Where Next, Columbus?: The Future of Space Exploration

by Valerie Neal

In the decades since the launch of Sputnik, the world has thrilled to the long-dreamed-of moon walks of the Apollo astronauts, marvelled at spectacular photographs of the outer planets brought to us by Voyager, and watched in horror as the Challenger exploded before our eyes. No longer the terrifying realm of science fiction, space has been hailed by popular culture as the "final frontier," the focal point of future exploration. Yet today there is no strong consensus about our future in space. Where should we go next? Mars? Deep space? Should we continue to send humans into space? Is it worth the cost to explore space at all? Now, a curator of space history at the Smithsonian, Valerie Neal, has assembled a noted group of writers and thinkers--among them Stephen Jay Gould, Carl Sagan, Timothy Ferris, Robert L. Forward, and Stephen J. Pyne--to consider such questions. The result is an intriguing collection of essays that offer stimulating insights into the exploration of new worlds.
Boasting an oversize format and more than fifty color illustrations, this engaging volume offers readers a fascinating look at exploration's past and future. Several pieces vividly depict the actual experience of space travel and the many scientific findings made along the way. Harrison H. Schmitt, the last astronaut to set foot on the moon, provides an often spellbinding account of that adventure, in the process making a compelling case for human rather than robotic explorers (during the examination of a boulder, Schmitt made a discovery that a mere circuit-board would have missed--and that is to say nothing of the poetic earth-rise he describes). But robots get equal time. Edward C. Stone, Project Scientist for the Voyager missions, describes other worlds as seen from the camera-eye of a machine millions of miles away: the roiling storm systems on Jupiter, the complexity of Saturn's rings, and the spectacular nitrogen geysers on Triton, one of Neptune's major satellites. Looking towards the future, Stephen Jay Gould pleads for a manned mission to Mars, one which would scour the Red Planet for signs of life (paleontologists have found fossilized bacteria in Earth silica, Gould explains, and similar fossils on Mars may be the key to proving that life once existed there). And physicist Robert L. Forward offers detailed plans for actual starships that could send astronauts to the nearest star system in a single lifetime--and with today's technology.
Where Next, Columbus? is an utterly absorbing contribution to a debate that may help define the twenty-first century. With colorful illustrations, a spacious oversized format, and ten fascinating essays--all but one of which have never been published before--this volume will intrigue anyone interested in space travel or our place in the universe.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195092775
• ISBN13: 9780195092776
• Release Date: November 1994
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 2.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 8.8" x 11.3"

Customer Reviews

INsights into the future of exploration

Valerie Neal, editor: Where Next, Columbus?: The Future of Space Exploration (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 230 pages, £10 sterling. reviewed by Ted WithamI finished reading Where Next, Columbus? in the week that Melbourne geologist Ian Plimer took the creationists to court in Sydney. It was a tonic to read in that atmosphere. It mentions God but once, and the Church only a few times when it refers to the imperialistic domination of the Conquistadors in North and Central America. But it is the best I have read for some time about the spirituality of science and technology.Where Next, Columbus? is a series of essays, reflective and technical, about the story of human exploration. It delineates particularly the choices facing the human race about the exploration of space. These choices raise vast ethical and spiritual issues. They ultimately concern the nature of the human race, and its survival.The first essay by historian Stephen Pyne divides the history of European exploration into three stages: the first were the voyages of exploration simply proving that the world was round and that it could be circumnavigated. Columbus was followed by Magellan. This was the age of the oceans and the shores with which ships came into contact.Then came the phase of conquest of the interiors of these new lands and the creation myths about their colonisation by European settlers. With this phase came the intriguing dilemmas faced by mercenaries and missionaries as they struggled to find categories of thought through which they could understand the human beings they met. Were they innocent savages to be protected and civilised, or rivals to be tamed and exploited?This second age ended with somewhat a whimper. Intrepid explorers struggled across polar ice caps to impose a human skew on vast wilderness with limited success. There were no people, or apparent resources to plunder. The problem was that "the last of the continents, Antarctica, resisted discovery. The ice field lacked the kind of! data, experiences, and referents that had characterized other explorations." (p. 24)The third and modern stage of exploration is the exploration of unpeopled places: deep under the sea, discovering strange life forms depending on heat from vents on the ocean floor, or again, going to the moon and Mars and wondering if these are really feasible journeys.Professor Pyne's questions are primarily spiritual. What sort of creatures are we with this relentless wanderlust and this nasty inability to recognise our siblings in new peoples?Pyne's essay provides a backdrop for the other essays. Harrison Schmidt, the first scientist and last astronaut to land on the moon, describes a breathtakingly beautiful journey into the lunar Valley of Taurus-Littrow, and the effect of such "firsts" as the first earthrise seen by human beings on a generation's spirit: "daring, and imagination" (p. 58). Schmidt's travelogue is accompanied by stunning photographs from his Apollo 17 mission. Ot