fasterbusa
07-22-2009, 09:54 AM
Did anyone read this this morning?
A very good article.
I really like Charles Krauthammer's writtings. :thumb2: :thumb2:
http://www.theoaklandpress.com/articles/2009/07/22/opinion/doc4a66d8f7cbc57853259041.txt
Michael Crichton once wrote that if you had told a physicist in 1899 that within 100 years, humankind would, among other wonders (nukes, commercial airlines), “travel to the moon, and then lose interest ... the physicist would almost certainly pronounce you mad.”
In 2000, I quoted these lines expressing Crichton’s incredulity at America’s abandonment of the moon. It is now 2009 and the moon recedes ever further.
Monday marked the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing. We say we will return in 2020. But that promise was made by a previous president, and this president has defined himself as the antimatter to George Bush. Moreover, for all Obama’s Kennedyesque qualities, he has expressed none of Kennedy’s enthusiasm for human space exploration.
After countless millennia of gazing and dreaming, we finally got off the ground at Kitty Hawk in 1903. Within 66 years, a nanosecond in human history, we’d landed on the moon. Then five more landings, 10 more moonwalkers, and, in the decades since, nothing.
The shuttle is now too dangerous, too fragile and too expensive. Seven more flights, and then it is retired, going — like the Spruce Goose and the Concorde — into the museum of Things Too Beautiful And Complicated To Survive.
America’s manned space program is in shambles. Fourteen months from today, for the first time since 1962, the U.S. will be incapable not just of sending a man to the moon but of sending anyone into Earth orbit. We’ll have to beg a ride from the Russians or perhaps even the Chinese.
So what, you say? Don’t we have problems here on Earth? Oh please. Poverty and disease and social ills will always be with us. If we’d waited for them to be rectified before venturing out, we’d still be living in caves.
The financial crisis? All we need is sufficient funding from the hundreds of billions being showered from Washington — “stimulus” monies that, unlike Eisenhower’s interstate highway system or Kennedy’s Apollo program, will leave behind not a trace on our country or our consciousness.
We didn’t go to the moon to spin off cooling suits and freeze-dried fruit. Any technological return is a bonus, not a reason. We go for the wonder and glory of it. Or, to put it less grandly, for its immense possibilities. We choose to do such things, said JFK, “not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”
Who could have predicted that the moon voyages would create the most potent impetus to — and symbol of — environmental consciousness here on Earth: Earthrise, the now iconic Blue Planet photograph brought back by Apollo 8?
Look up from your BlackBerry one night. That is the moon. On it are exactly 12 sets of human footprints — untouched, unchanged, abandoned.
For the first time in history, the moon is not just a mystery and a muse, but a nightly rebuke. A vigorous young president once summoned us to this new frontier, calling the voyage “the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.” We came, we saw, we retreated.
How could we?
Charles Krauthammer is a national columnist who can be reached by e-mail at letters@charleskrauthammer.com.
A very good article.
I really like Charles Krauthammer's writtings. :thumb2: :thumb2:
http://www.theoaklandpress.com/articles/2009/07/22/opinion/doc4a66d8f7cbc57853259041.txt
Michael Crichton once wrote that if you had told a physicist in 1899 that within 100 years, humankind would, among other wonders (nukes, commercial airlines), “travel to the moon, and then lose interest ... the physicist would almost certainly pronounce you mad.”
In 2000, I quoted these lines expressing Crichton’s incredulity at America’s abandonment of the moon. It is now 2009 and the moon recedes ever further.
Monday marked the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing. We say we will return in 2020. But that promise was made by a previous president, and this president has defined himself as the antimatter to George Bush. Moreover, for all Obama’s Kennedyesque qualities, he has expressed none of Kennedy’s enthusiasm for human space exploration.
After countless millennia of gazing and dreaming, we finally got off the ground at Kitty Hawk in 1903. Within 66 years, a nanosecond in human history, we’d landed on the moon. Then five more landings, 10 more moonwalkers, and, in the decades since, nothing.
The shuttle is now too dangerous, too fragile and too expensive. Seven more flights, and then it is retired, going — like the Spruce Goose and the Concorde — into the museum of Things Too Beautiful And Complicated To Survive.
America’s manned space program is in shambles. Fourteen months from today, for the first time since 1962, the U.S. will be incapable not just of sending a man to the moon but of sending anyone into Earth orbit. We’ll have to beg a ride from the Russians or perhaps even the Chinese.
So what, you say? Don’t we have problems here on Earth? Oh please. Poverty and disease and social ills will always be with us. If we’d waited for them to be rectified before venturing out, we’d still be living in caves.
The financial crisis? All we need is sufficient funding from the hundreds of billions being showered from Washington — “stimulus” monies that, unlike Eisenhower’s interstate highway system or Kennedy’s Apollo program, will leave behind not a trace on our country or our consciousness.
We didn’t go to the moon to spin off cooling suits and freeze-dried fruit. Any technological return is a bonus, not a reason. We go for the wonder and glory of it. Or, to put it less grandly, for its immense possibilities. We choose to do such things, said JFK, “not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”
Who could have predicted that the moon voyages would create the most potent impetus to — and symbol of — environmental consciousness here on Earth: Earthrise, the now iconic Blue Planet photograph brought back by Apollo 8?
Look up from your BlackBerry one night. That is the moon. On it are exactly 12 sets of human footprints — untouched, unchanged, abandoned.
For the first time in history, the moon is not just a mystery and a muse, but a nightly rebuke. A vigorous young president once summoned us to this new frontier, calling the voyage “the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.” We came, we saw, we retreated.
How could we?
Charles Krauthammer is a national columnist who can be reached by e-mail at letters@charleskrauthammer.com.