CONGRESS TRIES TO CLOSE THE HIGH FRONTIER
Last week, in a move made all the more incomprehensible by the fact that Congress is projecting a trillion-dollar budget surplus, that same Congress decided to gut funding for NASA science projects. Science programs were cut by roughly a billion dollars, with overall NASA cuts of $1.325 billion. Missions to Mars, to Pluto, to Mercury, to the asteroid Europa, not to mention a slew of satellite missions to study good old Mother Earth, are now kaput. The Explorer program, which has been going on for forty-two years (42!) will be deader than J.F.K Junior if this turkey passes.
Those of you who like their irony bitter should be particularly satisfied by the fact that this almost complete destruction of NASA's science programs comes on the heels of the 30th anniversary of Man's first walk on the Moon. And even more ironic is the fact that this comes at a time when we're fighting over what to do with more money than we need.
So? You may say. What good does the space program do me? Well, go turn on your TV set. Have you got cable? How do you think those signals from Atlanta, Chicago, and New York get to your cable system? Carrier pigeon? Check the weather. How do you think they get those pretty pictures that show the rain headed our way? All of these things are direct results of advances made by the space program. Then there are the spin-offs from the space program that are so well-known that we now take them for granted, things like Teflon and Velcro.
But the issues here go beyond the neat stuff they invent for the astronauts. Let's face it, we can live without Tang if we have to. But what happened to human curiosity, that lust for knowledge that's driven us to plunge into the depths of the ocean, hack our way through malarial jungle, and shoot people into the sky on hopped-up skyrockets, all for the sake of finding out what's there? What happened to the desire for new vistas that sent men across the roaring oceans in boats only a little larger than a double-wide mobile home? When did we stop looking up at the night sky and burning with the desire to go have a closer look at those little points of light? That drive to explore and expand is one of the main things that makes us human, and we're in danger of turning our backs on it.
Well, maybe not all of us. I was particularly moved a few days ago by a bit of news about the late astronomer Eugene Shoemaker. Shoemaker, best known as one of the discoverers of the Shoemaker-Levy comet that struck Jupiter, died a couple of years ago in a car crash. One of his greatest regrets, he said shortly before his death, was that health problems had kept him out of the Apollo program and put him on the sidelines helping to train astronauts. Early on the morning of Saturday, July 31, a probe known as Lunar Prospector struck the moon at about 3800 mph in an experiment to see if there was ice buried beneath the lunar polar caps. The probe carried a small vial of Shoemaker's ashes when it struck the surface. Congratulations, Gene. You finally made it. Call me a sentimental old fool, but the idea of someone whose desire to go into space was so great that it didn't stop after he was dead brings a tear to my eye. The explorer spirit isn't dead, but it's flat on its back and gasping for breath while Congress is trying to pull the plug on it.
We are eating the seed corn, good people. We are devouring our future for the sake of a short term savings. But it doesn't have to be like this. The cuts are part of a VA/HUD appropriations bill that won't become law until the President signs it. It's not too late to stop its passage. Get on the phone, fire up the e-mail, and write your Congressfolk to stop this short-sighted betrayal of the spirit of exploration.
Dusty Rhoades is a Southern Pines lawyer, who according to some people, already lives in space.
© 1999 by Jerry D. Rhoades, Jr.