Kroll's Inspire Antarctic Expedition 2008

So far the journey has been a great one. While the Drake’s Passage is never calm, we lucked out, and it was not nearly as bad as it could have been. As we crossed the Drake, I had time to think about how my vision of what constitutes “the final frontier” has changed during my life.After graduate school in the late 1960’s, my first work was at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Manned Spacecraft Center (now called the Johnson Space Center) in Houston. I worked on support software for the Apollo project to take astronauts to the moon.

At the time, we thought we were all part of a real-life Star Trek. When William Shatner opened that show with the term “Space, the Final Frontier” all of us said “Yeah, that’s what we’re working on. Soon, we’ll be going.” I believed it then. A bunch of 20-something and 30-something engineers and scientists working to send people to the moon and to bring them back safely. We all figured that by 2000, we would all be up in orbit, if not at a moon colony. Obviously we were wrong.

Maybe space is the ultimate frontier, but if we don’t take steps to reverse trends like global warming, we’re not going to have much of a home planet. I’ve come to believe, like Robert, that for us here on earth, the final frontier is Antarctica. The melting of the pack ice, the changes in glacial melt, the changes being observed in Antarctica’s biosystems and the hole in the ozone are troubling signs. To industrialize the Antarctic continent at the expiration of the Antarctic Treaty in 2041 should be unthinkable, but in a world thirsty for fossil fuels, who knows how reasonable just a bit of “ecologically sensitive exploration, drilling and production” might sound? This journey is showing me that this is the place to take a stand — that Antarctica should stand forever as a protected natural habitat and science center.

What can we do as individuals do? Maybe not a lot, but collectively, we can make things happen. If we don’t the Antarctic follows the vast buffalo herds of the American west into oblivion. I don’t know if I’ll be here in 2041, but for my children and their children, I own them the attempt to get the word out and try to reverse the climate change and preserve this planet’s final frontier.

Melissa’s initial thoughts on climate change…

I haven’t really been impacted….or I just haven’t realized it! I am sure this trip will give me a new perspective.

Alan’s initial thoughts on climate change…

I have wanted to find a way for people to take some personal responsibility for doing something about climate change. It doesn’t have to be big. Swapping out the incandescent lights in your house for compact fluorescent isn’t a huge deal, but if done by enough people, it helps. I’m not above having people do the right thing even if they are doing it with an ulterior purpose. While visiting my parents in Florida, I not only changed their bulbs to CFLs, but got several of their neighbors to do so, not so much to save energy or reduce avoidable carbon loads, but because they are guaranteed to last for years (which is more than I can say for some of the neighbors.) I also helped our neighbor switch his holiday light display from the little incandescent bulbs to LEDs, which combined both a more beautiful display and reduced energy consumption by more than 90%.

That’s all good, but I hope I can use my experience and skills in adult/lifelong education to provide a vehicle for getting the word out about climate change and what we can each do, both as individuals and through our political systems, to begin changing things. One of the things that Admiral Hopper taught me is that when a warship is steaming full speed ahead, it takes a while for it to turn or to stop, but that the key is getting the turn started. I’m hoping for some insight and guidance during our trip so that I can make that training happen.