A Giant Leap Backwards

The news of the cancellation of NASA’s Constellation program came and went from the nation’s consciousness last week like ripples on a pond. Yet this represents a larger shift in our cultural fabric than the latest news on Brangelina or who won this year’s Super Bowl.

Once, in our parents’ times, our nation dreamed bold. This country is at its best when it is ambitious; when its dreams slightly exceed its current grasp. Some of those dreams were morally flawed, some were widely reviled, and some were simply unrealistic. But one dream hit the sweet spot of ambition, innocence, and capability: that of manned space travel. Long before “Yes We Can,” we did. Now, the only thing bold in our lives is the coffee we drink. We let our dreams slip away with nary a complaint.

I was raised on a steady diet of promises. Work hard, study hard, and you, too, can be a part of the space program. We would have cheap, regular access to space via the Shuttle; by 1990 we would have a permanent space station in orbit; by the turn of the century a permanent manned moon base was possible, and by 2010 manned space flight to other planets was perfectly realistic. I was one of those kids sitting in front of the television in their pajamas on the morning of April 12, 1981, as the first orbital Space Shuttle flight was launched. I had a full-color atlas of the Earth spread out before me, open to the centerfold global map, and I slowly pushed a paper cut-out of the Shuttle across the map to match the positional data from NASA. I wanted to be part of that. I dreamed big.

Slowly, however, those dreams were drained away. The end of the Cold War revealed the space race for what it was: political grandstanding, a game of one-upmanship. Without the challenge of “beat the Russians” driving us, the nation went about its way perfectly happy to ignore the cosmos. That realm was relegated to a very narrow demographic: the socially inept, overweight, white male watching Star Trek reruns on the Scyfy channel in their parents’ basement.

Now we are obsessed with the mundane. People’s passions run towards questions of who will sing better on American Idol, who will move the ball down the field more adroitly, who will divorce who in Hollywood next, what company will fail and which will buy its competition. We have always had an interest in sports, entertainment, and commerce, of course. But the difference now is this: that is all we aspire to. Decades of postmodern deconstructuralist narrative have taught us to tear down our heroes, re-examine our dreams, reign in our aspirations.

Some would argue that this is a necessary and realistic step. The end of the manned space program represents a national coming to maturity. However, dreams of space travel are no more unrealistic than many of our other dreams. In 2007, it was estimated that we were spending $720 million dollars per day on Bush’s adventure in Iraq(1). Meanwhile, the Center for Science and International Studies estimated the ongoing operational cost for a permanently manned Lunar base would be $7.35 billion per year, or twenty million dollars per day(2) . Taken in that light, a manned Lunar base certainly seems more realistic that the dream of a peaceful, democratic, and USA-loving Iraq. In addition, we would have far fewer families losing their sons and daughters.

The Apollo astronauts are all in their seventies and eighties; the earliest Shuttle astronauts are not much younger. What do we tell them? “Thank you for your bravery, but it was all for naught. We’ve decided what you did wasn’t important enough to follow up on.” Tell that to the families of Gus Grissom, Vladimir Komarov, Francis Scobee, Kalpana Chawla, and the others who have given their lives for space travel(3).
Yes, the Constellation program was questionable. I was a strong critic of a program that would, essentially, revisit 1960’s technology. But it was something, and we have invested five years and many millions of dollars in the program already. Perhaps even more importantly is the dreams that this project represents. To end it without something better to look forward to is unprecedented. The White House claims the goal is to encourage private space travel in preference to government-sponsored travel; but private corporations do not succeed by dreaming big and being bold.

Soon enough, there will be no humans left on the Earth who have walked on another celestial body. In thirty years, we may very well have no one left alive who has ever been to outer space. What will we tell our grandchildren? “Once upon a time, people traveled into space and to the moon. But then we decided it just wasn’t worth the trouble.”




References:
(1) According to the American Friends Service Committee, see http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/21/AR2007092102074.html


(2) http://csis.org/publication/costs-international-lunar-base

(3) http://www.vibrationdata.com/space/deaths.htm