“We’ll touch the stars and see the mind of God.” I think it is a Carl Sagan quote, but I remember Martin Sheen‘s President Bartlett say it when talking about space exploration on ‘The West Wing.” The Space Shuttle program finishes today or tomorrow and that is a little sad. I’m old enough to remember being shepherded into the class room that had a television set to watch Apollo landings in grade school. While the shuttle missions weren’t always clear, I was fine with that because if ever there is a place that you should “go for a drive” it is space. We seem to have lost a little something as explorers and to consign further space exploration to private sector commercial vehicles seems like a lot of pressure to put on the Richard Bransons of the world.
Our leaders seem to be spending a lot of time arguing about how to spend our money, wasting a lot of it in the process. Finding things out for the sake of finding them out might read a little vague, but consider, that is how we got stuff like penicillin. Space is one of the areas of universal wonder, and the “space race” yielded knowledge from within all the competition.
It is just a little sad that as explorers, the administration is going to be content with our Astronauts sticking out their thumbs as great cosmic hitchhikers. I hope those hoopy froods know where their towels are.
Don’t Panic
Mike's Pub 