INTERNATIONAL DAY OF HUMAN SPACE FLIGHT – We could say that the 1960s Space Race to be the first country in space between the United States and the Soviet Union came down to a tie. The Russians put the first man in space when cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin orbited the Earth in 108 minutes on April 12, 1961, but the Americans put the first man on the moon when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on its surface after landing with Apollo 11 in 1969. Interestingly enough, though, there’s still an ongoing conspiracy theory concerning this ‘giant leap for mankind’.

Based on the video footage of the first moon landing, critics claim the flag couldn’t have waved in vacuum where there’s no wind. NASA’s standpoint is that it happened because Aldrin was twisting the flagpole to plant the flag firmly into the moon soil. What’s more, independently verified moon rocks brought back by the astronauts also count as pretty solid proof, but then again, you can’t really deny what theorists also say, that Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey proves that the filmmaker himself could have helped NASA fake the lunar landing with the technology already available at the time in 1968 when the movie came out.

Considering how much of what humans thought they knew or believed to be true has already turned out differently throughout humanity’s recorded centuries, we can’t really rule out anything. Undoubtedly though, we have maintained multinational human presence in outer space ever since the docking of the Apollo and Soyuz spacecrafts on 17 July, 1975. And we have come a long way since then, but humans are still just as hopeful as they are fearful of “Space, the final frontier.” But is it a final frontier? We might find out more, in one of our lifetimes for sure, if not this one, as some of the planned future space programs of the world seem quite thrilling first steps to go ‘where no man has gone before’.

For one, there is the Indian Space Research Organisation – ISRO’s human spaceflight mission program with the objective of developing a fully autonomous orbital vehicle for 2 to 3 crew members to about 300km low-Earth orbit (LEO) and their safe return. (LEO is an orbit around Earth where objects are at an altitude between 160 km to 2,000 km (orbital period of about 88 min to 127 min), where the majority of our space missions have taken place, where the International Space Station (ISS) operates, whose crew of 6 spends up to 6 months in space at a time.)

Another space mission in the works is U.S. NASA’s plan development to land humans on Mars by the 2030s, and then there are also the human spaceflight programs announced by several other countries using their own technology, like Japan (JAXA), Malaysia (MNSA) and Iran (ISA).

Who knows what frontiers these explorations uncover, what we find beyond our Solar System, where we go after we’ve reached the Earth’s gravitational well? And then we haven’t even considered the parallel or expanding universe theories, to add a thought.

However far our technological and scientific knowledge takes us though, we can’t ignore our flesh and blood limitations, our earthliness. I mean, just think of Arnie Schwarzenegger’s eye-popping scene when he gets a bit of Martian air in Total Recall (1990). Any planet that does not have an ozone layer, like Mars, is a danger to all life forms we know of at present, as it’s awash with UV radiation.

So spending too much time in space could be the greatest challenge of all for humans, to say the least, even if we were wearing super spacesuits, unlike a superhuman like the Barbarian Terminator aka ex-California Governor. Or living the life as Mark Watney (Matt Damon) in The Martian (2015).

First of all, our bones and muscles are meant to fight gravity, otherwise they deteriorate quickly. This can affect our survival in space and lead to severe injuries back on Earth too. Out in space, gravity also no longer pulls fluids, like blood, lymphatic and cerebrospinal fluid, to the lower part of our bodies and so they redistribute themselves more evenly. This is why ISS astronauts’ eyeballs flatten a bit after 6 months in space, which explains the reported vision deterioration upon their return. Zero gravity can also block our immune functions, which makes us much more vulnerable to diseases. And a recent and ground-breaking NASA twin astronaut study finds that prolonged space travel can cause shifts in gene-expression.

NASA’s Scott Kelly spent 340 days in space (lifetime total of 520 days) from 2015 to 2016, while his identical twin, also an astronaut, Mark Kelly stayed on Earth. The research and comparison of their immune systems is in process.

Besides these obstacles, mental illness is another factor to consider when moving house to the above and beyond. This is why NASA is currently conducting a human performance study, the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) project, sealing people in a dome in a Mars-like habitat for a longer duration of time to see how we would cope mentally with outer space living.

And if we overcome these physical and psychical limitations, we still face the greatest risk of all – the one that we have not yet anticipated.

Just think of all the possibilities. Millions of humans have reported that they may have been abducted by aliens right here on Earth, more and more death bed confessions of retired NASA and other space flight officials surface, Roswell revelations and UFO specialist investigations add to the vast opportunities of what lies beyond the grasp of our present knowledge.

So unless it’s already hidden or buried in some X-files, regardless of whether it may exist in our far past or far future, in the trillion galaxies of the known or the unknown universe, “the truth is out there”.
I just hope, for all our sake, humanity maintains space for peaceful exploration and not an escape route from a home planet we’re killing, and not even softly.

It’s the International Day of Human Space Flight guys, but remember we are Gaia.

From out there on the Moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.’ – (Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut, speaking in People magazine on 8 April 1974.)

• The longest single human spaceflight is that of Valeri Polyakov, who left Earth on 8 January 1994, and did not return until 22 March 1995 (a total of 437 days 17 h 58 min 16 s)
• Sergei Krikalev has spent the most time of anyone in space, 803 days, 9 hours, and 39 minutes altogether
• The longest period of continuous human presence in space is 16 years and 144 days on the International Space Station