Last Friday I was privileged to watch the Endeavor fly over downtown Sacramento, CA. The Endeavor was atop it’s transport 747 as it made low passes over several cities in California.
Watching it fly over reminded me of being a child, watching some of the early shuttle launches. I was watching the news when the Challenger blew up, and I remember my parents’ reaction, knowing something bad had happened, but not in any way realizing what the accident meant for the future of spaceflight or the future of NASA. Watching the shuttle fly over made me question the path my nation has walked in spaceflight. As a lover of science, and a lover of the unknown, I believe the pursuit of knowledge and exploration, the pursuit of the unknown, is written into the genome of our species.
From the earliest days of known human history, we’ve been trying to learn what’s over that next hill. The cost of this exploration has been countless lives lost, yet you cannot undertake exploration without assuming great risk. This is simply a gamble we must all decide on. It seems these days my government has decided that this gamble is not worth the risk. I disagree with that decision. I believe that if we give up on manned spaceflight as a goal for the nation and for the world, we cheapen the sacrifice made by all those who gave of themselves to push this barrier. Space truly is the next great frontier, and I hope for the sake of my children, and their children, that we push into this new domain. It looks like in the US this will come through private venture, but hey, Columbus was after profit, Lindbergh wasn’t government backed, nor were the Wright Brothers, so there’s no reason Rutan et.al. can’t be the ones who break this barrier of making spaceflight the norm, rather than the exception. So – while the shuttle closes a chapter of history for my nation, I look forward to what private ventures will do here, and I look forward to seeing what other countries will do in the future.
