Cassi Creek:
We made it to the moon, and back.
We built an International Space Station.
Von Braun’s multi-stage beast, the Saturn V, looked pretty much like what Walt Disney helped him sell. Our Space Station looks more like discarded box springs and corrugated culvert than the beautifully painted wheel that Willey Ley described with the Disney crew providing the animation. But it is there, in orbit, visible from the ground. The current question is, “Can we keep it up?”
Space shuttle Atlantis lifts off
By the CNN Wire Staff
July 8, 2011 12:11 p.m. EDT
Cassi Creek:
And in a moment like only 135 in the last 3 decades, a crew rides upward on a pillar of smoke and fire. The noise can be heard for miles inland and seaward. The exhaust plume can be seen on the opposite side of the peninsula, and the flame can be seen for an even greater distance at night.
There will be no more shuttle launches. Any personnel changes, resupply, or other transport to the ISS will take place on Russian (old Soviet) launch vehicles with limited cargo capacity and limited crew space. The supremacy of the American manned space program is ended. We’ve allowed our voters and our politicians to become overly familiar with the excellent safety record our program has built, so that they fail to appreciate either the very real risk involved in riding rockets or the importance to the world’s population that resides in a manned space program. Putting robots on Mars or on other planets is amazing! Sending probes out of our solar system, gathering and transmitting knowledge homeward, and announcing our infantile efforts to interact with the physical and social demands of what inter-stellar society we may eventually encounter, is also exciting and something we should continue to carry out. However, there remains a necessity to keep humans active in and eager to explore near and outer space for thousands of reasons that any sentient citizen should understand without having them enumerated and explained.
Scientific research and exploration should spark a unique interest in anyone who has ever gazed at a night sky, watched a thunderstorm roll in and drop a tornado, or watched meteors streak into incandescent nothingness. Anyone who has ignored the assigned chapters in “The Scarlet Letter” in order to read “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress,” or “The Martian Chronicles” understands why we screwed up when we let our politicians drop the funding for manned space exploration.
When we care more about professional athletic competitions and sensationalized court cases that truly effect none of us, than our ability to explore new worlds, we’ve lost the sense of wonder and adventure that took us off the ground to begin with. What a shame!
Shabbat Shalom
No comments:
Post a Comment