Flying to the Moon
Page 14
Of course, the most fascinating question of all is: could there be life on Mars? There definitely could be, although not animal life as we know it on earth. There is no free water now on the surface of Mars, but there is evidence that there once was, and it is possible that there still is moisture trapped below the surface. Therefore, at one time there might have been a different kind of life than could exist today, and even now there might be primitive life somewhere below the surface. Some life-forms on earth can survive a long time under the harshest conditions: animal eggs hatch after many years and plant seeds sprout after centuries. Perhaps such dormant life exists on Mars. Another possibility is that the rocks there contain fossils of extinct animals and plants. It would certainly be fascinating to see what life, if any, really is on Mars. I’d certainly be willing to spend eighteen months of my life on a trip to find out.
And Mars is just the beginning, an obvious place to start because it happens to be close at hand.
Beyond Mars is a zone, or belt, of asteroids, and then the outer planets: Jupiter, the gas giant, the largest planet in our solar system; Saturn, with its weird, complex rings; blue-green Uranus; Neptune and its huge moon Triton; and obscure Pluto, its orbit tilted at an angle from all the rest.
Titan, one of Saturn’s moons, has an atmosphere about as dense as our own. We believe that Titan has a hot core and a surface of frozen liquids. If that is the case, beneath its surface ice Titan probably has oceans at various temperatures, including those that nurture life deep in the earth’s oceans. Who knows what surprises Titan might have in store for us?
Our entire solar system is an insignificantly small part of the universe, a grain of sand in an endless desert. Our sun is but a tiny speck in our home galaxy, the Milky Way, which in turn is lost among countless other galaxies. With so many galaxies and therefore so many stars, it is inevitable that there are more planets than our minds can imagine. If we assume that nearly all of them, for one reason or another, are unfit for humans, we still have a number of habitable planets that is bigger than any number I was ever taught in school. Astronomers believe that there are at least 1,000,000,000,000 planets in the universe capable of supporting our kind of life.
If this is true, is it reasonable to suppose that our one little peanut of a planet (a character in one of Mark Twain’s stories referred to it as The Wart) is the only one which has produced intelligent life? I don’t think so. I think it’s the height of conceit for us Wartians to decide that our planet is better than all the other 999,999,999,999. A more reasonable assumption might be that we are in the middle, which would make us stupid indeed, compared to life on some of the more advanced planets out there. A man who may have been the most intelligent Wartian who ever lived, Albert Einstein, developed a Theory of Relativity which says (among other things) that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. If this theory is correct, and we have discovered no reason so far to doubt it, then visiting other planets with intelligent life won’t be an easy thing to do. The nearest star, Alpha Centauri, is over four light-years away, meaning that it would take over eight years to make a round trip, traveling the entire time at the speed of light, which is not something we know how to do yet. People wanting to visit more distant solar systems would have to set out with the understanding that they would most certainly die en route, hoping that their descendants would someday reach their destination safely.
This may sound like an outlandish idea, but I really don’t think so. I believe that a lot of people, especially young people, would volunteer tomorrow for such a flight. A starship could be very large, and therefore very comfortable. The crew would be huge, and you’d meet some very interesting people on board. After all, the earth itself has been called a spaceship, and the only major difference between it and a starship is the fact that the earth’s passengers ride on the outside, instead of the inside. Compensating for this possible disadvantage, and its smaller size, the starship would provide one important feature the earth cannot. Instead of being locked into a monotonous, 365¼-day orbit around the sun, starship passengers would always find the view out their windows slightly different from anything they had ever seen before.
Will mankind do this? Will it decide to create Libra, live on Mars, visit Titan, and venture beyond? I don’t know. I only know that in my short lifetime I have done things which would have been considered clearly impossible in the year of my birth. I expect the same thing will be true of coming generations (even more so), because the pace of human achievements seems to be quickening. Just think, it was only sixty-six years from the Wright brothers’ first flight to Neil Armstrong’s landing on the moon.
I have dangled from a cord a hundred miles above this planet; I have been privileged to go beyond this planet’s moon, briefly, into the black void beyond. I hope and believe that some of you reading this book will be so privileged; in your lifetime, it is certainly possible. If you decide to travel, I will watch when you depart, and applaud.
Also by MICHAEL COLLINS
Carrying the Fire:
An Astronaut’s Journeys
Copyright © 1994, 1976 by Michael Collins
All rights reserved
Published in Canada by HarperCollinsCanadaLtd
eISBN 9781429929479
First eBook Edition : May 2011
First edition, 1976
Sunburst edition, 1985
Second Sunburst edition, 1994
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Collins, Michael.
Flying to the moon : an astronaut’s story / Michael Collins.—
2nd ed., with a pref. and a rev. final chapter
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-0-374-42356-8 (pbk.)
“A Sunburst book.”
1. Collins, Michael.—Juvenile literature. 2. Space
flight to the moon—Juvenile literature. [1. Collins, Michael.
2. Astronauts. 3. Space flight to the moon.]
I. Collins, Michael. Carrying the fire. II. Title.
TL789.C65A3 1994 629.45’0092—dc20 [B] 93—42001 CIP AC
This book is based in part
on Carrying the Fire
© 1974 by Michael Collins