Why Do I Love Space?

~ J.S. Pailly

Hello, friends!

This is my first “real” post here on my new blog.  The main message I’m hoping to convey with this new blog is, quite frankly, right there in the title: I Love Space!  If you’re still wondering how I feel about space, then… I don’t know what else to do.  I don’t know how to make my feelings for space any clearer.  However, the title of this blog does raise another question that I think is worth talking about.  Sure, I love space.  But why do I love space?

I think everyone will understand what I mean when I say space represents the future.  This “space equals the future” idea has been part of the zeitgeist for a long time now.  I can’t say what, precisely, our future in space will look like.  Will there be humans on Mars?  Face-to-face contact with extraterrestrials?  Fleets of starships exploring the Orion Nebula?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  Perhaps the work of exploring space, gathering resources from space, and defending our planet from space-based threats (like asteroids and comets) will be left to machines while we humans remain safe and comfortable here on the ground.

Either way, I do believe space will be a big part of our future.  That’s always in the back of my mind whenever I look up at the stars.  That’s always in the back of my mind whenever I learn a new space fact (like the many space facts I hope to share with you, dear reader, on this blog).  It’s in the back of my mind whenever anything even remotely space-related comes up in conversation.  Space isn’t just an empty void.  The other planets aren’t just barren rocks or giant gas balls.  These things represent our future as a species, our future as a civilization.

Given the state of the world today, it’s easy to lose hope.  It’s easy to get so wrapped up in the problems and conflicts of the present that we lose sight of the future.  Reading the news these days fills me with a sense of hopelessness.  And that, my friends, is why I love space.  I love space because no matter how bad things get here on Earth, space always reminds me that there is still a future to look forward to, a future worth living for, a future worth fighting for.

And so that is what space means to me.  It represents the future—but even more than that, it represents hope.  Every single one of us needs to find hope in something.  I find my hope up there, among the planets and stars.  Where do you find yours?

Published by J.S. Pailly

13 thoughts on “Why Do I Love Space?”

  1. I’ve always had an inordinate fascination with space, for all the reasons you list. It started with sci-fi TV, like the original Star Trek and Lost in Space shows, but quickly led to a broader interest. And an early discovery of just how misleading the portrayals are in most sci-fi. It’s rare for the unimaginable scale and vastness to be acknowledged.

    Still, set a story in space, and I’m unreasonably more interested in it than the same story set on Earth.

    But what really fascinates me is what our future in space might actually look like. I suspect it will be much stranger than anything commonly portrayed. The transition may be more like life moving from the sea to land than the European Age of Discovery, one that might inevitably change us as a species.

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    1. Oh, I never thought about it like that, but that is a really good analogy… that it’ll be more like life moving from the sea to the land. I sometimes wonder, half-jokingly, what the first lungfish thought it was doing. For the first first to crawl on land, that must’ve seemed like as alien and forbidding an environment as the surface of the Moon does to us today.

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      1. If you’re like me, you imagine those moments with 2001 A Space Odyssey theme music (Also sprach Zarathustra) playing in the background. But I’m sure for the fish it was more like, “Hey, there’s food I can get to by flapping into this uncomfortable place for a few seconds!” Later some of its descendants had mutations allowing them to flap, and eventually waddle, into that place for longer and longer times.

        Of course, the transition to space requires intelligence, so we won’t have to wait on mutations. We’ll modify ourselves. Or send out our AI progeny. Or some combination.

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      2. I tend to agree with that, especially when looking beyond the next century or two. Natural selection got us this far. The next phase of evolution may end up being a bit more calculated and deliberate.

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    1. I feel the same. I sometimes feel like I missed my chance to live on Mars by just a generation or two. But there are still many ways we can enjoy the adventure of space from here on Earth.

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      2. I’ve been reading the books. I’m the kind of person who won’t watch a movie or TV series if I haven’t read the books first, so the Amazon series will have to wait for now.

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  3. I loved this post J.S. I believe so much in the need for space exploration. And you met one of my heroes, Bill Nye, the Science Guy. I shared him a lot when I was teaching. If I were growing up now, I’d be headed for the Space Force. Have a happy and inspiring May!

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