For centuries, explorers have risked their lives venturing into the unknown for reasons that were to varying degrees economic and nationalistic. Christopher Columbus went west to look for better trade routes to the Orient and to promote the greater glory of Spain. Lewis and Clark journeyed into the American wilderness to find out what the U.S. had acquired in the Louisiana Purchase, and the Apollo astronauts rocketed to the moon in a dramatic flexing of technological muscle during the cold war.

Although their missions blended commercial and political-military imperatives, the explorers involved all accomplished some significant science simply by going where no scientists had gone before. The Lewis and Clark team brought back samples, descriptions and drawings of the flora and fauna of the western U.S., much of it new to the colonizers and the culture they represented. The Apollo program, too, eventually gushed good data. "Our fundamental understanding of the overall geological history of the moon is largely derived from the last three Apollo missions," says Paul D. Spudis, a geologist and staff scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston.

   
Already a Digital subscriber? Sign-in Now
If your institution has site license access, enter here.