Around the same time came an anniversary of a different sort: Aug. 10 marked 487 years since one of the most important explorers of our world, Ferdinand Magellan, set out from Spain with five ships to circumnavigate the Earth. After an epic voyage across the Atlantic, down the eastern coast of South America through what we now call the Strait of Magellan and across the Pacific Ocean, Magellan was killed in April 1521 during a battle with natives on Mactan Island in the Philippines. Only one of the five ships, the Victoria, under the command of Juan Sebastian Elcano returned to Spain and completed the first circumnavigation of the globe on Sept. 6, 1522, with 18 of the original crew.
Because of the proximity of Van Allen’s death and the anniversary of the start of Magellan’s voyage I am thinking about explorers. What does it take, beyond courage and curiosity, to actually give your life to the exploration of the unknown? Forgive me for imposing my spiritual predilections on this reflection, however, I think the main thing all explorers must have is a belief that there is a great unity between what we know and what we do not as yet know, between what we have already seen and what we have not yet been given to see.
I think there is in all explorers a feeling that they are discovering a part of God’s creation we have not yet been privileged to know. Of course not all explorers are religious nor need they be. But their task and their journey is not essentially scientific. It is a spiritual trip told in the language of science. Explorers do what they do because they believe that everything fits together. This is also the most important, common and unifying religious belief. Most folks believe this. Explorers want to prove it.
Explorers are also loners. Magellan was fired by the king of his native Portugal for insubordination. Van Allen refused to become a PR flack for NASA’s manned-space-flight program. He believed to the end that discovering things in space was both safer and more economical when you did not have to worry about where the astronaut was going to go to the bathroom.
In an article published in Summer 2004 issue of the journal Issues in Science and Technology, Van Allen wrote: “Have we reached the point where human spaceflight is also obsolete? … Let us not obfuscate the issue with false analogies to Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan and Lewis and Clark, or with visions of establishing a pleasant tourist resort on the planet Mars.”
Even though we know much about the Earth and space, we still need explorers who can trace the lines that flow from God. They may explore using a microscope and petri dish and not a rocket or a galleon, but today’s explorers still require curiosity and courage. Like Magellan and Van Allen, some of them may die along the journey, and some will, I pray, die peacefully and full of years in Iowa, but all of them are ready to “boldly go where no one has gone before.” Captain Kirk, take us on out there.
