We do this not because it is easy...

“That’s one small concession to deficit realities, one giant blow to the dreams of children who want to be astronauts when they grow up.”

Great Quotes From the End of NASA’s Space Shuttle Era, by Jim Santel, in McSweeney's

Forty-two years ago today, Neil Armstrong descended from the Lunar Module of Apollo 11 onto the surface of the moon.  It seems so long ago and yet like yesterday.

It is one of those "Where were you?"  moments.  I was eight years old, walking barefoot (as I often did, even on the hot Florida asphalt) to a park a mile away when a family member drove up in the car.  "Get in," they said. "We just landed on the moon!" The rest of my family was gathered around the old black and white set in the living room, watching in wonder.

The papers trumpeted the feat and our wonderful future. For one of his birthdays, the Rocket Scientist's mother gave him a framed copy of the Atlanta Constitution from the next day, which she had been saving for years. The sky was no longer the limit -- there seemed no limit to human ingenuity and drive.

The moon.  That seemed inconceivable.  Even today it seems so inconceivable that there are conspiracy theorists who believe it never took place, even though their crackpot beliefs have been thoroughly discredited.* (Thank you, Mythbusters!)  Sometimes, when I look at the full moon hanging in the sky, I find myself in awe.  People walked there.  We left our imprint in that dust.

For many of those who were alive then and remember that era, the history of manned space flight since then has been dispiriting.  The moon was supposed to be the first step: the space station a stopover on the way to other, more distant places.  Build the space station; build colonies on the moon; then Mars; then... who knew?  The stuff of science fiction seemed within our grasp, with the possibility of being turned into science fact.

It hasn't happened.  Oh, space science -- important science -- is still going on, with unmanned missions to planets and asteroids. The Space Shuttle, for all its shortcomings, still produced good science, but was not that first step outwards.

I am pessimistic about whether manned flight to other planets will take place in my lifetime. It is a shame: there are things a rover cannot do that a human can.  Rovers, no matter how well piloted, do not have curiosity.


I think Tim Kreider captures what I feel quite well.  Although I would disagree that manned space flight was frivolous: the space program spurred us on as a nation to do a much better job of teaching our children science and math, not to mention the technological innovations it spawned. Instead, today we have many people in many places trying to force us to expose our children to some insane religiously-based, totally nonscientific belief about the origins of the Earth and of mankind, and who disregard what science is showing us about the future of our planet's climate. Far from being revered, in some circles science is treated with disdain.

It's sad.  For all of us, but mostly for our children, whose visions of flying to stars may have to remain just that.  Visions.

*I would provide links, but I really do not want to give these people more website hits.  It will only encourage them.  Not that they really need encouragement.