From the Intelligence Community to the Exploration Community

I'm a storyteller; that's what exploration really is all about. Going to places where others haven't been and returning to tell a story they haven't heard before.
-James Cameron

As an up and coming explorer with Blue Marble Exploration, I am honored to be invited into such a prestigious group of astronauts, entrepreneurs, divers and well… explorers. My story is a bit different from other new explorers. I’ve been working for the intelligence community since the age of 19. Due to my test scores, I was recruited by the Army into a program that no longer exists. I was trained as a Counterintelligence Special Agent in the art of tradecraft, source operations, and interrogation. For those of you who are not familiar with the term counterintelligence, it simply means that I keep our nation’s enemies from stealing our secrets.

After the Army, I pursued my intelligence career in private industry, and now I work for the Department of Defense as a Counterintelligence Special Agent. During my travels, I’ve been fortunate to meet many beautiful minds to include fellow explorers. I’ve always admired these men and women above all others. My experiences of global travel, extreme environments, and war zones gave me the qualifications to prosper within my field, but never in the name of science or exploration.

This is not the first time the intelligence and exploration communities have crossed paths. In 1985, Bob Ballard set out to lead an expedition with the hopes of discovering the Titanic. Ballard, a former Naval Officer himself, was able to fund the expedition through U.S. Naval Intelligence in secret. The Navy was not interested in financing the search for the Titanic. However, the Navy was desperately interested in discovering the location of two of their sunken nuclear-powered attack submarines from the 1960s. Stories like Ballard’s inspired me and gave me hope for being accepted into the exploration community.

When I began working with Blue Marble Exploration and The Explorers Club, I was amazed but very cautious. For every similarity between these two worlds, there were several differences. Who pays for this stuff? I’ve been accustomed to Uncle Sam picking up the tab, and had no idea where the funding for these expeditions came from. I recognized very quickly there was no right answer for this question. Corporate sponsors, wealthy donors, crowdfunding, grants, and yes, in some cases the intelligence community has funded many of the amazing expeditions that have awed and educated us over the years.

In order to be accepted into the exploration community, I needed to embrace social networking. This has been the hardest change for me. Having active Twitter and Instagram accounts is considered a general faux pas within the intelligence community, especially for those in non-overt positions. Having a significant cyber footprint on the internet opens oneself up to possible cyber-attacks and visibility from the enemy. However, it also brings public interest to important causes, helps with crowdfunding opportunities, sponsorship for expeditions, and is a medium for educating the public.

Finally, I now have the ability to pursue expeditions with my particular interests. Having the freedom to decide where I want to travel and write on topics I’m personally interested in is a new concept for me. Being a certified scuba diver, I’ve always enjoyed exploring the world’s oceans. In 2016, I’ll be joining Blue Marble Exploration to be part of the first manned submersible expedition to the bottom of Dean’s Blue Hole located in Long Island, Bahamas. The goal will be to pilot a small sub 663 feet to the bottom and broadcast the event live!

I live for these adventures and take this stewardship seriously. I now understand the bond between exploration and storytelling, and more importantly doing it in ways that impacts the human experience and deepens our connection to this planet. These stories are not only meant to entertain but to educate and remind us that the age of exploration is just beginning, not ending.

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Contributed by Justin Shanken Emerging Explorer Blue Marble Exploration Atlanta, GA, USA

Primal Instinct to Explore

One of the most common questions explorers face is: "Why?"

WHY do you explore?

WHY is exploration important?

WHY do human beings have a history of exploration?

Perhaps it is simply in our nature to do so. Perhaps we have a deeply ingrained survival instinct that our animal brains cannot shake despite thousands of years of evolution. Or perhaps we are simply following our destiny as "wanderers".

Carl Sagan was one of the biggest proponents of our sense of exploration. Now Swedish digital artist Erik Wernquist has created a powerful video to try capturing that wanderlust. Regardless of whether you believe the viability of humanity ever existing beyond Planet Earth, Wanderers is still a visually compelling piece of art. Enjoy!

Wanderers - a short film by Erik Wernquist from Erik Wernquist on Vimeo.

Becoming The Youngest Person in Space

I am 17 years old and will start my senior year of high school in the fall. Like most kids, space has always been something that excited and amazed me. Even as a young child, I would stare up at the stars, wondering what was out there and how I could find it.

Unfortunately, growing up in my generation I began to face the reality that being an astronaut was not exactly a realistic career choice. People told me that it was almost impossible to work for NASA and that the space program had almost no budget so what was the point in trying anyways. This was really hard for me to take in, but I moved on and began to accept the reality that I would just have to become a doctor or lawyer when I grew up.

However, after an incredibly unexpected turn of events last year, my dream of going to space was reignited, when I was able to create a position for myself at XCOR Aerospace, a commercial space company based out of Mojave, California.

The biggest perk of working for XCOR is that every employee gets a free trip into suborbital space aboard our spacecraft, Lynx. When I found this out, I could not have been more excited: since Lynx is set to start flying within the year, that would mean that I would become the youngest person ever to visit space!

As XCOR’s Communication and Youth Outreach Associate, I have taken this excitement with me and spoken to over a thousand students and teachers about the possibilities of commercial space exploration and how they all can get involved. I have developed a presentation and classroom materials, and I have seen how inspired kids are by space and all that it holds.

Through all of this, I have thought a lot about what exploration really means to me.

Some people dismiss XCOR because we are only going to suborbital space, and that is somehow unimportant in the grand scheme of exploration since we have already gone to the Moon as a species. However, what that notion fails to take into account is that each flight will be a new experience and chance to explore for each individual. Not only will we be conducting research that has never done before, but we will also be bringing space, the most extreme environment we know of, and its beauty to thousands of people, while inspiring millions more. The commercial space market as a whole is pushing the limits of how we explore and making our universe more accessible to everyone in the process.

I want to go to space not because it will be a first for humanity but because I will get to expand the boundaries of what I have experienced and share that knowledge with as many students as I can. I truly hope that my record of being the youngest person in space does not stand for long and that space becomes something accessible for everybody on the planet, especially kids. The future of exploration relies on the youth of today. We have as a whole become more interested in looking at our phones than looking up at the sky or down into the ocean, but this can be changed. It is our job as individuals, as communities, and as a society to reignite a passion for exploration and make it exciting for future generations once again.

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Contributed by Zach Oschin Student Explorer Blue Marble Exploration Los Angeles, CA, USA

Exploration Summit 2015

Last week the Exploration Institute organized its first Exploration Summit. Set on the Caltech campus in Pasadena, California, the event drew a group of 40 invited participants with diverse professional backgrounds but a common passion for exploration. I had the honor of attending and came home with three thoughts:

The Next Great Age of Exploration

Many members of the media and general public seem to question the need for ongoing exploration efforts, so I often hear the question, "Haven't we already explored everywhere on Earth?" Then a plane goes missing somewhere over an ocean, and those same people wonder why we cannot find it. Perhaps it is because our planet is a phenomenally huge place, and humans have only begun to scratch the surface when it comes to exploring the entirety of its ecosystem?

Fortunately, there also seems to be no shortage of explorers, who are prepared and eager to continue pushing the limits of humanity's knowledge of our home world. Leveraging modern technologies and funded by the greatest accumulation of global capital we have ever seen, these courageous visionaries are ushering in what many of us consider to be The Next Great Age of Exploration.

During last week's Exploration Summit, I was humbled to be among so many passionate individuals working hard to bring their exploration projects to life. I am excited to see what eye-opening discoveries the next few years will bring!

Explorers and Storytellers

I have always believed that one of the most important roles exploration plays in the realm of human activities is its vast potential for inspiration and education. Each expedition can be a tremendous storytelling platform with the ability to reach great numbers of people around the world. This is the fundamental vision behind Blue Marble Exploration.

Leveraging the Summit's strategic location near Los Angeles, founder Armin Ellis and the wonderful staff at the Exploration Institute were able to bring together explorers AND storytellers. It was such a pleasure engaging in so many riveting discussions with artists, photographers, writers, and filmmakers!

While explorers can organize expeditions and scientists can provide the subject matter expertise, it is these talented and creative storytellers who add all the value and make the expeditions worthwhile endeavors. They are true heroes.

From Extreme Environments To Hyperlocal Exploration

We founded Blue Marble Exploration with a specific focus on human exploration of extreme environments. As such, our expeditions tend to be large complex projects that span the globe. However, we know so little about our planet that even a single person can make a big difference by exploring their own backyard ... sometimes quite literally. Over the past few years, we have seen a growing movement toward "hyperlocal" exploration, and that phenomenon was on full display last week.

Several participants arrived at the Summit with ideas for large-scale global expeditions, including a trek along the Pan-American Highway on an eco-friendly flying motorcycle, a trip to study the indigenous peoples of the Ecuadorian Amazon, and a public-private partnership with NOAA to explore a 6,000-meter-deep South Pacific marine protected area the size of California. However, there were also many ideas for much smaller projects, including a platform to enable community-based exploration, a 3D visualization app to study butterflies, and a "thumbsat" (extremely small satellite) to allow individuals access to space.

Humans have really just started to explore this planet, so every little bit helps ... a lot. We need more than just a few "intrepid explorers" embarking on occasional ambitious expeditions. We need 7 billion explorers using their curiosity to make new discoveries in their own backyards every day.

These are just a few thoughts that I took away from last week's Exploration Summit, but there were so many more ideas that came through the intense two-day event. I look forward to future interesting projects from our friends at the Exploration Institute!

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Contributed by Guillermo A. Söhnlein Co-Founder & CEO Blue Marble Exploration Atlanta, GA, USA

Mars One and the Mars 100

Earlier this week, the team at Mars One announced their "Mars 100". This is a pool of 50 men and 50 women for what the organization hopes will be the first effort to establish a human colony on Mars starting in the next decade. These finalists were selected through a rigorous screening process from over 200,000 applicants. Ultimately, 24 "Martians" will be chosen for the initial six 4-person missions to the Red Planet.

Although this is certainly not the first time anyone has planned a manned mission to Mars, what makes the Mars One approach unique (and media-grabbing) is the fact that it is a colonization mission. This means that every one of these individuals is signing up for a one-way trip. No return voyage is planned.

For some reason, the general public, fueled by a voracious media, continues to focus on what it perceives to be the suicidal nature of this mission. The headlines always seem to echo the question on everyone's minds, "Don't these people know they are going to die doing this?!"

However, this question is baffling.

It seems to presume that the alternative to dying on this mission is to live forever NOT doing the mission. It seems to presume that if these would-be Martians would just stay on Earth, they would be immortal. Of course, this is clearly not the case. Whether a human being dies on Mars or on Earth is simply a matter of geography. One way or another, that human being WILL die. There is no avoiding the natural fate of our mortality.

So ... perhaps the better question should be, "Out of 7 billion people on this planet today, why did ONLY 200,000 apply for this glorious historic opportunity?"

Perhaps one possible answer is that it takes a deep-seeded spirit of exploration to drive a human being to explore an environment as extreme and hostile as deep space, or another planet. While homo sapiens are a naturally curious animal species, this type of drive is quite rare in individual members of the species. This is why the rest of us hold explorers in such high regard ... because most of us could never do what they do, and yet we know that we all benefit from their efforts.

All of the Mars 100 know they are risking their lives, but they willingly do so out of a sense of higher purpose: to push the bounds of humanity's knowledge. And to do so by boldly going where no one has gone before. These are not crazy nuts blindly following a cult toward personal or group suicide. Instead, they are heroes and role models.

One of the Mars 100 said, "When people ask me why I am going to Mars to die, I say we are all going to die, but it's important what you do before you die." Or, as Mel Gibson's William Wallace said in Braveheart, "Every man dies, but not every man really lives."

Perhaps it is time for the media to stop focusing on the one-way aspect of this mission as an act of suicide and instead as a 100% commitment to the colonization of another world?

Not all of us have what it takes to join this mission, but the rest of us are truly fortunate that at least these 100 are up to the task. Let us support their efforts and hope for their ultimate success.

Europa Report

This year, audiences flocked to see the science fiction sensation, Insterstellar, starring Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway. Besides being a wildly popular movie with general audiences, it was also a hit with the science community, which applauded director Christopher Nolan for the film's scientific accuracy and integrity.

For the exploration community, last year's Europa Report provided similar authenticity. Using video footage and still images from NASA and JPL and leveraging technical consultants from both, it was an amazingly accurate depiction of a future private expedition to one of Jupiter's moons.

As you celebrate the holiday season and prepare to close out 2014, try to carve out some time to enjoy this movie (either for the first time or for a repeat viewing). It will thrill your "inner explorer".

Discovering Our Inner Explorer

Many of us are inspired by the biggest names in the history of exploration. Magellan. Shackleton. Hillary. Armstrong. We are amazed by their exploits and marvel at their accomplishments.

And we ask ourselves, "Could I do that?"

Exploration has been described roughly as "going somewhere no one has been before--usually at significant risk--for the purpose of scientific discovery". There are several elements of that definition that scare off most of us, whether it is the part about going somewhere new or taking risks or conducting science. Therefore, we tend to leave exploration to the "professionals", such as the members of the prestigious Explorers Club.

However, the world might be such a better place (and the future of humanity such a rosier vision) if more of us ventured out to explore the universe around us.

Someone once said that the difference between science and exploration is that "science seeks answers; exploration seeks questions". Since curiosity is at the core of exploration and human beings are naturally curious creatures, it stands to reason that each and every one of us has an Inner Explorer. We just have to connect with ourselves.

Fortunately, there are a growing number of opportunities for "citizen explorers" to join or support expeditions ... or even conduct their own exploration efforts.

The University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science recently launched a new Exploration Science program. Although it aims to teach scientists many of the skills they will need to conduct their own expeditions, it also provides opportunities for "citizen scientists" to get involved with exploration projects.

The team that brought us inexpensive DIY underwater robots is developing an online platform to foster a global community of "citizen explorers". Through OpenExplorer, anyone can "explore their backyard" and share their findings with the rest of us.

With opportunities like these becoming increasingly available, we hope that many more people around the world will find their Inner Explorer.