Hollingsworth: Fifty years later, no clear winner in space race
Issue date: 10/4/07 Section: Opinion
Humans are big on anniversaries. Nice, round numbers just somehow click with us and seem worthy of special admiration and reverence.
For me, anniversaries are a good time to look back on what we've learned and how we've changed in the intervening years.
Thursday, Oct. 4 marks the 50th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik I. Those of you who are old enough to remember the world's first artificial satellite understand its significance. Those of you too young to recall are living in an era that Sputnik created without even knowing it.
On Oct. 4, 1957, the 184-pound, basketball-sized sphere was flung into orbit from the steppes of the then-Soviet Union. There were no scientific instruments, no cameras, nothing we would equate with a modern satellite.
It was done to prove it could be done, and it scared the living daylights out of Americans. For despite our GM cars with huge fins, automatic washers and 12-inch TVs, there was something we couldn't do in 1957: put an object into space.
Only four years later, it prompted President Kennedy to go before Congress and propose what he called the "most hazardous, dangerous and greatest adventure upon which Man has ever embarked."
On a summer's night eight years later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin strolled the Sea of Tranquility. And all because of a ball of metal in space.
So where have we gone in fifty years? Well, to the Moon, for starters. But we did that only six times, and that ended 35 years ago - another anniversary we'll mark in December. After Apollo came the forgettable Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz efforts, and then the nearly-three-decades-long backwaters of the Shuttle and International Space Station programs.
We've sent emissaries of mankind to other planets - spacecraft with daring names, such as Voyager, Viking, Mariner and Pioneer. Humans, though, have languished, trapped in what must be some kind of exploratory limbo, condemned, it seems, to circle mere inches above the Earth for eternity.
The public has been overtaken by apathy, uncaring about what lies just over the horizon, around the next bend. If it isn't on MTV or the cover of People magazine, it's beneath consideration.
Where humanity goes in the next 50 years is a matter of some half-hearted debate on Capitol Hill, at NASA and elsewhere. But debate gets us about as far as Cleveland. If we're to venture any further into the vast ocean of outer space, we need another Sputnik.
We need a kick in the pants to fire our national imagination again, to light our curiosity and set our minds ablaze. More than rocket fuel, the drive to discover is what powers space exploration, and we need it now more than ever.
If we can't muster it, I fear - and suspect - I'll be writing this editorial all over again in 2057.
Brandon Hollingsworth is the news editor of The Chanticleer. He can be reached at (256) 782-8521 or at chantynews@gmail.com. You can read his weekly science blog at brandononscience.blogspot.com.
For me, anniversaries are a good time to look back on what we've learned and how we've changed in the intervening years.
Thursday, Oct. 4 marks the 50th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik I. Those of you who are old enough to remember the world's first artificial satellite understand its significance. Those of you too young to recall are living in an era that Sputnik created without even knowing it.
On Oct. 4, 1957, the 184-pound, basketball-sized sphere was flung into orbit from the steppes of the then-Soviet Union. There were no scientific instruments, no cameras, nothing we would equate with a modern satellite.
It was done to prove it could be done, and it scared the living daylights out of Americans. For despite our GM cars with huge fins, automatic washers and 12-inch TVs, there was something we couldn't do in 1957: put an object into space.
Only four years later, it prompted President Kennedy to go before Congress and propose what he called the "most hazardous, dangerous and greatest adventure upon which Man has ever embarked."
On a summer's night eight years later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin strolled the Sea of Tranquility. And all because of a ball of metal in space.
So where have we gone in fifty years? Well, to the Moon, for starters. But we did that only six times, and that ended 35 years ago - another anniversary we'll mark in December. After Apollo came the forgettable Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz efforts, and then the nearly-three-decades-long backwaters of the Shuttle and International Space Station programs.
We've sent emissaries of mankind to other planets - spacecraft with daring names, such as Voyager, Viking, Mariner and Pioneer. Humans, though, have languished, trapped in what must be some kind of exploratory limbo, condemned, it seems, to circle mere inches above the Earth for eternity.
The public has been overtaken by apathy, uncaring about what lies just over the horizon, around the next bend. If it isn't on MTV or the cover of People magazine, it's beneath consideration.
Where humanity goes in the next 50 years is a matter of some half-hearted debate on Capitol Hill, at NASA and elsewhere. But debate gets us about as far as Cleveland. If we're to venture any further into the vast ocean of outer space, we need another Sputnik.
We need a kick in the pants to fire our national imagination again, to light our curiosity and set our minds ablaze. More than rocket fuel, the drive to discover is what powers space exploration, and we need it now more than ever.
If we can't muster it, I fear - and suspect - I'll be writing this editorial all over again in 2057.
Brandon Hollingsworth is the news editor of The Chanticleer. He can be reached at (256) 782-8521 or at chantynews@gmail.com. You can read his weekly science blog at brandononscience.blogspot.com.
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