Danger and expense didn't stop America's westward expansion, and shouldn't block our journey into space.
Special to The Observer
Published: Tuesday, December 1, 1998
Section: VIEWPOINT
Page 15A
My kids boot up the PC and load ‘Oregon Trail', an adventure program that simulates the historical trip that opened up the West and took lives to do so. Playing the game, we would have our party die a few times before learning some lessons, like taking time to rest and eat regularly.
We would also realize you could not pack all of the food needed, and would need to hunt along the way. While we are trekking along the virtual trail NASA is planning a trip on the next frontier and is using some of the same strategies–you can't go to Mars and back, and take everything you will need. You will need to produce food and fuel along the trail. NASA is studying ways to grow food and produce fuel on the surface of Mars.
These initial efforts toward deep space exploration and habitation could not come at a better time. With John Glenn's trip back into space behind us we have just about drawn dry the well of space nostalgia. Apollo 13 movies and specials and other anniversaries have come and gone. I'm tiring of looking at heros in the rear view mirror.
Last month's Russian launch of the first piece of the International Space Station was the first step toward a major new manned presence in space. Thursday NASA will launch its first contribution–our first multi-billion dollar house payment. Expensive, but hey–location, location, location! Actually, I'm tired of hearing of the cost or nebulous goals of the project. The US economy is robust and our total cost is about a week or two of one year of the total US budget. We can afford to do this and we should. Let's lighten up and enjoy the adventure–we've earned the right.
Is it just an expensive privilege for a few? I don't care. You could put the same amount of money into paving roads or fighting poverty and see few significant results–we will always have potholes and the poor. Compare it to spending in schools, where we not only have special programs to serve intellectually impoverished students, but others to challenge our brightest. Let's challenge our best engineers to push the envelope in space. And, we need something exciting and good to focus on as a nation. Something that we all are invested in and proud of. The Monica tripe on TV does not cut it.
It is also important that we are working with our comrades from Russia and other countries to accomplish this mission. Whether we have to help the cash-strapped Ruskies or not isn't critical. Working together is certainly cheaper than a return to the Cold War, and this kind of partnership could be important during times of instability. Sort of like the first Thanksgiving–befriending the Indians was a lot more fun than the fighting that would follow with the expansion along the westward trails.
And, yes, some will die and that will be hard to take. Get over it. Perhaps the silliest thing that NASA did after the Challenger disaster was to panic and rule space off limits to ordinary citizens like teacher Christa McAuliffe, who died on that mission. She is an immortal heroine now and has done as much in her tragic death as most of us do` in life. In fact, I believe we should have every Shuttle take off with such a passenger. The list should include artists, journalists, sculptors, and novelists. Poets and priests, teachers and students. The range of ages should only be limited by health–let's take kids as well as seniors. Their only requirement for passage would be to produce some kind of interpretive work, and we should pay them to take a year off to do so and to tell us about their experience. This alone would make every launch exciting and would interest the public in each mission.
We are in as statistical lull now with no recent space deaths, but that will catch up with us, almost certainly during the dozens of trips needed to build the International Space Station. That's always been the price of life on the frontier, whether it was the Oregon Trail or final frontier, and is indeed part of what builds the hero status. Perhaps it is this lack of real danger that leaves the current sports heros hollow.
Danger and expense did not stop the westward expansion that helped build a great America. So let's build our space fort at the new frontier and circle the wagons for Mars and beyond. Giddyap!
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