, almost as though Neil Armstrong had never taken his small step.
I wandered amongst the replica models of modules from the Vostok programme of the 1950s; the coffin-shaped capsules designed to transport dogs into orbit, and their slightly scaled-up equivalents for their human counterparts which, to my eyes at least, appeared to have all the technical sophistication of an over-sized baked bean tin. How such craft ever managed to survive the intense velocities and thrust pressures that were exerted upon them appeared to be something of a miracle in itself.
In the decades-long race to conquer space, Russia and America carefully manufactured enthusiastic consent from their respective populations to fund and pursue their imperialistic endeavours. In the wake of possibly the bleakest period in world history, the Second World War, with its detestable ideology fuelling untold barbarity and culminating in the horror of 'the Bomb', it is perfectly understandable that the masses sought a new 'grand vision' to invest some level of belief. If planet Earth was no longer quite so attractive in the light of such destructive evil, then the tempting propensity to turn attention to the frontiers of space was perhaps a wholly rational response.
From the start of Sputnik 1's extra-terrestrial bleeping, to Kennedy's solemn pledge that men would walk on the moon; the global morale needed a tremendous injection of vitality, and the technologically prosperous epoch of the 1950s was the ideal time for the Prozac of space exploration to be administered.
What was far more surprising, and speaks rather more profoundly about the human condition, was just how insubstantial the impact was on the collective psyche.
The Space Age may have only lasted, according to J.G. Ballard, from the sonic response of Sputnik 1 in 1957 to the first re-entry splashdown not broadcast on TV in 1974, the merest of blips on the human evolutionary chart. In truth, the kind of fundamental shift onto a higher stage in the evolution of the human race failed to materialise in any real sense; dissipating away from anything substantive and into branding, merchandise and Hollywood sci-fi blockbusters.
The Apollo landings on the moon simply didn't provide the mass transcendental galvanisation in an imaginative or aspirational sense; instead, perhaps alienated by the sheer scale of the event, people slowly lowered their gaze to the more immediate and tangible earth-bound concerns. We did not, as Kubrick envisaged, have a colony settlement established on the moon by the year 2001; on the contrary, the zenith of the Space Age has become tarred by the modern brushstrokes of cynicism - apparently 7% (some 22 million) American voters believe the moon landings were faked.
My workmate's enthusiasm for the testaments of space exploration and the boundless possibilities for human advancement into the wider universe was infectious, and surely, no one could see any of the Hubble telescope images - vast coronas of opalescent colour splattered across the blank canvas like a cosmological Jackson Pollock - with anything other than awe. And yet, I could not help but try and peel away the carefully presented artifice of the museum to explore the less reverential reality of the subject matter.
It would have to be conceded that technological advances in space travel have yielded great benefits in terms of communications, environmental and meteorological investigations. Yet the fundamental moral dilemma persists - how can such far-flung ideological pursuits be justified when so many civilian problems remain? Particularly in the case of the Soviet Union, which subjugated large swathes of its population with poverty whilst funnelling millions into an ultimately futile race with the Americans, who themselves had a great many alternate earth-bound causes desperate for investiture.
I cannot help but ruminate on whether the Soviet Union's fateful collapse was in fact sealed by ceding the race to the moon to Nasa in 1969, and whether the psychological impact of such a defeat might perhaps offer a comvincing explanation for Russia's aloof and isolationist stance on the world stage; forever keen to portray itself as the underdog.
It is a moral charge that could be levelled today against India, who are pumping around $1 billion investment per year to fund their mission to Mars, a symbolic demonstration of national strength and development. Meanwhile, according to World Bank statistics, nearly 180million Indians live below the poverty line, whilst a lack of sanitation and child malnourishment levels are persistently high.
What space programmes represent is the same drive for empire that fuelled colonialism, the adventurous opiate of the masses that keeps them from querying why more of their nation's riches can't trickle down to help improve their lot rather than acquiescing to their leaders' whims of building the mythological Tower of Babel ever higher.
Neil Armstrong said, upon observing the Earth from space; 'I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet. I didn't feel like a god, I felt very, very small'.
It is this cognisance of the sublime, in possibly its most meditative incarnation, that I think demonstrates the true value of our travails into space. The fragility of the planet, a mere paper lantern blown by an imperceptible breeze, its effervescent glow melting the human construct of time, is exemplified in a way no more profound than by the god-like act of covering the world with a human thumb.
Today, we have some of the finest minds marinating their intelligence and energy in the inspiring yet stolid stew of Big Bang theories, compositions of black holes, and such like. Whereas, the investment of such intelligence could be far better encouraged to tackle the perennial problems afflicting human kind, in areas such as the environment, social inequality, medicine and fragmenting labour markets.
It is obvious that these kinds of perpetual issues afflicting society fail to inspire the same pioneering imaginative spirit as space travel, because ultimately they deal with the frustrations of detail, geographic disparities, conflicting opinion and constantly mutating parameters that very often prove insurmountable. It is akin to setting off to reach the moon only to discover it moving further away into space or shifting its coordinates to a new point in the sky.
As Frank Borman (the Commander of Apollo 8) expressed it with veritable incredulity: 'when you're finally up at the moon looking back on earth, all those differences and nationalistic traits are pretty well going to blend, and you're going to get a concept that this really is one world and why the hell can't we learn to live together like decent people?'
Indeed, I believe that Richard Branson should reassess the target audience for his imminent Virgin Galactic space tourism away from the glitterati and the moguls, and compel the political leaders of the world to embark on the voyage together. I think such an enlightening experience would surely serve to dissipate the intractable conflicts that currently blight so many regions of the world, address the fact that so much greed serves to disenfranchise so many, and perhaps retreat back from the current point at which the single gravest threat to the future vitality of the planet is mankind itself.
Alternatively, whilst they were all up there taking it in turns to stub out the world's light with their thumb we could lobby Branson to leave them up there in an indefinite orbit. For in space, no one would be able to hear their lies.
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