Statistics and common sense tell us newspaper readers trend older demographically, and our paper proves those expectations, which is why I’m jealous of a number of you dear readers.
You, my slightly older friends, got to live the excitement of the “Space Race.”
You looked on in intrigue (and in horror) in 1957, when the USSR launched Sputnik , the first man-made satellite to orbit the Earth.
Could America catch up, or were we headed for a Soviet domination of outer space?
Five years later, in 1962, with a parting of “Godspeed John Glenn,” Glenn orbited the Earth aboard Friendship 7, the first American to do so. We were, apparently, catching up.
The fledgling National Aeronautics and Space Administration, with its scores of engineers, physicists and other scientists from around the country collaborated to create some of the most amazing achievements man has seen, to not only eclipse the Soviet program, but to land a man on the moon.
And so they did, with Neil Armstrong treading where no one had tread before.
At one time, NASA spending affected every state in our union - and we all worked together so that our nation could both prosper and “win” the race.
There were subsequent Apollo missions and several others that came after them, but the public didn’t seem to take much note any more.
Oh sure, if something went horribly wrong, we all noticed (Apollo 13, the Challenger disaster), but, by and large, space had lost its allure.
We’d been to the moon, we’d won the race; what more did we need to learn from space?
By the time I came around in 1986 (the same year as the Challenger disaster), space wasn’t cool.
Most kids wanted to be a doctor or a vet, while some held out hopes to be able to “explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.”
I was one of those kids, with a telescope and star maps, gazing toward the heavens in search of something more.
At Opelika Middle School, I was blessed to be a part of the “Radio Jupiter” project, and got to listen as sound waves bounced back and forth between our world and the Great Planet.
I was even prouder to learn that we had an Opelikan astronaut - Jim Voss, Class of ‘68. Someone from here had done it before, so why couldn’t we?
NASA kept sending rockets and astronauts into “the final frontier,” but space was no longer alluring, and deficit hawks across the nation began to question why so much money was needed.
Now, we have no more space shuttles, and our astronauts have to hitch rides into space with other nations, even with the Russians we feared for so long.
Programs are seeing their funding cut, and we’re seeing severe job losses and economic depression come to towns who built themselves up with aerospace jobs. If there are no more space shuttles to build parts for, why keep all those people on the payroll?
Educational programs and opportunities to help inspire our youth have also declined, and we see the younger generation slip further away from having interest, or even awareness of, space.
I worry that if funding cuts and program cancellations continue, this nation could dig itself into a hole it will not be able to leap from. We could be sowing the seeds now for a loss of American dominance in outer space. After all, we’re already losing this generation.
We have always been spurred by a belief in American exceptionalism, that this nation is not only among the best and brightest, but the actual best.
By not continuing to invest in our nation’s space program, we run the risk of finding ourselves lacking the tools to inspire the next generation of engineers, astrophysicists and even astronauts themselves, to say nothing of the scores of other children who simply gain a spirit of exploration that could translate into innovations and developments in hundreds of other fields.
By investing in a renewed spirit of discovery, we could see untold dividends in our children’s generation. By exploring and cataloging other planets, we learn more about our own planet - the whats, whys, and hows of the Earth itself.
By venturing out further into our universe, we find an ever-expanding cosmos of stars and other celestial bodies that we never knew existed and we hold out the hope that, perhaps, we are not alone.
An investment in our space program is not just throwing money into outer space; it is a commitment to continuing to support the ideals of exploration and creativity that helped make this nation what it is today.
NASA and its programs represent the best American ideals, our belief that through knowledge, education and hard work, we can do anything we can set our minds to - whether its putting a man on the moon or even kicking off to Mars.
So, again, I’m jealous of a number of you.
You got to grow up when space was cool - when knowledge and creativity were celebrated.
You don’t know how lucky you were. You really don’t.
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