Disaster
My father and I used to have heated debates about the space program. He felt strongly that the money used to fund NASA should be used for social programs. “We have enough problems here at home,” he would say. I tried to argue that stopping space exploration would not increase funding to help disadvantaged people – it would just go to other pork barrel projects. Plus, that budget was miniscule compared to, say, the defense industry.
But he and I were both stubborn, so neither influenced the other very much. My father continued to believe, as I used to joke with him, that “all the shuttles and rockets and space stations should be melted down to make soup cans for the poor.”
My focus then, as now, is that we must continue to reach for the stars, both literally and figuratively. As a society, as a people, if we stop exploring, stop reaching out for things beyond our grasp, we die. I believe that’s a crucial part of what makes us human.
If we let what happened today slow the pace of progress, we’re not only going in the wrong direction – we’re doing a disservice to the memory of the people on the shuttle, who dedicated themselves to looking ahead, and up.
Why am I not surprised that the first completely non-military and totally research-focused space flight ends in disaster? A sad day indeed.
I just got an e-mail from my uncle in east Texas telling us not to worry–they’re safe under the coffee table.
It’s one of the things that makes me shake our head and wonder. Nothing worthwhile has ever come to humans without a cost of blood somewhere along the line, usually in amounts much greater than the US space program has experienced. (I shan’t detail the losses of the Soviet space program because I don’t have numbers handy). No exploration has ever happened without sacrifice. Sailing the seas cost more lives than we now can count, much less exploring the continents reached. Every outreach of humans beyond the circle of the tribal firepit costs like this, but the alternative is to die huddled around the embers.
The loss is saddening on a personal level — those were people, and they died unexpectedly. I will not say they died uselessly — they knew as well as anyone the dangers they faced, yet they did it anyway.
What twists me up inside is how, now, we will be subject to the myriad interpretations and hard reactions to this event. Have we always been so driven by fear, as a race? Is our desire for safety inside the walls of the familiar so very great? Have we always been this way? It seems people admire that person who goes to the edge and beyond, but we certainly don’t encourage anyone to take the trip.
Peace be to Columbia.
Beautifully said, Sherri.
For me, instead of spending several billions of dollars building a home for a few scientists in space, we should spend the money on building homes for thousands on Earth. I know it’s not an either/or. I enjoy the gee-whiz factor as much as others, but the science being done in space seems somewhat trivial to me and not worth the money.
I agree with you, Adam. The space program has given rise to more new technology than any other human endeavor. This is one example among many – every day people’s lives are saved with MRI technology originally developed by NASA. Think of the tumors found and removed at every hospital in the world using that technology. So many lives saved. Beats the hell out of some soup cans.
This page has more detail on the many scientific advances that help people every day which are a result of the space program.
For me, it’s not the scientific advances of the space program that make it worthwhile. And as Arthur said, I don’t think we need to spend all this money just so we can do zero-gravity experiments on plants.
We need to spend this money, and much more in my opinion, to continue to explore the unknown. As Sherri said so wonderfully, it’s an essential part of being human. And I don’t want to let that go.
“Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the drug store, but that’s just peanuts to space… Bigger than the biggest thing ever and then some. Much bigger than that, in fact, really amazingly immense, a totally stunning size, real “wow, that’s big” time. Infinity is so big that by comparison, bigness itself looks really titchy. Gigantic multiplied by colossal multiplied by staggeringly huge is the sort of concept we’re trying to get across here.”
–Douglas Adams
So… WHY are we trying to- ahem… EXPLORE something that is impossible by definition to explore?? How about, oh I don’t know, the OCEANS? We don’t know jack about the seas. Creatures are dieing off before we’ve even discovered them, thanks to pollution. Imagine a squirrel in Central Park leaping to an adjacent tree…. THAT’S the astronomical equivilent to the moon landing. Space is not only infinite, it’s a vacuum. What can we possibly gain from exploring a vacuum? I’m all for astronomy, telescopes and observatories are great. Even the Hubble Telescope is a great idea, but why the nations of the world need to keep people living in a tin can above the sky is beyond me. The aliens are laughing at us. On the other hand, we have explored one tenth of one percent of this planet’s seas. There are undiscovered primates roaming around the Pacific Northwest, and what about the rain forests? We need to start thinking closer to home. Man’s imagination is only surpassed by his ego, and in the cosmic sense, we’re not really that important. Sorry to sound grim like that, but we really need to focus on what matters to us, let the universe take care of itself, we’ve certainly done a bang-up job with earth.
Clearly NASA’s budget should be given to bigfoot research.
“The legal profession regularly convicts and kills people on a tiny fraction of the kind of evidence that we already have for the Sasquatch.”
— Dr. Grover Krantz
I agree Adam. I believe the following: We’re here to love, learn about ourselves, eachother, and humanity. I feel that to understand our place in the universe, and learn the things we’re supposed to learn about humanity while we’re here, we have to explore our world and the universe we live in. When we reach out to new worlds, and further into space, we will begin to realize as a planet that we’re all one, and that it’s to all of our benefit to get along and advance ourselves as a species, not as individual groups and races. Exploration has always been one of the driving forces of our species, and a part of our advancement spiritually, intellectually and socially. Also, I think the understanding of science, and our immediate universe in our society is quite disappointing. When you’ve got a significant part of the population easily swayed by these stupid, illogical moon hoax idiots, you know you’ve got problems. Discontinuing the exploration into space and science will only set us back, in my opinion. We are capable of so much more as a species, I don’t know how we’ll ever reach our true potential by not continuing our exploration into who we are. In the end, I think that the more we explore, and the more we learn about the universe around us, the closer we will become as a species, and finally realize our true potential. I think that based on recent and current events, we are NOT there yet-by a long shot.
“Quoting someone with ‘Dr.’ in front of his name who shares your opinions does not lend further validity to your opinions.”
— Me
If history has any lessons for us, I would guess that space exploration will help us realize our unity as a species just as soon as we find some other species to kill together.
“The validity of someone else’s opinion, is a matter of opinion.”
–Me
If those are our expectations for humanity, those are the expectations we will fullfil. Right now, we can’t even get people outside of the earth’s orbit, so unless we discover beings living on the moon I don’t think we’ve got to worry too much about the evil potential of human conquest. If we heed the lessons history has for us it does not HAVE to repeat itself.
History does not have to repeat itself, but history and a little induction indicates that it tends to.
“Quoting someone with ‘Dr.’ in front of his name who shares your opinions does not lend further validity to your opinions.”
— Me
He was an anthropologist at Washington State University, moron. Do your research.
I don’t care who he is. That was my point. Try this:
“Quoting an anthropologist at Washington State University who shares your opinions does not lend further validity to your opinions.”
— Moron
I never said it did, jerkoff. I was just citing a quote, Jesus Christ.
Oh, okay. Sorry for the misunderstanding. You weren’t citing a quote by an accredited authority in line with your opinions in order to lend further validity for your opinions. It was just a random act of citation with no motive. Have I got that right?
It was my mistake to infer any connection. In future I’ll try to only apprehend that which is explicitly stated. Of course, I never said either of my first two comments had anything to do with you….
OK that’s enough.
ddffrrttrrrer