What's the point?

You get into these conversations every once and a while. People think you're nuts. And the truth is, you probably are. Dreams are like hope - you need them to survive. But they also make you look Looney. Sometimes they’re like puffs of air, you can’t live without them.

People ask more times than I can count "What's the point?" They don't use those exact words - but they might as well. "What's the point of going into space?" “Why should I care?” "Why not focus on the problems here at home?"

So I could probably talk about the threat of asteroids or comet impacts, or maybe I could quote the “having all your marbles in one basket” line. I could talk about the uses of extraterrestrial power sources and how much cleaner power that would create. I could start talking about Hydrogen on the moon, solar power… But that gets talked about all the time. And that’s not the real reason why I care, and why I think there is a point.

You see, I think the reason is different for most people. The truth is, the reason boils down to, the way I see it anyways, hope.

When the first pioneers from Europe came to this continent, they had hope. They had hope that this new world would be better than the last. They had hope that by starting over they could get a second chance. They knew that nothing would probably change for them, or their children. But they had hope that maybe one day their ancestors would be better off. They had hope that they could go to a place where they didn’t feel like outcasts. They had hope that they could be part of a country, of a place that let them be free.

North America was their escape. The New World was their hope. It was the light of the world. A beacon shouting out to the oppressed, and the downtrodden, to come to a place where you could start over. It was their hope for a final victory over the evils of where they came from. It was the hope that they could leave the worst of the old, and keep the best for the new.

That I think is the heart of it – hope. There is a longing in each one of us to start over new. There a longing to make the wrongs right. And sometimes you can’t fix what’s at home.

Some people have perpetual hope that they can change things. That would be those that stayed in Europe despite the rise of evil. That is those that are in China still trying to change the evils of their own government. And the list of other countries is too numerous to say. Yet there is a point where people loose hope.

There is a point where they are drawn inward, seeking one last refuge. They want that escape. They come to the conclusion that they can’t fix something that no one else wants to fix. They come to the conclusion that they have to leave.

Who is right? Is it the ones that want to stay and fight the impossible fight? Or is it the ones that think the fight is over and go to a new place? There is no easy answer. Only that those immigrants like my Grandfather that left Europe before WWII saw things going sour and took a chance.

He left his friends. He left his family. He left everything he knew.

He got off the boat only with a few dollars in his pocket. The first day he was mugged.

So here he was, right off the boat, no money, no job, and he knew no one. He had to sleep in shipyard in the cold that first night. I can only imagine what was going through his mind. I can only imagine the feelings of hope falling around him.

He got up the next day. In the middle of the Great Depression, he got a job that very same day. It was painting a building. A few years later he was an engineer in Windsor. A dozen years later he owned his own business. He had hope.

My Grandfather on my mother’s side chose to stay. Maybe he figured he should try to fix things at home. He ended up being a deserter of the Italian Army when the war started. Which choice was right?

The funny thing is, that most of the people that will give the hard time, are first or second generation immigrants. It's like the biggest whopping irony I've ever seen. If you want to know why we should be colonizing other planets why don’t you ask your parents, or why don’t you ask yourself what you’re doing here?

You want to know why need to go into space? The reason boils down to hope. We need an escape. We need one, because we don’t have one today – and that’s a very dangerous thing.

The question I always ask myself is what are the evils today?