Who Goes to Space Next?

 By now, we've all heard William Shatner's comments upon his return from his brief flight into space. Yes, he was emotional and awed by what he experienced and saw....but I have a feeling he was, for the most part, preaching to the choir.

Those of us who care at all about Star Trek or Shatner already shared these feelings--and without having been in space. We were awed by the images sent from the moon in July 1969, by the pictures taken with the Hubble telescope, by the pictures beamed back by our Mars explorer robots.

What we need is for someone that a much larger community cares about to make that same trip and come back with similar thoughts. How about somebody like Mary J. Blige or Jay-Z? How about one of the Kardashians? Or, for a real challenge, how about Ted Cruz or Ron deSantis--imagine if either one of them came back with an epiphany about the fragility of our planet and our need to all work together?

Space Flight and Business

 Fifty-two years ago, man first landed on the moon. If you want some idea of the scale of that accomplishment, remember that man first flew in a heavier-than-air vehicle just 66 years before that, and commercial aviation began only about 40 years earlier. The first manned spaceflight was in 1961. 

And today, there are people complaining about three very rich men who are once again planning to make spaceflight a regular occurrence, with plans for a return to the moon and eventually land on Mars. "Why aren't these billionaires using their money to solve world hunger, or homelessness, or climate change or whatever major problem is at the top of their list?" these people ask. Of course, the solutions to those problems are infinitely (and I mean that literally, infinitely) more complex than simply being able to reach escape and orbital velocity. They require cooperation among national governments, aid organizations, and massive bureaucracies. Merely throwing money at these problems will not result in them going away.

Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk are not statesmen or diplomats; they are very very wealthy businessmen. And, as I have frequently noted in conversations with friends and acquaintances. their wealth is not like that of Scrooge McDuck. It does not consist of a huge vault filled with coins and paper money, in which they can go swimming for amusement. It is in the form of investments in their own companies and others. To access it in the way these people would like would require the dismantling of those businesses, probably putting a significant number of their employees out of work.

Even when the government broke up the big trusts of the early 20th century--Standard Oil, US Steel--it did not insist that the owners give away their fortunes. It simply required that the wealth be spread around to other businessmen to foster competition. If that's what you wish, then say so.

in Memoriam: Michael Collins, Astronaut

 

The death of Michael Collins leave just one of the Apollo 11 crew still with us, Buzz Aldrin. It also brings to mind a question: Where were you on July 20, 1969?

At the time of the landing, I was with a singing group at a Muscular Dystrophy camp in upstate New York. We had gone there from Staten Island to entertain the campers and staff. While we were there, the camp loudspeakers were broadcasting the radio coverage of the landing.

When the performance was over, we loaded onto our bus for the several-hour trip home. Arriving at about 11 PM, a group of us went to the home of a member who lived near the drop-off point to watch the TV coverage of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin actually walking on the moon....because we didn't want to split up to our own homes and miss it all.

Those of you who weren't alive or who were too young to remember 1969 have no idea what this all meant to us. We were sure it was the beginning of a grand future of space exploration. After all, the original run of Star Trek had ended only weeks before and it predicted that by the 1990s, we would have colonies on the moon and Mars. But Vietnam, Watergate, and so many other things got in the way...public interest and support for the space program waned. We had beaten the Russians to the moon--wasn't that the whole point?

The final Apollo mission came just three years later...and our space program came to be about satellites and occasional manned missions like SpaceLab. Nobody wanted to spend time and money on putting men on another planet. Didn't we have enough problems right here?

We've now kept the International Space Station manned continuously for more than 20 years and, thanks to private companies like SpaceX, plans for a return to the moon are on track.

It took but 60 years to go from the Wright Brothers to Apollo 11. Let's hope the span between Apollo 11 and a permanent presence on the moon isn't any longer than that.

Martian Chronicles

 Believe it or not, there are three exploration vehicles from Earth currently orbiting Mars--one from the United States, one from China, and one from the United Arab Emirates.

The UAE mission, launched from in cooperation with Japan, was the first to reach the red planet. It is currently orbiting to test atmosphere and other conditions on the planet. The Chinese orbiter recently completed maneuvers to put it in a polar orbit, as it searches for likely landing sites, with a plan to put a vehicle on the surface by May or June. The US mission will land its "Rover" later today, using the same "sky crane" technology that successfully put its sister vehicle on the surface in 2004.

It would appear humankind's desire to explore the final frontier has not yet waned.