The Eternal Frontier
by Louis L'Amour
1.
The question I am most often asked is, "Where is the frontier now?"
The answer should be obvious. Our frontier lies in outer space. The moon,
the asteroids, the planets, these are mere stepping stones, where we will
test ourselves, learn needful lessons, and grow in knowledge before we
attempt those frontiers beyond our solar system. Outer space is a frontier
without end, the eternal frontier, and everlasting challenge to explorers not (only)
of other planets and other solar systems but also of the mind of man.
2.
All that has gone before was preliminary. We have been preparing ourselves
mentally for what lies ahead. Many problems remain, but if we can
avoid a devastating war we shall move with a rapidity scarcely to be believed.
In the past seventy years we have developed the automobile, radio, television,
transcontinental and transoceanic flight, the internet, cell phones, and the electrification of the country,
among a multitude of other such developments. In 1900 there were 144 miles of surfaced
road in the United States. Now there are over 3,000,000.
Paved roads and the development of the automobile have gone hand in
hand, the automobile being civilized man's antidote to over population.
3.
What is needed now is leaders with perspective; we need leadership on a
thousand fronts, but they must be men and women who can take the long
view and help to shape the outlines of our future. There will always be the
nay-sayers, those who cling to our lovely green planet as a baby clings to its
mother, but there will be others like those who have taken us this far along
the pat to a limitless future.
4.
We are people born to the frontier. It has been a part of our thinking,
waking, and sleeping since men first landed on this continent. The frontier
is the line that separates the known from the unknown wherever it may be,
and we have a driving need to see what lies beyond...
A few decades ago we moved into outer space. We landed men on the moon;
we sent a vehicle beyond the limits of the solar system, a vehicle still
moving farther and farther into that limitless distance. If our world were to
die tomorrow, that tiny vehicle would go on and on forever, carrying its
mighty message to the stars. Out there, someone, sometime, would know
that once we existed, that we had the vision and we made the effort.
Mankind is not bound by its atmospheric envelope or by its gravitational
field, nor is the mind of man bound by any limits at all.
5.
One might ask--why outer space, when so much remains to be done
here? If that had been the spirit of man we would still be hunters and food
gatherers, growling over the bones of carrion in a cave somewhere. It is our
destiny to move out, to accept the challenge, to dare the unknown. It is our
destiny to achieve.
6.
Yet we must not forget that along the way to outer space whole industries
are springing into being that did not exist before. The computer age has
arisen in part from space effort, which gave great impetus to the development
of computing devices. Transistors, chips, integrated circuits, Teflon, new medicines,
new ways of treating diseases, new ways of performing operations,
all these and a multitude of other developments that enable man to live
and to live better are linked to the space effort. Most of these developments have
been so incorporated into our day-to-day life that they are taken for
granted, their origin not considered.
If we are content to live in the past, we have no future. And today is
the past.