Requiem For a Dream?

This morning I watched the liftoff for the last trip of the space shuttle vehicle Endeavour and once again was mesmerized by the awe-inspiring sight of this huge craft being launched skyward through the impetus of an enormous, sustained explosion.  Its means of propulsion has remained essentially the same from the time of our first space vehicles – some very brave men volunteer to be strapped into cramped quarters in the nose of these huge rockets and ride their tip into the blackness beyond the earth’s atmosphere.

So very much has been accomplished since President John F. Kennedy exhorted the nation to rise to the challenge posed by the Russians’ Sputnik circling the Earth.  Americans have  since set foot on the moon, orbited the planet many thousands of times, transported the Hubble telescope to its celestial vantage point and carried the first segments of the International Space Station aloft.  Endeavour, with 25 flights and over 116 million miles logged, with 283 days spent in space, has performed in superlative fashion and earned a well-deserved retirement to the California Science Center in Los Angles.

A sister ship, Atlantis, is scheduled for a final flight in July, concluding the space shuttle program.

NASA is a success story, albeit that their program has included tragic loss of human assets as well as expenditure of great amounts of  treasure.  Their odyssey has produced enormous gains in technology that have found many additional uses in applications to our daily lives.  Their “can do” mindset has served as a glowing example, copied by other countries that have produced their own space programs, showing what America can accomplish if well-motivated and focused.

How unfortunate that we, as a nation, have not been able to employ that brilliance and competence in dealing with the problems that we face here on earth.  Relations between the people of our planet have been unpredictable, messy, and frustrating since time immemorial and do not lend themselves to the ministrations of the orderly formulae of the scientific community.

I have always felt that space travel might provide another safety valve necessary for the survival of the human race and a superior option following the exploration and settlement of America’s vast, open, Western lands that began well over a century ago.   Overcrowding of the planet, inequality of resources and opportunity, and deterioration of our planetary environment might all be alleviated through interplanetary expansion (there are those, of course, who shudder at the thought of exporting the more undesirable traits of humanity to “unspoiled” space).

The chances of such prospects seem dim, however, since after the Atlantis flight space operations will enter a hiatus estimated to last a minimum of three years and perhaps as much as a decade before operations focused on asteroids and Mars (according to the current White House occupants and I must forcefully restrain myself from taking advantage of that “gimme” ) might be launched.

True leadership is always required for substantive progress.  The deterioration from the grand and galvanizing plans initiated by President Kennedy to the current “lead from behind” policies proffered by Obama has resulted in a chasm that will demand a Quantum Leap to conquer – hardly probable considering the restraints imposed by “leadership” that is restricted by the tunnel vision that remains an integral part of statist mentality.