The Future of Exploration: An Interview With Explorers Club President Lorie Karnath

In just a few days, an expected 1,000 explorers from around the world will arrive in New York City to attend Saturday's Explorers Club Annual Dinner, the Academy Awards of exploration. Now in her third term as president of the club, Lorie Karnath (pictured) took a break from preparations to discuss exploration with a purpose, the importance of challenging conventional thought, and how technology is changing the game … oh, and the end of the world.—Mary Anne Potts

Adventure: First, Japan. The news just continues to worsen. What role do explorers play in these kinds of world events?
Lorie Karnath: Field research and data collection being done by explorers and scientists may aid in better understanding why and where earthquakes occur, and why they are often followed by tsunamis. The work being done in the field today will hopefully help to better prepare and prevent such disasters as the ones we have just witnessed in Japan.

This year’s dinner theme is the Maya prophecy, which some interpret as predicting the end of the world in 2012. Though the world seems especially chaotic right now, why did you pick this theme?
It’s actually not so much about the Maya prophecy, but about prophecies in general, and how explorers throughout the centuries have not only had to deal with the challenges of exploration, but, on top of that, they have had to deal with going against accepted bodies of thought.

We all know about 2012, but what are some of the other prophecies?
Over and over explorers have had to challenge very erudite groups. For example, think about how long it took scientists to decide that the Earth was not the center of the universe. There were times when there was prophecy that the world was flat and that people were going to fall off the edge of it. And yet explorers still jumped in ships and discovered it was round. Explorers were told if they climbed the highest mountain they would be annihilated by radioactive rays … and on and on.

But each time, explorers were not only willing to go through the hardship that goes along with exploration, they were able to think outside the box and go against the status quo. So part of our role as explorers is not just discovery, but it’s also separating science from fiction.

Space and the New Age of Exploration - An Interview With Explorers' Club President Lorie Karnath

More than 1,000 explorers from around the globe will converge in New York City for the 106th Explorers' Club Annual Dinner on Saturday at the Waldorf=Astoria (watch a video from last year's event). While sharing a Versailles-styled ballroom with the world’s best polar explorers, bushwhacking biologists, and dusty archaeologists—some in native dress—might sound like a throwback to a bygone era, this year’s theme is decidedly modern: space. The evening's program even includes superstars on an intergalactic level, such as physicist Stephen Hawking and planetary scientist Steve Squyres. According to club president Lorie Karnath (pictured below), we are entering a new Age of Exploration, one baring likeness to sailing’s uncharted days and early polar expeditions. Here Karnath fills us in on the future of space tourism, manned missions, planetary colonization, and space-age exploration.—By Mary Anne Potts

Why is this a new Age of Exploration? 
There was a time in history known as the Age of Exploration, starting in the 15th century, when explorers and adventurers really did not know where they were going, what to expect, or what they would find. That’s the same feeling we have about space. Space is definitely going to become a more important place for us to learn about as quickly as possible.

Meet the Adventurers of the Year: Astronaut John Grunsfeld

Voice from Outer Space: Astronaut John Grunsfeld

Around NASA, he’s known as “the Hubble Repairman.” And last May, on his third visit to the orbiting space telescope, John Grunsfeld pulled off the repair to end all repairs. Working at zero gravity some 350 miles above the surface of the Earth, the astronaut restored sight to a half-blind Hubble—called the greatest scientific instrument ever invented—and ensured that it will continue to send back the stunning images and mind-boggling data that have transformed our understanding of the universe.

Having just turned 51, Grunsfeld has spent his career championing manned space exploration. At a time when astronaut-led programs are being called into question, ADVENTURE tracked down Grunsfeld at the Johnson Space Center in Houston to learn about his May mission and why going manned matters. Read the story and view images >>

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Two weeks ago we announced the 2009 Adventurers of the Year, selected for their extraordinary achievements in exploration, conservation, action sports, and humanitarian work. Now, for the first time ever, you can vote for the Readers' Choice Adventurer of the Year. To help you get to know them, we are going to highlight a different adventurer daily. You can only vote once, so make sure to check out each adventurers' profile, video, and photo gallery, before firing up our voting machine.

Send Yourself to Space... For a Price

Text by Joe Battle

There are many different paths to take to float with the stars, but a majority of them revolve around a wallet that could plug a black hole.

One of the leaders in promoting private space travel is a company known as Space Adventures.  A meager $100 million will “secure” your personal trip to the moon…whenever that again becomes a reality.  So far Space Adventures has had six clients, most famously Anousheh Ansari, co-founder of Telecom Technologies. Her family provided the sponsorship for the Ansari X Prize, which was a major catalyst for making private space travel a reality. The goal of the prize was to break away from government organizations and create a reusable manned spacecraft. In 2004 the SpaceShipOne accomplished just that and the X Prize Foundation delivered the prize money of 10 million dollars. Ansari is one of the trustees on the X Prize Foundation along with PayPal co-founder Elon Musk. Musk is the CEO of Space X, which quite possibly represents the future of private space travel.

But if you want to get to space within the next five years, our 2008 Lifetime Achievement recipient, Sir Richard Branson, is your man. His Virgin Galactic will, for $200,000, take you on a two-and-a-half hour trip to the outskirts of our atmosphere, where you’ll feel weightless. It’s been reported that 300 people have paid a majority of the fee, while 80,000 people have been interested but haven’t yet ponied up the 200,000 clams.

Virgin Galactic is not alone. XCOR aerospace is planning a shorter and less expensive suborbital trip.

40th Anniversary of Moonwalk: Interview with Buzz Aldrin

Text by Ryan Bradley, Photograph courtesy of Criterion Collection

It’s been 40 years since Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. became the second human in history to set foot on the moon. Though he retired from NASA not long after the Apollo 11 mission, he’s still awfully vocal about how important space remains, and why we need to explore it.

ADVENTURE: It took less than a decade for us to figure out how to get to the moon. Shouldn’t we have gone to Mars by now?

Buzz Aldrin: We really aren’t ready to do that. I think it’s a problem of will. I don’t think we’ve inspired ourselves. We haven’t been moving in a direction that clearly evolves toward exploration.

A: Why is that?

BA: The funding went down. A president came in who was not so friendly as the president that committed us to go to the moon, yet he took credit for reaching the moon and oversaw the disabling of that system. And then we embarked on something that didn’t succeed really at all: the shuttle system.

Continue reading Buzz Aldrin interview>>

40th Annivesary of Moonwalk: Classic Film Revisits Magnitude of Lunar Missions

Text by Ryan Bradley; Photograph courtesy of Criterion Collection

"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard…” —JFK September 12, 1962

Forty years is a long time, technologically speaking. This is the immediately striking thing about For All Mankind, Al Reinert’s brilliantly simple 1989 documentary about the missions to our lunar neighbor. The film lumps millions of feet worth of film footage from 1968 to 1972 together into one seamless, ultimate Mission. No one is identified—though there are voiceovers from interviews, it’s nearly impossible to know which astronaut is speaking. That’s the point. The individuals involved aren’t really important, it’s the magnitude of the thing itself, this very big thing they’re doing for all mankind. By getting out of the way of the images (there’s a sparse score by Brian Eno), you quickly realize how amazingly, almost dauntingly un-slick space travel circa 1970 was. It was uncomfortable, not very glamorous, not at all like the movies. It was hard.

Just look at that gigantic rocket takeoff. It’s a violent act, and one that flies directly in the face of gravity and every slick summer blockbuster out there. Cut to mission control: Men in buzz cuts and IBM jackets stare into massive panels of knobs and blinking lights. The control panels are reminiscent of a Connery-era Bond villain’s, just no bikini-clad babes to be found. Cut back to the astronauts, now orbiting earth and giddily playing with a flashlight in zero gravity. Back and forth they pass the thing until mission control scolds them and they stop. Cut back to Houston: Bad haircuts, even worse computers. These are the images of the extraordinary thing that happened 40 years ago today. People came together and did something very, very hard—superhuman even—with very, very limited technology. But Reinert shows us how human we were when we did it.

In honor of the 40th anniversary of the first moonwalk on July 20, For All Mankind is re-released today on a special DVD by the venerable Criterion Collection ($30; criterion.com). There are all sorts of extras like director commentary and a making of feature, but the high-definition digital transfer is the best thing about it. Really, there’s nothing like real film-footage from outer space. A million big-budget blockbusters can’t beat it.

Talking the Walk

In the Shadow of the Moon is nearly as sparse and inspiring as For All Mankind, but with a bit more on the men behind the missions. Based on interviews with ten of the Apollo astronauts, the 2007 documentary really capitalizes on the poetry and high-emotion of the former spacemen, Mike Collins in particular. Collins was the Apollo 11 command module pilot who stayed onboard the craft as it orbited the moon, ending up in its shadow and becoming (as press later noted) “the loneliest man in the universe.”