Earth & Space: Home & The Final Frontier

Nonfiction | 31 December 2015 | ~3 min read

Space is a place, or a void, that has fascinated us humans for as long as dated history. The feeling that we might not be alone, that the universe is bigger than we could ever image or see. That our world is just one among billions of others. That is what drives us to explore it.
And we must explore it, for the human species we must. For it is our only chance of survival. For we are only a fragile piece of gel able to be squashed by ourselves, space itself, or the Earth that gave us birth. We are destined to explore space, for it is our only hope. Our only hope for infinite survival, all until the universe collapses into yet another. In spite of this, earth is our home, and that we must never forget.

After studying space in high-school for about a year I’ve learnt about our solar system; the planets order, the different astroids, how Jupiter, our guardian angel, protect us from harm so we can nurture, how our sun one day will end what we call life.
Then I’ve learnt about stars, those tiny shining dots in the sky that our sun is a part of. That one of them, Betelgeuse, will one day, any day in fact – tomorrow or in one hundred, collapse and its radiation come crashing down on us. It wouldn’t kill us, but enough to do harm.
I’ve learnt that some stars, create blacks holes that suck everything in reach into themselves for it has gravity more dense and massive than anything known to us.
There’s so more we don’t know, than we know. For we don’t have a clue of what we don’t know. It might as well be an infinite amount of knowledge out there, just waiting to be discovered.
Sure, there is a formula for us to calculate how many advanced civilizations there are in the universe. But as everything in science, it is a theory until it has been proved wrong or right. Then it either becomes a fact, or a false.
The fermi paradox; if there are so many planets and so many possibilities for life. Where are they?

But this, all this, might be forgotten in the long run. Not for words by themselves are meaningless, but together make stories, life, and worlds. But because the world we’ve built, the world we live in, may end, ending us all.
If you believe space to be a hoax, the moon landing or the International Space Station a hoax; you must realize that space is out there. If not, wouldn’t someone had told it was fake, a person at NASA, ESA, JAXA, or any other space agency. Realizing that there are worlds out there, greater and more fascinating than anything known to us, is the first step to understanding we must go there. We must explore.
Space is in fact, as mentioned in Star Trek, our final frontier. At least from what we know now. And for our survival to be as infinite as possible, for our civilization and thoughts and feelings to keep wandering we must go there.
Yet, space and other worlds shouldn’t be a replacement of the home of us all, Earth. Rather, space exploration and space colonization should be an extension of Earth, and us.
Because of that must take care of our Earth, and all living on it. There is nothing in space that can replace what our earth has given us, a home. It has given us the chance to explore ourselves, as people, as humans. The chance to commence our species and to move further. We have found love, agony, hatred, joy, and wonder. There is nothing out there, nothing, that can give us what the Earth, our Earth, has given us; the chance to live, the chance to evolve.
Our planet might be but a snowflake in the snowflakes that is the planets in the void we call space. But it is our special snowflake, and therefore we must nurture it, as it has nurtured us.
Whether you believe it or not; everything comes to an end. And so does our world. But for what. For it has given us life, and trusting us to give it back. To nurture it when we were ready.
So, are we ready?