Colonists

7/22/07 - 7/29/07
by C. Zaitz

This year marks the 400th anniversary of the first permanent English settlement in the Americas. Jamestown, Virginia is known as the birthplace of the country, where the first boatload of eager colonists landed. They arrived in May, and I can imagine that the summer was filled with building, hunting, cooking and fending off human and animal enemies. By July I imagine that the colonists were wondering what they had been thinking, coming to a new world so far from home. They must have been hot, hungry, riddled with mosquito bites and maybe a few arrow wounds. But enough of them survived the terrible famines and attacks from the Spanish and Natives to build homes, churches and official buildings, to flourish and become farmers and businessmen.

400 years later, we can wonder what happened to that colonizing spirit. When you first heard that we’d gone to the moon, didn’t you think Mars was next? What happened? Yes, space travel is very dangerous, expensive and time consuming, but was not also crossing the Atlantic to the New World?

Old colonizing risks: Running out of food and water. Disease and pestilence. Getting speared by someone already living there. Death.

New colonizing risks: Running out of food, air and water. Disease and pestilence. Getting lasered by someone already living there. Death.

So why haven’t we planned a mission to Mars? Are the risks any greater? Are the costs heavier? If we really wanted to travel to Mars, we would. America has not been frugal when its will was strong. Why do we not establish a mission to Mars, to walk the rusty sands and build a human presence on that nearby planet? Perhaps we need an outside menace to motivate us. The mission to the moon was a response to immediate threat of Soviet superiority. Without that threat, it’s not obvious that we would have endured the expense and the risk. But being motivated by threat is not the best case scenario, since the threats that would motivate us to travel to other planets usually involves the destruction of our own planet.

But it’s not all gloom and doom. Economic incentive seems to be what drives us today, rather than fear of asteroid collision, irreversible global warming, or even nuclear holocaust. Some say our governments should pool resources and offer incentives to private companies to innovate. Private companies can often get the job done with less bureaucracy, more efficiency, and less waste than governments. That requires widespread cooperation, however, and economic motivation. Companies need to know what they will gain from the endeavor. On the other hand, did the Jamestown colonists really know what they were getting into before they left England? They surely weren’t making a profit during the first years of starvation.

I don’t think our will is weak. We are fascinated by space travel, by UFOs and aliens. Maybe we are just yearning for proof that it can be done. Whatever our ultimate motivation, I hope that it includes our will to survive and our curiosity to know the universe. And I hope we don’t wait too long to get started. Who knows where we’ll be in 400 more years. I hope it doesn’t take a threat of Jupiterian superiority to get us motivated, because by then, it may be too late.

Until next week, my friends, enjoy the view.