Why bother with Space Exploration? (A Nigerian Context)

Space exploration? Abeg, give us food make we chop!

Space exploration is quite broad and I will spend some time on the subject. However, there are a few persons who can’t understand the rationality of exploring anything outside the earth. They don’t see the need for it and the noise around space seems needless to them. So, I’d like to digress for a bit. My intent is to rub minds with those who don’t mind paying a little attention to things happening in their world. Together we might be able to guide the generations to come to latch on while they’re still green.

Although a lot of us would wish we were computer wizards in 2020; sadly we spent too many years solving calculus while other kids were building the devices we now use.

Education is very paramount however. The problem is that in this part of the world, we were bequeathed the philosophy of “formal education or nothing else”. Perhaps this is why a lot of us suspend our childhood creativity till we’re out of university. After tertiary learning, we’re kinda helpless as the window for creativity gets influenced and shortened by the importance of meeting basic needs and sometimes relational needs that lead us into marriage. Years down the line, we simply rinse and repeat with our kids.

Historical Perspective

Some years ago, typewriters were so popular and it was a good idea to have them not only in the office but at home too; if one was able to afford it. Also, we had secretaries in most offices while some senior officials had special secretaries called confidential secretaries.

In fact, Business studies which was a subject taught in junior secondary school had typewriting as a critical part. We had a Typing Pool (a laboratory for learning how to type) in the secondary school I attended which in my estimation had over 50 typewriters.

This is 2020, many kids born 10 years ago will not be able to relate with what I wrote above. All the typewriters are completely gone and forgotten. The typing pools are now computer labs or adapted to other uses.

While we were typing ferociously and churning professional typists out of our institutions, some other folks were investing their time and resources on advancing technology. What did we all reap from it?

The Personal computer. This of course includes sophisticated calculators, desktop computers, then laptop computers later, mobile devices — Phones, Tablets etc.

Did they come from the blues? Erm… Just like that — from nowhere. Right? Wrong. From somewhere.

Lost in the past

While we were fixing our broken typewriters and developing expertise in typing, Bill Gates was consolidating gains on the Microsoft project. Steve Jobs followed fast and produced the Apple PCs. Mr. Jeff Bezos jumped on the Internet wave and built an online bookstore — Amazon using the foundation laid by Gates and Jobs. Around the same time, what did I say we were doing? Pushing typewriter keys. Well, we should be grateful that computers keyboards adopted the same key structure as the typewriter. It made the transition a bit faster.

In July 1969, the first successful human mission to the moon took place — Apollo 11. That was 10 years after the Soviet Union achieved the rare feat of putting the first man-made object on the moon in 1959. On October 4, 1957, two years before the first robotic landing on the moon, the Soviet Union launched the first ever artificial satellite into space; it was called Sputnik 1. The batteries of the satellite died within three weeks while it was orbiting the earth and it fell back to the earth after about two months. That laid the foundation for the next major feat of the USSR in space exploration where they sent a man-made object to the moon.

The excitement was surreal when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon’s surface. It was the first crewed landing on the moon. After Apollo 11, there were other crewed moon landings with the last one happening in 1972. Since then, man hasn’t been able to return to the moon. There’s been quite a number of attempts, but so many of them have failed. Besides, it is extremely costly to lift off such humongous mass of a space rocket into locations that are hundreds of thousands of miles away.

This is 2020 and history is to be made (or has been made) as it was on schedule this 27th May that for the first time in a decade, American astronauts will be taken to the International Space Station from the American soil. In addition, the bigger history is that this mission is taking place via a private spacecraft — SpaceX crew dragon. It has never happened before.

Pause!

We delve slightly deeper in the next piece.

Remember, watch this Space.

Next: Technological Innovations aided by Space Exploration