To boldly go where no one has gone before

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WHAT’S UP!

Before the Avengers, before the X-Men, even before Star Wars, there was Star Trek. The original television series started in 1966 and ran till 1969. At the beginning of every episode Captain Kirk (William Shaftner) would give an introductory speech:

These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. It’s five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilisations; to boldly go where no man has gone before!’ (that bit ‘no man’ has since been changed to ‘no one’ to keep up with modern sensibilities).

That speech came back to me when I watched the launch of the spaceship Artemis last week, as they proceeded on a mission to go further into space than any human has ever done.

To many, it was not a big deal, they just went to the moon and back. They did not even land, as the Apollo astronauts had done more than 50 years ago. They were not the first human eyes to see the dark side of the moon, the Apollo guys had done that.

The Chinese have even landed probes on that dark side. So, again, the sceptics asked, what’s the fuss?

Someone pointed out that this particular launch cost a whopping $4b and insisted that money could have been better used elsewhere.

The counter arguments had it that it was important for humanity to explore the possibility of establishing colonies on the moon, that the earth before not very long will not be able to sustain life. And that there are resources on the moon we need back one earth, with its dwindling resources.

It might not get many headlines, but there is a space race going on, mainly between the US, Europe and China. At one time, some Chinese speculator tried to sell plots on the moon, but nothing came of it. The UN eventually decided that no one country can own pieces of the moon, although if you are doing something there, no one will stop you.

The Artemis is actually a programme, not just a mission; this was Artemis II. The programme aims ‘…to return humans to the Moon, establish a sustainable presence and prepare for future missions to Mars’.

The programme plans to have humans back on the moon by 2028 and to have started the building of the Lunar Gateway space station. So, yeah, the space race is real, and last week’s mission was just a small part of it.

But what really got me was the fact that the four astronauts (Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen) had gone boldly where no one had gone – all 252,756 miles (406771.352km) of it. It might not seem to have been ‘boldly’, but a million things could have gone wrong, as has happened so spectacularly in the past.

The history of man, especially the development, is largely a story of people who have been bold enough to go where no one else had gone. The inventors, the explorers, even those who questioned the status quo, were bold people who drove humanity onwards.

It is that spirit that makes science fiction so fascinating, and I pointed that out to one of the Artemis sceptics, but who is an ardent Marvel fan.

If those before us had not been bold, we would still be living in caves.

Big-up to the black pirates rugby club

In a similar, albeit much smaller horizon, Uganda’s Black Pirates Rugby Club boldly went where no Ugandan club had gone for almost 60 years when they beat fancied Nairobi side Nondies to reach the finals of the regional Enterprise Cup. Records show that the last Ugandan team to win the Enterprise was the Kampala Rugby Football Club in 1970, which was actually a three-peat, because they had won it in 1968 and 1969. The Enterprise Cup was first competed for in 1930, and Kampala RFC first won it in 1956, beating Kenya Harlequins 14-3.

Everything in Uganda started breaking down after 1971, and rugby was no exception. I appeared on the rugby scene in the mid-1990s, had a very short playing stint with the Rhinos and decided to do what I do best – being a journalist.

I covered rugby regularly, and then on and off till about 2018. But in that time, as far as I can remember, no Ugandan club had even got close to the semi-finals.

It was all tears and frustration, so we really must be very proud of the Pirates for boldly going to where no Ugandan had gone for more than 50 years.

To put it in perspective, the Americans were still going to the moon the last time Uganda brought the Enterprise Cup home.

To put what the Pirates did in further perspective, the Nondescripts (Nondies) is one of the oldest rugby clubs in East Africa, being formed in 1923. In over 100 years of their history, they have won 17 Kenya Cup championships and 25 Enterprise Cups. Pirates, on the other hand, were formed in 1996, and the club is barely 30 years old, still a youth in the game of rugby.

So, on May 30, in Nairobi, the Pirates will continue their path into the unknown when they take on six-time defending champions Kabras Sugar, exploring strange new worlds and conquering them. Go get them, boys!