Today saw the final launch of the Space Shuttle program. It is a good time to look back and see what we learned about ourselves since, say, 1960. But this is not the overwhelmingly important date that many are making it out to be.
The date that should be remembered as the turning point is 1972. It is not since then — forty years ago — that humans have flown in real space, outside the earth’s atmosphere. Most people on earth today were not even alive the last time our race physically reached beyond the earth.
And I am definitely not saying that is a bad thing.
That extraordinary period between Kennedy’s “we are going to the Moon” speech in May 1961 and the return of Apollo 17 in December 1972 was enormous fun. For those of us who were alive and aware, it was the ultimate trip, and we all reveled in it. Sitting in a hotel room in Yugoslavia with a dozen others watching the first Moon landing on an ancient black-and-white TV was one of my lifetime memories.
But it ended, and we deliberately pulled away from sending humans into space. Now, we are pulling back from sending humans into low-earth orbit; the latest step in a forty-year retreat.
I believe that we have come to understand that we had over-stepped our abilities; that we simply could not put so many resources into a program that did not directly assist us with the overwhelming problems (poverty, environmental degradation, disease) that face us here on the earth itself. If that’s true, then the cessation of Shuttle flights should be welcomed as a hopeful sign. And the abandonment of the ISS should be the next objective.
Posted by jakking 
