by Terry Virts
However, as I mentioned earlier, life is so complicated that I don’t think it would simply create itself. Which brings us full circle to the question of aliens. Although there are countless planets out there, and you would think there’s life on some of them, I think that science requires that someone created it. Notice I’m not using the word “believe,” I’m using the word “think.” Let’s keep belief out of this mind exercise.
At the end of the day, however, the debate over aliens is a moot point because of the sheer distance to those other planets. The closest star system, Proxima Centauri, is roughly four light-years from Earth. It is also a star system with three suns orbiting one another, making life there all but impossible because of the continual erratic and extreme climate changes that any planet there would undergo, as portrayed in Cixin Liu’s novel The Three-Body Problem. However, let’s say for the sake of argument that there happened to be extraterrestrial life at this nearest star system. How long would it take us to get there and say hi?
The fastest velocity ever obtained by a human-launched satellite was by Helios B in 1976, one of a pair of NASA probes designed to study the sun. At its closest approach to the sun, it reached a speed of 240,000 km/hr. Assuming it could maintain that velocity all the way to Proxima Centauri—which it can’t, because as it departed the solar system, the sun’s gravity would slow it down by a lot—it would take 19,000 years to reach the nearest star. Let’s take a more realistic speed—the velocity of the Voyager satellites, humanity’s most distant probes to date, and their pedestrian 60,000 km/hr. The trip to Proxima Centauri would take 76,000 years. Ouch. We aren’t going there anytime soon. Plus, those satellites are the size of a car. Now imagine the number of rockets and amount of rocket fuel that would be required to launch something the size of an aircraft carrier into space, and then accelerate it to those same speeds. That will never happen with current rocket technology. Even if it did, it would take as long as Homo sapiens have been on Earth to get to the nearest, uninhabitable solar system.
Let’s say we develop an electric propulsion system that enables a vehicle to travel at a much faster speed; engines like this have been used for decades on a small scale. If we were able to build one on a much larger scale, such as the VASIMR engine developed by my good friend and fellow astronaut Dr. Franklin Chang-Díaz, a space vehicle might achieve a velocity of roughly 400,000 km/hr. It is still a 10,000-year trip, one way. That’s 350 human generations. We know almost nothing about humans who were around 10,000 years ago.
There are other, more exotic forms of in-space propulsion: nuclear electric rockets, solar sails, even photon rockets that use light as their propellant. Let’s be wildly optimistic and assume we can develop an exotic engine that could propel us at one-tenth the speed of light. This is way beyond anything that is remotely possible or feasible today. But let’s assume that eventually happens. The nearest star is more than four light-years away. Our intrepid space voyagers would need time to accelerate to that incredible speed, spending half their trip accelerating and half decelerating. It would probably take at least 100 years. One way. Using technology that isn’t even remotely possible on any serious rocket scientist’s drawing board.
We aren’t even remotely close to being able to send a signal into space that would have a chance of being heard over the noise that is generated by our sun, and presumably the same is true of other intelligent beings.
And these 100 years, 1,000 years, 100,000 years, whatever the duration, would be spent entirely in interstellar space. No resupply ships. No shielding from galactic cosmic radiation. Crop failure? You have the rest of your life to figure that one out. Meteor strike? You have the rest of your life to plug the hole with materials that you have with you, because Houston won’t help. Communication with Earth? At first it will take minutes, then hours for a transmission. But a few hundred years into the trip, and a call home will take many years for someone on the other end to answer. Whatever problems you may have—technical, moral, political, spiritual—will have to be solved by the crew. Actually, it won’t really be a crew. That group of humans who first set off for a new star system will be a group of pilgrims, in the truest sense of the word. Like Cortés when he arrived in Mexico, those pilgrims will essentially be burning the ships. When they leave the comforts of Earth, they will be leaving forever. By the time they get to their destination, their descendants, and hundreds of generations of descendants after them, will be gone. They will never return to the planet where their species was conceived. If that moment ever happens, it will be the most epic tale in human history.
How does this relate to aliens? First, let’s assume we are traveling to a star system because we know that some intelligent beings exist there. We would presumably have heard an electromagnetic signal from them to be certain of their existence. Humans have been sending radio waves out into the universe for more than a century now, through radio and television signals. In order for an alien civilization to communicate with us, however, it would have to discern that signal above the tremendous noise that our sun generates. We aren’t even remotely close to being able to send a signal into space that would have a chance of being heard over the noise that is generated by our sun, and presumably the same is true of other intelligent beings. They would have to make radio waves more powerful than their own sun in order for us to discern them. Besides all of these technical reasons, based on some of the news being generated in recent years by our world’s leaders, maybe it’s best that extraterrestrial intelligence not receive our broadcasts.
So, is there a God? The scientist in me tells me there has to be, because the universe in general and life in specific is just too complicated and incredible for there not to be. We aren’t random accidents or afterthoughts. I came away from my spaceflights with one main thought: I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist. Are there aliens? I tend to think there are, though I do believe they would have to be created. Does it even matter? Those other planets out there are so far away that I don’t think we will ever be able to communicate with or visit our cosmic brethren out there. The good news is that the xenomorphs from the movie Alien won’t be popping out of our collective chests anytime soon. The bad news is we won’t be hanging out with Chewbacca either.
What Does it All Mean?
The Big Picture
Living in space is a complicated thing. It is at once profoundly sublime and utterly mundane. Being a fighter pilot has given me a very strong, matter-of-fact personality; I rarely get excited or emotional about anything, which is a great characteristic when the emergency alarm goes off, but it makes human relationships difficult. Our ability to compartmentalize emotions as pilots is legendary, but I will try to put thoughts and feelings to paper.
There are so many experiences that comprise a spaceflight, but I believe there is one profound one that supersedes all others: the realization that you are not on your home planet anymore. That you are here, in space, and the Earth is down there, over there, not where you are. Everyone who has ever lived and will probably ever live was born and died down there on that planet, over there, and you are not there. There was something profoundly, well, profound in that realization. Although I like to think that I’m still the same down-to-earth person that I was before my time in space, I know that it changed my worldview in profound ways. Now that my spaceflights are a few years in the rearview mirror, I think they changed more than my worldview. They changed my soul.
The first moment that really changed my perspective came about five minutes into my first launch. Endeavour performed a roll maneuver, giving me a view of the East Coast at night, and in one glance I could see the corner of America where I had grown up. I wasn’t prepared for that moment and what I would see; I just suddenly had a view out of my cockpit of the land where I was raised, and it hit me. America isn’t as big as I thought it was; I had just seen half its population in one glance out of the window. That snapshot was the beginning of a transformation in my way of thinking that would ultima
tely continue for seven months.
Minutes later, after Endeavour’s engines had shut down and we were floating peacefully over the North Atlantic, I had my first view of the planet in daylight. It was an intensely blue sunrise, something I would eventually experience more than 3,000 times, but this first one was special. It was a shade of blue that I had never seen before, another profound moment only minutes into my first spaceflight. I had spent my entire life preparing for that moment. I had seen all the IMAX films, read all the books, seen all the astronaut photography. I’d even spent the past decade working with fellow astronauts and hearing their tales of spaceflight. And yet, in this first glimpse of daylight, I saw something that I was entirely unprepared for: a new shade of blue—intense, vivid, burning, all-encompassing. It was unexpectedly clear that space was going to be full of surprises. And that was the understatement of the century. My seven months off our planet would slowly and profoundly challenge my worldview in ways I had not imagined.
My fifth day in space was a big one. We were docked to the ISS and had begun the weeklong process of installing the final two modules of the orbiting outpost, through a series of spacewalks, robotic transfers, and lots of internal maintenance work. As I was going to sleep that night, I closed my eyes and saw my first white flash from cosmic radiation. It was something I would eventually experience hundreds of times, but that first time was both impressive and sobering. Although those white flashes were pretty, they also meant that my body was being subjected to intense and dangerous radiation, a kind that doesn’t exist on our planet. Which made me think—the universe is inhospitable and cold and dark and wholly incompatible with life, with the exception of our blue planet, as far as we know. I had a new sense of thankfulness and appreciation for our home, drifting through space like a giant spaceship carrying the entirety of our species on a timeless journey. We should take care of it. There is no plan B; there is only plan A. Though I had always thought flying in space would be about rockets and planets and spacewalks, in the end it was about our home. When asked, “What is your favorite planet?” I now respond, “Earth!”
A few hours before that white flash, I was watching the Mediterranean glide by silently below at night, a few thunderstorms flashing in the distance, a quarter moon hanging slightly above the horizon. There were beautiful city lights throughout my field of view, mostly yellow, but some blue and white. And it struck me: During the daytime, you cannot really tell that humans are down there; an alien flying by our planet in daylight might not even realize that we are here. But at night, it’s a much different story because of those city lights. It would be fascinating to have a time-lapse movie of Earth at night over the past thousand years, or even ten thousand, to put into perspective how quickly humans have changed the planet. If you made that a billion-year time lapse, it would be dark for the entire time up until the last frame of the video, where you would see a quick flash of our city lights. Our presence today is visible globally. Well, mostly. In some places, you see lots of lights, and in others you see only darkness, even if there are lots of people living in that darkness. On that fifth night, I realized that I wasn’t seeing population in those city lights, but rather wealth.
This was a profound realization, something I had never heard any fellow astronauts mention. But it was obvious once I first noticed. In some places like the East Coast of America, Europe, or East Asia, there were lights everywhere. Lots of people + lots of lights = lots of wealth. In some regions, like the Middle East, there were not very many people but lots of lights nonetheless, indicating plenty of wealth. However, there are a few places on Earth, most notably Africa, where there are almost no city lights even though there are a billion people down there.
It was striking to see how people live their day-to-day lives from outer space. Nowhere was this more apparent than the Korean peninsula. South Korea is a vibrant place at night, and Seoul is one of the brightest cities on the planet. The rest of the country is brightly lit, and the ocean surrounding South Korea is full of fishing-boat lights. Across the Yalu River, northern China is full of bright, yellow cities at night. In between there is a giant sea of blackness, with one small dot of white light—Pyongyang. I was struck how some people live in light (South Korea) and some live in darkness (North Korea). Yet another profound realization.
Another thing really stuck out when seeing those city lights at night. Flying over the Mediterranean, I could see the entirety of the Middle East in front of me, from the Nile River delta on the right to Cyprus and ancient Turkey on the left, stretching out to the Saudi Peninsula, Iraq, and even a faint glow from Tehran and dust from the Zagros mountains in distant Persia. Directly in front of me was a small cluster of lights. Tel Aviv was the brightest, but also Jerusalem, Aman, Beirut, and Haifa, all tightly grouped together.
Maybe it was a case of being hopelessly optimistic, but it was pretty obvious from my vantage point in space that there was no reason for the conflicts we have—in the Middle East or anywhere else. We are all crewmembers on this spaceship, and we may as well get along and work together.
I thought, wow, Israel is such a small country; why all the fuss? I had been there on several occasions and found it to be an amazingly beautiful and vibrant country, and I absolutely loved the people and Shabbat dinners. I have also traveled to many Arab countries, enjoying their architecture, cuisine, culture, and hospitality. Some of the friendliest people and most interesting places on Earth were right there in front of me, looking through Endeavour’s pilot window, right next to each other. Israel and the Arab world, together, down there on Earth. Maybe it was a case of being hopelessly optimistic, but it was pretty obvious from my vantage point in space that there was no reason for the conflicts we have—in the Middle East or anywhere else. We are all crewmembers on this spaceship, and we may as well get along and work together.
Our STS-130 crew came back to Earth on the fifteenth day of our mission, landing at the Kennedy Space Center. As the pilot, I was required to power down a lot of the systems after touchdown, and I was the last person to get out of Endeavour. Our crew did a walk-around of the orbiter, did our medical tests, met with senior managers, reunited with our families, and finally made it back to crew quarters, an astronaut “hotel” that has been in use ever since the 1960s. And like any business trip, when I got back to my room I plopped down on my bed and turned on CNN. I don’t remember exactly what the announcer was talking about, but it was blah, blah, blah, and whatever meaningless scandal there was back in 2010. I watched for about thirty seconds, grabbed the remote, and turned it off. I literally could not take it anymore—it was like fingernails scratching a blackboard. A few hours prior I had been in space, looking down on our beautiful planet, thinking grand thoughts about how to end poverty and war and what our ultimate destiny in the universe would be, and here I was back home, being bombarded with meaningless noise.
Our lives are so cluttered with noise; we need to figure out how to unplug and let ourselves breathe and think. Social media, cable news, constant entertainment, work emails and texts—it really is difficult to “be still” in the modern world. I firmly believe that this constant stimulation is unhealthy, intellectually as well as emotionally. On a recent trip to Vienna, Austria, I had the chance to give a talk in the same hall in which Beethoven played one of his masterpieces for the first time. It struck me to compare the type of life that those masters lived a few centuries ago to the lives that we live today. They had time to think. If they wanted to know something, they had to read a book or research it; if they wanted to compose music, they had to sit down and write it with pen and paper. Of course, today we have tools that are infinitely more efficient, and I’m not saying that is a bad thing, but I do believe there is something to be said for being alone and reading or thinking or writing. There is a level of creativity and intellect that is tapped by doing things in the old way that we lose when consumed by modern technology, and I believe there is a level of genius that has disappeared from human society becaus
e we don’t invest the intellectual capital required to develop it in the way scholars and artists did in centuries past.
The more serious consequence of today’s hurried pace is the emotional toll that our unceasing plugged-in lifestyle exacts. The next time you are at the airport, or on a train, or at a restaurant, look at the people around you, and they will all be heads down on their phone. Heck, the next time you’re driving down the highway, look at the drivers around you. The Air Force called this CPA (continuous partial attention), an appropriate term. I struggle with putting the dang phone down and focusing on people around me, which can cause serious relationship problems. Another problem is constantly looking for affirmation from your online “friends,” many of whom you may have never met. “How many likes did this get?” “What are people saying about my post?” I’m no therapist, but I’m quite sure that this isn’t healthy for self-esteem or emotional well-being. To paraphrase the scene from Skyfall, when Moneypenny is shaving James Bond with a straight razor, “Sometimes the old ways are best.” Putting down your phone, picking up pen and paper and writing a letter, reading a book, or getting outside and being still in nature all beat running from meeting to meeting while typing on your iPhone.
And then you look down and see this oasis of beauty, our planet and home in a sea of hostile inhabitability. There is a much bigger picture, and we should not be distracted by the silliness that often fills our lives.
We could probably all use more of these things and less tech. I never expected to learn that lesson from space, but that moment in crew quarters after landing the shuttle brought it home loud and clear. When you see the universe and its vastness from the vantage point of space, it is indescribably beautiful. I could use a bunch of adjectives, but they don’t do the view justice. The universe is immense, beautiful, vast, cold, barren, black, and in so many ways beyond human comprehension. And then you look down and see this oasis of beauty, our planet and home in a sea of hostile inhabitability. There is a much bigger picture, and we should not be distracted by the silliness that often fills our lives. There are real and important issues that matter, like poverty, the environment, safety and security, the economy, our families, etc. I have resolved to be a better steward of my time, not wasting it on trivial matters of little importance.