Been There, Done That

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Forty years ago, the world stopped to watch two men walk on the moon. Most saw it as the awesomest thing they've ever seen. Others thought getting out of Vietnam and healing the rifts caused by the events of 1968 were more important. Still others thought that the moon landing was the most expensive TV show ever produced--funded by taxpayers, no less.

Forty years later, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is fighting tooth and nail to remain relevant. Instead of launching missions to infinity and beyond, the best they can do is to shuttle astronauts back and forth to a space station high above the Earth on aging equipment. Nothing wrong with that, considering the limited budget they're working with. It's just that no one cares unless NASA screws up or someone gets killed upon liftoff--and that's happened twice.

So far, nobody has come up with a good reason to continue space explorations that don't involve billions of dollars that are needed for other things. The Cold War, the original reason for putting an American on the moon in the first place, is over. Science has taken a back seat to "the basics" at your local school. And the term "moonwalking" has become associated with the late Michael Jackson.

There's no question that the Space Age did have its benefits. We know a lot more about the Solar System than we once did, because of more powerful telescopes and clearer pictures taken from unmanned spacecraft. And the products we use today--cellphones, satellite TV, microwave ovens, you name it--would not have been possible 40 years ago.

I think back to what President John Kennedy once said about sending a man to the moon, then returning him to Earth safely by the end of the 1960s. On that one, JFK was a prophet. Now we need a new goal. Why go back to the moon, as NASA hopes to do by 2020, when they could be exploring Mars? The easy way out is to send sophisticated robots to find out if there is any life on the Red Planet. Is that going to help our understanding any more than sending a man or woman there?

However, one look at the national budget will tell you that space exploration is way down on the list of priorities right now. If President Barack Obama (or his successors) decide that NASA isn't worth the money, then more than just dreams will be deferred. So will progress.