Friday, May 14, 2010

Caesura

That's a pause in the proceedings.  Because today is an auspicious and sad day for me, and for all Americans.

The beginning of the end of an era, truly, today. The space shuttle Atlantis lifted off on this brilliant afternoon for its final flight. After that, Discovery will make her final voyage in September, and Endeavour takes her final ride in November or December… and with that, ends the manned space program of the United States of America.

I have been welling up all day, just thinking about the finality. President Obama says he wants to land a human on an asteroid by 2025. WTH? Pardon me, but … WHY? Why cancel the Constellation program, which was to return us to the moon and then go on to Mars with mining expeditions, colonization efforts, etc., paving the way for privatized tourism? In this economy, we're cancelling all of the jobs that program would generate.  Why cancel all of that?  Because we have "more pressing problems at home."  Definitely.  The answers may lie up there, however, and now we're not going to be able to find them.  We have always had problems on Earth to solve, and always will - to quote Jesus Christ Himself, "...you will always have the poor."  That's not just about the poor, by the way.  That was His way of saying, "You're always going to have stuff going on.  That doesn't mean you stop striving for the highest and best you can achieve, even as you are trying to lift those in dire circumstances out of their holes."  And what about all of our hardware up there in orbit?

We have an interest in the International Space Station, at least until 2020 - that’s ten years from now. How do we get there? Obama plans to hitch a ride on a Soyuz with the Russions if necessary. Seriously? We’re putting our nation’s security at risk if you ask me, in a huge and dangerous way. Dig it:

How many satellites does it take to keep the web of connectivity running, the internet, satellite TV, radio, GPS, all that? What would happen if even one of those went down? Was disrupted? And we have no way to get there except for the Russians? I know they’re supposed to be our friends now, but I don’t trust Putin at all. I am old enough to remember Kruschev threatening us on an almost daily basis, promising to bury us, and pointing nukes at us from as long as I can remember. I don’t forget that easily. If I’m a Russian Prime Minister, and I’m in bed with the next great world power (China), why do I care if the US has a hard time tweaking its satellites from Houston? Don’t I secretly love it if that happens?

I love SpaceX and Virgin Galactic, and all the other private companies that are coming up with new ways to travel to space that don’t rely on government funding. I know that our hope for the future lies with them.  Frankly, I get sick of people bitching that "to get this economy back on track, America really needs to get manufacturing back.  People should buy products that say Made in USA, and that would put a lot of people to work."  Really? 

Do you want to go to work painting the eyes on little die cast horses?  Or pouring the metal into the molds to make those little die-cast horses?  And do you want to accept the wages that are paid to the people in Mexico and India and Taiwan and China, the people who make them?  Get real. Our past may have relied on American manufacturing, but Unions and plain old practicality make that impossible today: those jobs simply do not pay enough.  Or, conversely, we would have to pay American workers so much more to do those jobs that the items we now obtain cheaply from other nations would skyrocket in price.  Do you want to pay 17.99 for a 2-pack of Hot Wheels?  $3500 for a chair?  Because that's what it would take, people.  That's why our future is NOT in bringing back manufacturing - let that go to other countries.  Get into college, get your degrees, and get better jobs - where?  In pharmaceuticals.  In medicine.  In aerospace, avionics, engineering, robotics, architecture.  Because THAT's where the future is, idiots.  Get yourself to work in a privately funded aerospace company - I have a feeling that the people smart and fortunate enough to do that now will find themselves very glad indeed when it comes to retirement age.  The private space programs are what we're going to have to rely on just to service the satellites we presently have in orbit - not to mention deploying any new ones.

But there is a national point of pride in our space program, in NASA. I … I guess it all goes back to Star Trek, to tell you the truth.

I just … ever since I was old enough to imagine, to read, I’ve always loved stories about going out there. Traveling in outer space. Some of the imaginings and stories were fantastical and wonderful, magical and amazing. Some were scary and honest and real. I loved them all. I believed with all my heart that we were supposed to go on and go out there. I watched Star Trek, I saw Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock, just going out there, and my heart sang, “Yes! Yes, that’s right. That’s where we’re going. That’s what it’s going to be like someday. I might live to see it.”  And I just couldn't wait.

But it's not going to happen, at least not now. And that is profoundly depressing to me. To think that, my whole life, I believed and hoped and waited and wanted so damn much to see it all happen. Part of it did. I have my “personal communicator.” Cell phones are so ubiquitous we don’t even think about how much their design, their very existence, was fueled and inspired by kids who watched Star Trek and said, “I want that,” and because they did, they grew up to become engineers and electronics whizzes and scientists, and they did the research and created the technology (a lot of that tech was born in space, by the way – crystals small enough to conduct electricity in a cell phone, for example) and, with apologies to Captain Picard, made it so.

And now, here we are. On the day the last flight of the Atlantis heralds the last flight of each of the remaining shuttles. And no plans to return a citizen of the United States to outer space. None. All that inspiration. All that hope. All those dreams. All that tech. All of that space out there.

And we’re not going.

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