When I first began traveling, if I was able to choose any destination, I would've chosen to travel to the stars. When I'm sitting by a fire at night, and I look up, I often wonder if maybe someone else in my long line of sight is looking in my direction thinking the same thing. For the longest time during my childhood, I'd always dreamed of going to the stars. After all, I was sitting in class learning about how a few decades ago man was traveling to the moon, so it couldn't be that much further to the stars, could it? But it is.
I could toss some numbers at you, but numbers like these don't have much meaning. 24 million million miles is easy to say, but not easy to grasp; and that's just the distance to a star called "Proxima Centauri" which is the closest star to our sun. And the chances of finding an Earth-like planet anywhere near us are practically nonexistent. A planet like ours could very well be on the complete opposite side of the galaxy. But we can't cross the distance because we don't have the velocity, and we don't have the velocity because we don't have the necessary energy.
So I found comfort in science-fiction. A place where anything was possible. In those worlds, traveling to neighboring planets and galaxies was as easy as flipping a switch. But these fictional worlds made me lose sight of reality, so I had to make sure to always keep one eye facing the truth. And after a while, the other eye started paying attention also.
The fastest and farthest man-made object in space (which I personally deemed as the greatest traveler the Earth has ever seen) was launched in 1977: The Voyager 1 spacecraft; which, as you read this, is about 11.5 billion miles away. That sounds like a lot, but it's not. The probe is traveling at 38,000 mph, and that sounds fast, but it's not. At that speed it would take 73,000 years to reach our neighbor Proxima Centauri. And the Voyager is just a probe, a lightweight! There isn't any need to carry people, food, water, or entertainment to pass the time. The fastest a man has ever traveled is 26,000 mph during re-entry in the Apollo 10 command module: A vehicle that could support 3 men for just a few days.
The biggest problem we face in galactic travel, I think, is us. Our territoriality, and our determination to breed beyond the Earths ability to sustain us. Our greed, and our shortsightedness. Our fear, and our hatred towards those from a different tribe. Our insane economic systems and our drive to war. And above all else, our inability to face reality. These are the real challenges. Compared to that, traveling to the stars couldn't be easier.
Many of us have seen the sun rise, and in the right state-of-mind, that could be one of the most beautiful sights our planet has to offer. But I often dream of standing on a far away moon watching an entire galaxy rise a million-trillion miles away. It's only a dream, but it feels real, as if I was actually there. So small that I barely exist. But as much as I feel at peace dreaming about it, I feel an equal amount of torture. There is so much out there that I wanted to see that I never will. Stars can live for tens of billions of years, compared to them, what am I?
The truth is though, that I don't need to head out towards the stars, I'm already there! Hitching a ride on a ship called the Earth, which is flying around our star at 67,000 mph, which in turn is flying around the center of our galaxy and around 500,000 mph. I don't need to travel to a world in outer space because I'm already there standing on one. For every new discovery we make on this planet, there are 100 more out there. Different landscapes, different customs and cultures. People and places we simply can't imagine are out there, withing reach, waiting for us.
What's the point of people jealous of a star living for billions of years when it can't experience one second of it? I think the stars would cry tears of jealousy towards us if they knew of our existence. Stars don't have a choice. They cannot feel. They cannot laugh. They cannot love. They cannot experience the joy and ecstasy of discovering a new land, or a new friend, or the bliss of the journey it took to get there.
While growing up, I let the darkness of the world cloud my mind. So I raised my mind above the clouds and got stuck in the heavens. I was up there for so long that I never stopped to appreciate the beauty that lay below. Eventually I realized that I would never achieve my dream of interstellar travel, so I came up with a better dream. Instead of squatting the universe, I chose to squat the planet.
