27 June 2009

Uncommon Commentary #63: The Heavens that Interest Me Number Only Seven

Despite my intellectual curiosity, it's hard for me to have much enthusiasm about space exploration, especially regarding the possibility of colonizing moons and planets. Why send probes to distant celestial bodies, when we've scarcely begun to investigate the depths of our own oceans? Shouldn't we really put more effort into improving the governance of Earth before subjecting some other planet to our misrule? And since so many parts of Earth could support a much higher human population than they currently do, why even discuss the possibility of making settlements on such a place as Mercury or Titan (one of Saturn's moons), which would require great, and probably impossible, alteration of the environs?
I suspect that science fiction has conditioned people to think of the discovery of extraterrestrial civilizations (because, let's face it: no one but a scientist will be inspired by the finding of something like bacteria on another world) as lying in the near future, but this conditioning is almost certain to produce disappointment. Consider the distances that would have to be covered; there is a reason why the word "astronomical" has come, in our language, to describe incredibly large numbers. The starship Enterprise may zip from one galaxy to another the way that we in the early Twenty-First Century might jet from New York to Miami Beach, but a real interstellar commute would turn travel to travail. Aside from the Sun, the nearest star to Earth is Proxima Centauri, at a distance of 2.3 light years; this means that, even were it possible for a vehicle to travel at the speed of light, such a vehicle would require 2.3 years to reach a planet orbiting that star. Many of the stars that we think we see actually died centuries ago, but were so far away that the light they emitted before then is only now reaching us! Furthermore, it's estimated that, of all the solar systems in our unbelievably vast universe, only a small percentage contain bodies that have the potential to support life. All this means that, assuming that intelligent beings do exist elsewhere, it's of the utmost unlikelihood that we'll make contact with them during the lifespan of anyone born this year.
I don't foresee centuries of fruitless exploration of space, but that's because—fortunately—I, a Christian, don't foresee centuries of continued existence for the world as we know it. In my analysis, the Final Judgement cannot take place before we human beings have fulfilled the Great Commission to preach the Gospel to the ends of the Earth, thus giving everyone in the world the chance to choose between Truth and Error; this time, however, must not be far off, because there are few places on the globe that missionaries have not yet penetrated. During the coming Millennium, the 1000 years of rest for mankind during which Christ and the Saints will rule, will it matter whether we've conquered other worlds? Will it not be enough to know that our Lord has overcome this world?