In thinking about space exploration, we often get lost in the technical details, such as what is the thrust of that rocket, or how long will it take the Horizon space probe to get to Pluto, and things like that. We must remember, however, that space exploration is largely a function of human imagination. Without the works of visionaries such as Jules Verne in France and Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in Russia, Robert Goddard would never have built his first rocket, the first artificial satellite would never have been launched, and we wouldn't be talking now about sending manned spacecraft to the planet Mars.
Speaking of Mars, going to, and settling Mars was the topic of American writer Ray Bradbury's most famous work,The Martian Chronicles. It was published around 1950, at a time when the first satellite had yet to be launched and anyone who talked about men landing on the moon before the year 2000 had his or her sanity seriously questioned. The theme of The Martian Chronicles, which took the form of a series of short stories, was the settlement of the planet Mars by people from Earth. These settlers were not so much brave explorers, like Star Trek's James Kirk, but rather mostly ordinary people who were leaving the Earth because of a fear of impending nuclear war, and because the environment had become so ruined by mankind's activities that it was doubtful how much longer mankind could continue to survive. In coming to Marts, these settlers hoped to make a brand new start, but they found out that making a new start was a lot harder than just going to a new planet, if you keep the same mindset and prejudices that you had before. They did indeed find a brand new world, along with the remnants of an old Martian civilization, consisting of crystal houses that were now empty and sapphire lakes that were now bone dry (it's interesting that scientists studying the data sent back by probes to Mars, such as the rovers Spirit and Opportunity, have concluded that Mars was far warmer in the distant past and may have even had running water).They may even have found some living Martians, or maybe the spirits of Martians; the book leaves that mainly to the reader's imagination. They find evidence that these ancient Martians, in spite of their technological achievements, may have had the same weaknesses, such as jealousy, as the new settlers who have come to take their place, and that these weaknesses may have played a hand in their destruction, much like the Krell in the movie Forbidden Planet. Thus, the Martian Chronicles is as much a cautionary tale as it is a bold prediction of the future, maybe more. So far, our planet has avoided the nuclear conflict that destroyed the Earth in the novel, but as long as those weapons are still around, can anyone really say that we are out of danger. And, war or not, if we go ahead and destroy our environment (Bradbury's book predated the environmental movement by at least twenty years, so he was indeed a visionary), what will happen if the place we go to to escape this destruction has already been destroyed?
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