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The Not-So-Final Frontier

By Ken Wright

"Can anybody remember when we used to be explorers?"

- Captain Jean-Luc Picard

Well, so much for our exploring strange, new worlds, seeking out new life and new civilizations . . .

Last year was the 40th anniversary of man's putting his first well-padded foot onto the surface of another world. That anniversary was marked with much hoo-ha and hullabaloo - as it should, because it was and remains a truly staggering feat of vision and collective endeavor. But today, man's attempts to reach into space today are limited to just that: nostalgia and old newsreels.

This year, even the paper-thin hope of President Bush's half-hearted urging for manned missions to the Moon and Mars was sucked out the airlock. Under President Obama, the newest proposed NASA budget cancels several manned programs and shifts those efforts toward unmanned probes for studying the Earth's climate changes.

Whoop-dee-do.

Oh, and the shuttle program just flew its last mission.

But I am a believer. I believe in space exploration as a worthy and worthwhile human endeavor, one that not only engages the minds and spirits of all of us here on this planet - look at the way the Moon landings captivated the entire globe four decades ago - but one that, I also believe, is good for all of us stuck together here on this beautiful, mysterious, middle-aged, tired, overworked and fragile little world.

So, while our country abandons its role and leadership in pushing the boundaries of our traveling out into space - a temporary hiatus, I believe as well - I would like to propose a stop-gap space program for the meantime. This would be an "open source" sort of space program, a low-cost, individually driven endeavor that we all can contribute to and participate in, here and now. One that is richly personal, yet where everybody's individual contribution matters and helps shape the whole. One that is visionary, yet is also highly practical and beneficial to our daily lives. And one that will continue to advance our grounded space program until it returns to where it belongs: The final frontier.

I call my project the Backyard Space Program. Think of it as a sort of interplanetary manned space mission right here at home.

I'm not just being metaphoric here. I mean real, actual space travel. Because space travel isn't just about the space - it's also about the travel. Just because our country has for the time being bagged the going-into-space part of space travel doesn't mean we can't find space to travel in space-travel style.

Look at it this way (because the BSP is all about how we look at things): Every time we walk out the door we can beam down onto a fresh, unique, ever-changing and always fantastic and unfathomable planet inhabited by a staggering variety of strange life forms and intelligent sentient beings (some of which are even humanoids). To do this, we must deliberately and consciously choose to perceive and use every day as an away-mission to the world we already are on. To explore what's around us as a strange new world, and to seek out who's around us as new life, and a new civilization.

To boldly go where we we've often gone before.

Simple. But hard - for it's not the way most of us move around in our daily worlds. To experience the world as a traveler is a skill, and like any skill it can be practiced, improved and honed. And this is important work, because that's what real space travel will demand: The ability to observe and act and in the face of anything, expected or unexpected. To be present in, appreciate, and even savor the sights and experiences and circumstances encountered on the way, on any way, every day. And to embrace and respect the risks and challenges and conditions imposed by landscapes and their inhabitants beyond our control, and even beyond our understanding.

That's what it takes to be a traveler - whether space-bound or town-bound - and not just a tourist. But for space travelers, the last task - the respect - is perhaps the most important. Because of the nature of space as the most remote, inhospitable, and unpredictable place we can venture, those who travel there will have to motivated by more than mere routine and self-serving gain. To really travel, to really explore, you have to want to explore, for exploration's sake.

And that's what we will practice in the Backyard Space Program: Seeing. Doing. Appreciating. Honoring the universe and those in it as they are.

Fortunately, we here in the West are particularly well suited to these missions of the Backyard Space Program. With our vast expanse of public lands, we still have broad, diverse, challenging landscapes open to our intra-planetary forays, places to ambulate and investigate and contemplate. Inhabiting those places are an abundant variety of diverse and fascinating life forms worthy of inspection and observation. And scattered across this land are a number of distinctive and unique cultures settled into everything from outposts to hamlets to villages to towns and cities, just waiting for our interaction and connection.

There's plenty spread throughout the space right before us to keep our explorer spirits plenty engaged until we once again turn our gazes upward and outward. And as we do that exploring, we can also work on those other skills we'll need: That sense of adventure, that conscious and involved and interested mind, that respect for self-determination and every individual's - whether human or nonhuman - evolutionary and developmental journeys.

We can practice being explorers rather than exploiters right here on our own planet.

Then, if we can learn that, maybe we'll really be ready for voyages to other worlds.

Ken Wright's starship is a 1993 Ford Explorer. His latest "captain's log" from his voyages is called The Monkey Wrench Dad: Dispatches from the Backyard Frontline. Learn more at monkeywrenchdad.com.