Rage against the dying of the Light

A stranded astronaut amidst the vastness of ocher grains awaiting help on the red planet, another one piercing through the intense, warping gravity of a giant Black Hole, and then the one in her Michelin-Man like suit violently oscillating around a spacecraft, failing to reach a halt – these are not the probable contents of NASA’s contingency guide for the 2040s but gripping scenes by Hollywood that sent us in a riveting trance, as we glanced shockingly at the screen while our hands toiled to lift our dropped jaws from the floor.

Being someone who has always looked at the stars with curiosity, or in the anticipation to spot a UFO, I, for one, am glad on witnessing this shift of muse from the bounds of our own atmosphere to this erstwhile ethereal space. And I know of a certain someone else who also will be happy about this change, as he gorges on his salad, sitting in his California based  SpaceX office, contemplating on ways to colonize Mars, other than by merely nuking its surface – Elon Musk.

Musk is a genius, but there’s something I find intriguing in his investments, his businesses don’t quite complement each other, rather they are built on the understanding that when SolarCity and Tesla will fail to keep this planet habitable - euphemism for extinction of earth - it is then that SpaceX will carry us in huge spaceships to a place elsewhere, a place that will be our future home. So, it appears, his companies aren't exactly built on the same philosophy in the shorter duration, that of saving the earth but they kind of reinforce each other in the long scheme of things, that of operating to save our species. This is what my limited cognitive ability could think of as the only plausible rationale for his choice of sectors, unless it’s some attempt at extreme diversification of funds, which, knowing Musk, seems unlikely.

Does it make Musk a doubter, for he doesn’t see the blue planet’s future or does it simply make him a visionary beyond most people’s comprehension?

A lot of people associate our space explorations with pessimism, with the thought that one day Earth won’t be able to provide for our desires, which they believe is succumbing to nature's will without fighting. They believe that we should fight climate control, live off limited resources. They assume that migrating to another planet or even looking for different avenues for our species’ sustenance reflects a human defeatism of our age- that adapting to change is preferable to stopping it.

I believe that when the best among you make a plan, and you know shit about that problem, then the best you can do is stuff your mouth with a potato and seal it with a Sellotape. (Ahhh…Isn’t it obvious now that I’m just back from Martian?) These skeptics for sure know less about space and our planet, than NASA and the likes of Musk. So if we cannot support them at this, then let’s not try and use our cack-handed science to reason out with these intellectuals on a topic so profound, because, this, is in reality - Rocket Science!

We should realize that just like everything, even our Earth, came with an expiry date. And the earth isn't as new as us, it has been floating here since ages. The scale of time is so huge and the number so colossal that perceiving this issue can become quite difficult to relate to. Just to give you an analogy, if you think of a woman’s arm-span as the entire geological timeline then by merely filing away her nails, she will wipe away the whole account of Earth's recorded history. And yes, only in this much time we’ve managed to consume whatever has evolved since earth’s birth.

The naysayers are loud and they’re stifling the other voices. Believing that the earth is repairable, does reek of optimism, but given the duration and the size of this problem, assuming that the generations to come, which will be more in number, will squander the resources meant for only a thousandth of them, seems like a far-fetched shot at imagination and possibility. And yes, with this distorted logic and a perceived Silver Surfer like understanding of universe, these are the same people who term the idea of colonization of other worlds as improbable and smacking of pessimism.

In fact, I see more positivity and hope in what these disbelievers assume to be panic. There’s a possibility of a new life out there and the eternal darkness holds answers to our age old questions. The world, as it is in reality, might be calling out to us, and we’ve been dormant for way too long. Till now, we’ve always defined ourselves by our capacity to face the unknown, these are the moments we pride ourselves on, and we should believe that our greatest moments lie ahead of us. Perhaps, there is a story waiting to be constructed of how an entire species survived a catastrophe and averted its extinction.

The fact that this giant world of ours will crumble one day is inevitable, as gloomy as it may sound, but probably we will have to leave this blue marble for some lifeless, airless lump of rock, some million miles away. We shouldn’t bite this bullet with remorse and angst, we shouldn’t classify this act of leaving the planet as a dastardly one, but as one of hope and heroism. 

This sentiment couldn’t have been better captured than in these lines from Interstellar. “It’s like we’ve forgotten who we are, Explorers, pioneers, not caretakers ... We’re not meant to save the world. We’re meant to leave it. Mankind was born on Earth. It was never meant to die here.”

And just like all the movies mentioned in the opening paragraph, this one story also won’t be about despondency and running away in fear, but that of a hopeful caravan leaving everything to find another world, another place to call home.

Don’t let the loss be an excuse for despair, let’s use the memory to drive ourselves on.

P.S. Points for being ahead of time? Please drop your comments below.