Mankind's Need to Explore

The famous British mountaineer, George Mallory, was frequently asked "why do you want to climb Mount Everest?" His most famous reply was simply "because it is there."

Mankind has always had a natural predisposition for exploring. To push beyond the boundaries of what is familiar, comfortable, and safe and embrace the unknown. In fact, the entire history of mankind is hung on a timeline of exploration. We spread out across our respective continents, we sailed across the oceans to new lands, and we even explored the poles of our planet, literally the ends of the earth. Mankind explored the entire surface of the world, and after we had done that, we still didn't stop. Instead we looked up. We invented planes and took to the sky to explore the earth in a whole new way. We invented space shuttles and pushed into the heavens themselves. We orbited the planet, took pictures of distant galaxies, and landed men on the moon.

Each time that we stepped into the unknown, we did so in fear. Early sailors believed that if they sailed over the horizon, they would fall off the end of the world into a pit of monsters. Early pilots believed that if they broke the sound barrier, their planes would explode. And in many instances, early explorers where right to be afraid. George Mallory died trying to make it to the top of Everest, Henry Hudson was killed by his own crew in a mutiny while exploring Hudson Bay, and Amelia Earhart disappeared while trying to circumnavigate the globe. And yet every explorer in the history of mankind has knowingly shouldered these risks in their efforts to go where no one has gone before.

If courage is not the absence of fear but rather the judgment that something is more important than fear, then I submit that the most courageous of all mankind's undertakings is exploration.

Robert Browning once wrote "man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for." In the 21 century, mankind's reach must continue to exceed its grasp. We need to continue to push the boundaries of what we know and where we have gone. We must be prepared to fail and resolved to continue despite such failures. We need to add to the great timeline of exploration by pursuing what's next.

Mars is what's next. We already possess the technology and expertise to get there. All that's missing is the will to make it happen. In 1962, President Kennedy declared that the United States would land a man on the moon by the end of that decade. Now at the dawn of a new millennium, the nations of the world need to commit to achieving the next milestone in human exploration, sending the first representatives of Earth to another planet. And when asked "why Mars?" mankind must respond in one voice, "Because it is there."