I was reading the headlines lately about China’s current space mission, where their satellite is set to begin orbiting the moon in a few weeks. Then today I read about Syria cleaning up the mysterious industrial site allegedly bombed by Israeli planes last month. The imagery included with that article reminded me of the great site Intrepid Earth, a showcase for the satellite imagery to be found on Google Earth.
Lo and behold, Intrepid Earth’s featured site today is the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. With a few clicks you can see the retired workhorses of U.S. space exploration, now museum pieces that would be rusting if Alabama wasn’t in a drought like the rest of us.
Seeing the mighty Saturn V rocket lying on its side made me sad. There once was a time in America that we undertook bold adventures, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. We launched the Project Mercury and Apollo missions and increased mankind’s knowledge of our place in the universe. Now we have a ho-hum space station that hardly raises anyone’s pulse. Heck, I’m usually tuned into space happenings but even I didn’t know about Tuesday’s shuttle launch until it was safely in orbit.
If we’re going to spend trilions of dollars anyway, why not put them to use in ways that benefit people, instead of killing them?
The obvious answer is that the people who run large corporations and advise our political leaders don’t think any of those things are good ideas… I think our leaders should start listening to a broader spectrum of the population.