Exploration Is Very Human
By Don Rittner

As I watched in horror as the Space Shuttle Columbia broke into pieces over Texas, I couldn't help thinking that the fate of our 7 astronauts were shared by so many brave explorers before them. Death while seeking why we are who we are is nothing new. It began when we first stood upright and walked onto the plains looking for food and wondering what was on the other side.

The shuttle Columbia was first to fly (The Enterprise before it was a test shuttle) in Earth's orbit in 1981; it was named for the sloop that left Boston Bay and captained by Robert Gray in 1792. On May 11, Gray successfully maneuvered his ship at the mouth of the Columbia River. Gray was also the first American to circumnavigate the globe carrying otter skins to China and back. Columbia is also the name to the command module of Apollo 11, the first lunar landing mission in 1969.

Discovery is named for the ship piloted by Henry Hudson on his fateful trip in 1610 while on his search for a Northeast Passage. Henry made four other trips, the first in 1607 on the Hopewell that founded a whaling industry for Britain; a second through the northern water of Russia was a disaster; a third in 1609 on the Half Moon that founded the Hudson River and our region, and his final voyage with the Discovery in 1610-1611 into Canada's Arctic waters where a crew mutiny set him and others adrift, never to be seen again.

British explorer James Cook captained another Discovery. He was looking for the Northwest Passage in 1776, and after spending a year in the South Pacific, headed north and found the Hawaiian Islands in 1778. He was killed by a mob in 1779 on Sandwich Islands (Hawaii).

Cook's first ship was the Endeavor, NASA's newest shuttle. Cook's first journey, from 1768 to 1771, sailed to Tahiti in order to observe Venus as it passed between the Earth and the Sun. During this expedition, he also mapped northern Australia and also sailed around the world.

While the Atlantis is named after the American oceanographic research sailing ship for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (1930 to 1966), I can't help thinking of the connection with the mythical lost city.

The Challenger was the second shuttle built, and we all remember its loss just after launch in 1986. On December 21, 1872, the original 2,306-ton HMS Challenger left on a 3-year voyage of marine exploration. The Challenger Expedition of 1872-76 was the first great voyage of oceanographical exploration. Led by Captain (later Sir) George Strong Nares, and his science director, Charles Wyville Thomson, Professor of Natural History at the University of Edinburgh, it sailed a total of 68,890 miles. The Report on the Scientific Results of the Voyage of H.M.S. Challenger was issued in fifty volumes between 1850 and 1895. All that remains today is the figurehead at a museum.

The Apollo 17 lunar module, America's last lunar landing mission in 1972, also carried the name of Challenger.

The Enterprise, technically the first, never flew into earth orbit and was originally named the Constitution after our bicentennial and the USS Constitution war ship, but Star Trek fans massed a write in campaign to name it after the famous universe exploring TV Sci-Fi Enterprise.

Hundreds of explorers have given their lives while in search of knowledge. The Frenchman Jean-François de Galoup, Comte de La Pérouse, who mapped the west coast of North America in 1786, was lost at sea while searching for the Solomon Islands (after reaching Australia's Botany Bay)

Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen, the first to fly over the North Pole in a dirigible (May 11-13, 1926), and the first to reach both the North and South Poles, died in a plane crash attempting to rescue his friend, the Italian explorer Umberto Nobile who was lost in an airship.

Robert O'Hara Burke (1820-1861) and William John Wills (1834-1861) were Australian explorers and the first Europeans to cross Australia from south to north. They both died on the return trip, from exhaustion and hunger.

Bartholomew Dias (1457-1500), Portuguese navigator and explorer, explored Africa's coast in 1488, and was lost at sea near the Cape of Good Hope in 1500.

Sir John Franklin (1786-1847), an English explorer, finally proved the existence of a Northwest Passage (a water route from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean through Canada). The ship became trapped in ice, and the desperate, freezing, and starving survivors resorted to cannibalism. Franklin and his expedition died of starvation and exposure in the Arctic.

Our 7 astronauts made the ultimate sacrifice, but like the others before them will never be forgotten.