Community Comment:

U.S. needs to redefine its

goals for space program

By DAVID COKER

Special to the Courier & Press

Sunday, February 9, 2003

Last weekend we were stunned as a nation to view the chilling footage of the space shuttle orbiter Columbia as it came apart in flames over the clear, blue skies of east Texas toward the end of yet another epic voyage.

The sad truth is, however, that virtually nobody would have even remembered the names of these seven shuttle astronauts had their triumphant return not ended in the flaming catastrophe we witnessed on our television sets.

History teaches us that the business of exploration is fraught with destruction and death, no matter how sophisticated or primitive the technology. But these horrific dangers did not deter the brave shuttle astronauts, nor should it deter us as a nation from redefining our goals for future space exploration.

During the early hours of Christmas 1492, while many of the crew slumbered, leaving a young cabin boy to man the tiller, the Santa Maria, flagship of Christopher Columbus' fleet of discovery, broke up on a corral reef northwest of the island of Hispaniola, site of the present-day Dominican Republic.

Christopher Columbus, believing it was an act of God, told a detail of brave volunteers to build a fort on the island mainland out of the salvaged timbers from the large vessel, and returned to Spain in the two remaining caravels, the Nina and the Pinta.

A few years later, Ferdinand Magellan in April 1521 was killed in a battle on the Philippine island of Mactan. Although he did not live to return to Spain on this epic world journey, since he had sailed farther east on a previous voyage, he went down in history as the first person to circumnavigate the world.

Who among us remembers the names of American aviators Cmdr. Noel Davis, Lt. Stanton Wooster or their French compatriots Capt. Charles Nungesser or Francois Coli? Having died during flight tests and yet another ill-fated journey, all of their names were relegated to the footnotes of history when on May 21, 1927, Charles Lindbergh became the first man to pilot an aircraft from New York's Roosevelt Field to Le Bourget airfield in Paris - across the Atlantic Ocean in a little over 34 hours.

Similarly, in January 1967 the names of Edward H. White, Jr., Virgil I. Grissom and Roger B.Chaffee were etched into the memorial of history when a tiny spark ignited the pure oxygen environment of their Apollo I space capsule during a routine test on a launch pad at Cape Kennedy. The tragic fire ended their quest to be among the first American astronauts to journey to the moon.

More recently, however, the space program has failed to capture the imagination of average Americans. Those shuttle missions dedicated to building the International Space Station, the deployment and repair of the Hubble space telescope and other research flights seem to pale in comparison to the Apollo moon missions. In those days we seemed to have more well-defined goals in outer space and tangible destinations that we could all see in the evening sky. Who among us has not looked up on a moonlit night and seriously contemplated the brief season of manned exploration of the lunar surface? Others may go on and wonder, will we ever return?

In an effort to rekindle public excitement for the space program, it would behoove the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Bush administration and Congress to reconsider returning to the moon to establish a permanent manned facility on the lunar surface. We need to develop new space vehicles and redefine our goals and objectives beyond the space station to include manned exploration of Mars and beyond.

Only then will we once again have a space program worthy of the memories of Rick Husband, Michael Anderson, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, William McCool and Ilan Ramon - the names so hallowed in this, our latest national tragedy.

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