OPS: Oceanic, Polar, Space operations... and more

OPS-Alaska is a global research network, bringing together scholars from many disciplines, inter alia:

What brings us together is a mission that Gene Roddenberry articulated famously, to the point that it has become a cliché: "To boldly go where no one has gone before." Although all researchers live on the frontiers of knowledge, we are drawn together by our interest in expanding the human ecology, in increasing the capability to operate in extreme environments, gaining new knowledge from these exotic places and from the adaptation of human individuals and organizations to them, and in disseminating that knowledge for the common benefit of humankind.

The answer to "what" inevitably segues to the question, "Why?" The answer is perhaps is at the junction of curiosity and faith. As John F. Kennedy said in 1962, at the dawn of humankind's voyages into the cosmos, "We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the benefit of all people." In exploring the universe we come to better understand ourselves, and that expansion of our envelope of self-reflection, an ability that as far as we know is a unique gift among the species of Earth, inevitably brings us closer to whatever other recipients of that gift may inhabit the universe, and to that which bestowed the gift on them and on us.

This is our calling.