We bought our first color television set on July 18, 1969. It was the first one in the extended family. We could watch the moon landing in color. Wow! On July 20, 1969, parents, aunts and uncles, cousins and assorted friends gathered in our tiny living room to watch, in color, Americans land on the moon. We saw the giant leap for mankind. We saw two men walk on the moon. It was amazing! It was, for some, unbelievable. It was broadcast in black and white.
We, the United States had won the real race for space, the one started by the Soviet Union when it launched Sputnik in 1957. We put ten more men on the moon in the years that followed; the last one was in 1972. The whole adventure was a technological series of events that mesmerized the world. Then it became routine enough so that people were too busy to watch a landing on the moon. We bore quickly.
A couple of weeks ago, a multi-billionaire, Richard Branson rode a plane to the edge of space, some 50 plus miles above earth’s surface. A bunch of civilians earned their astronaut wings in a commercial venture.
Tomorrow another multi-billionaire, Jeff Bezos, of Amazon fame, and other passengers will venture to 62 miles above the earth’s surface; above the Karman Line, the real edge of space. Both billionaires see space as a cash cow. Virgin wants to send up flights every few weeks at a quarter of a million dollars per seat. Bezos wants to send people to Mars and back.
Where is NASA? The government space administration is still doing science, I guess. We can give them that. They created, launched, and supported an international space station, but they no longer have a spacecraft capable of reaching it. They relied on Russian rockets for a few years and now rely on multi-billionaires commercial rockets to get them to the space station.
Years ago, when flying was still an adventure, and only for the better well to do, the Sunday drive often included a stop at the end of the runway at Lambert Field, St. Louis, to watch planes land and take off. When TWA bought its first 747 it parked it near one of the closer gates and allowed visitors to tour the plane. They might never fly in a “jumbo jet,” but at least they had seen one up close. Flying was exciting back then.
NASA hasn’t given the public an exciting event in years. Scientists get excited about the pictures from Mars, of galaxies far away, of black holes forming and eating up small stars, and slogging through other faraway phenomena. It is all good learning, for sure. But how does it help Jane and Joe Six-Pack? Where is the excitement?
When Apollo went to the moon, the onboard processor ran at 0.043 MHz. That means that the phone in our pocket is 100,000 times more powerful. The Chinese landed a module on the backside of the moon that is studying the universe from that angle and searching for ways to control satellites from there. They have a rover on Mars broadcasting data that will help them land people, up there before we do. Will we relive the panic that overcame America when the USSR put Sputnik into orbit in 1957?
Where is NASA? Where is the American spirit that drove us to previous greatness that created excitement for the world? We were united then. We had an overarching belief that we could do anything we wanted, and quicker than anyone else? Where is that belief today?
Where is our belief in the scientific process? Even basic science has gone political. Huge numbers of people still believe that covid-19 was and is a hoax. Nearly half the population believes the vaccines are fake science, that they contain materials, at the request of the government, that magnetize us, that change our DNA, that has miniature chips that allow the government to track us and force us to do evil. Over 600,000 Americans have died because of covid and still too many don’t believe the news. In those areas of the country where vaccination rates are low, the virus is spreading like wildfire. But people still resist the vaccine which they consider a liberal effort to control the people. If we can’t believe in a process as simple as a vaccine protecting us from a virus, how will we believe that science can take us to the limits of space?
Let’s not put all of the blame on NASA, but they are part of the problem. They owe us some scientific excitement! Why only shoot for Mars? Let’s put the smartphone to good use!
