Archive: Opinions

The United States wins a lot of races. Besides the Olympics and the Tour de France, we have won the arms race and the space race. We are the most powerful nation on the planet, at least militarily, and until yesterday, we dominated outer space.

But Thursday, July 21, marked the final landing of Space Shuttle Atlantis and the end of the United States Space Shuttle program which has dominated NASA's manned operations for the past four decades.

I was not alive when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, but I do remember the historic moon landing of Apollo 11. On a warm summer day in 1969, my older brother and I sat in front of our Zenith Black and White Television and listened to Walter Cronkite narrate live coverage from the moon. Commander Neil Armstrong opened the lunar hatch and descended the ladder becoming the first human being to walk on the moon.

That historic event made every kid dream of going to the moon. We went out and bought Apollo 11 coloring books. That Christmas, Santa brought my older brother the Major Matt Mason Space station-a three story tower complete with astronauts, lunar vehicle and really cool equipment. The action figures resembled real NASA astronauts complete with space suits and helmets. I cannot remember how many times we launched those poor toys into orbit from our backyard.

By our early teen years, we had forgotten about space exploration. But NASA's new shuttle program renewed our interest in outer space. Like many Americans, we dreamed of orbiting space stations complete with living cities shaped like biospheres creating near-normal life high above the earth.

Sadly, that did not happen. Instead, we spent billions of dollars on the Space Shuttle program without any real goals. Scientific experiments along with general research were conducted high above the earth, but there were few benefits. There were no announcements that scientific experiments conducted aboard the space shuttle proved beneficial to mankind: no cure for cancer, aging or the eradication of poverty.

We did manage to make nice with the Russians, who if you recall lost the space race, but will now take over responsibilities for transporting astronauts to and from the space station.

Sadly, we lost seven brave Americans in the 1986 Challenger disaster. The immediate response from those on the ground as well as the American Public led NASA to launch an investigation of the Space Shuttle Program. The report concluded that the tragic disaster resulted from the faulty design of the O-ring seal combined with high level officials at NASA who failed to heed the warnings of engineers about the dangers of cold weather takeoffs.

Without guidance or clear goals, the Space Shuttle hobbled along for nearly four decades hoping to find some direction and meaning, but in the end, there was none. As the program comes to a close, let us remember the Seven Americans who gave their lives for this journey into space. May we continue to honor them among the pantheon of explorers who wished to go where no man or woman has gone before. And that is to the point.

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