THE EDITOR, Sir:
ON SATURDAY, February 1, 2003, many of us witnessed in amazement, the spectacle of seven astronauts descending from the heavens like a meteorite - over Texas - when they and their doomed spacecraft streaked across the heavens and fell to earth in millions of pieces, like a shooting star. The questions that inevitably come to mind are: Were these astronauts courageous or vain? Were they heroes or hallucinators? Were they geniuses or lunatics? Were they realists or dreamers?
Well, the general and popular orthodoxy is to call these astronauts - past, present and future ones - heroes, icons, brave, dedicated, and so on; any contrary opinion is viewed with scorn, and considered heresy. These astronauts are put in the same category as explorers and discoverers much like the Columbuses of bygone ages. We are told that they share the dream with humans throughout the ages to defy gravity and reach for the stars - not just figuratively, but in their case, literally. Indeed they are brave, it is said, because they know the great risks involved, but still undertake such dangerous missions.
Indeed, the desires of these astronauts to reach the heavens are not new. Ancient mythologies tell us of humans and demi-gods who attempted to climb to the heavens. Recall, Icarus of Greek legend, who put wings on himself, flew too near the sun and crashed mightily to earth because the sun melted the wax on his wings. Nimrod built the Tower of Babel to reach the heavens - to get away from earth's problems - but his tower crumbled and led to world confusion in languages and the scattering of the human race. Lucifer ascended to heaven to dethrone God, but he and his cohorts were cast out of heaven to earth to become fallen angels, where they've since plagued the earth with evil.
So our folklore is rich in imageries of men's quest to conquer the heavens. Certainly, much of Hollywood science fiction films from Star Trek to Star Wars give us this notion that the heavens are the last remaining frontier to be conquered by humans. Now again, what about these fallen astronauts? Are they brave or foolhardy? Well, they are both; they are geniuses and madmen/women.
However, the real question is not about the personal sanity, or the individual motivation of these astronauts, but the big questions should be: What is the real purpose behind the Space Programme? Are the physical and personal risks worth all the trillions of dollars expended on the Space Programme?
Broadly put, the space enterprise is a throwback to the Cold War era when the now defunct Soviet Union and the USA were engaged in an ideological deadly war game; and part of this war game was to see which country first could reach the stars. After the Russians successfully launched Sputnik in the 1950s, the Americans, shocked, decided that they could not allow Russian mastery of space - that this would be dangerous to the security of the USA; so when President Kennedy came to power, he in the early 1960s, pledged the US to get a man on the moon by decade's end.
This was achieved in 1969 with Armstrong and Aldrin apparently going to the Moon. Although the Cold War antagonisms have ceased, America continues its space explorations ostensibly for science, research and military purposes. However, perhaps the greatest drive to the continuation of space exploration and sending people to distant planets is not so much for pure science; it's not so much about dreams about reaching distant planets; it's about economics, finance - it's about jobs. The space research programme creates countless number of jobs and consumes trillions of dollars for US defence contractors and allied workers.
Although the destruction of Columbia and the death of the seven astronauts is a tragic event, and despite the fact that it has put a damper on the current space programme, the work will soon continue just like it did after the explosion of Challenger on lift-off in the 1980s. The space programme, once it is revamped, will get going again, because too much money stands to be lost if it is suspended. Of course, unmanned missions could again take precedence over human cargoes, but the sending of humans is not only a more compelling case to get funds from the Federal Government for the programme, but human missions also bring about national and personal gloating, pride and vanity.
So the question still remains, are the astronauts smart, or misguided? In the main, they are misguided, in that the whole space exploration game seems to imply man's inability to take care of the world. That is, he can't fix his earthly problems, so he wants to go and make a heavenly mess somewhere else.
I am, etc.,
GEORGE GARWOOD
merleneg@yahoo.com
Port St. Lucie, FL
Via Go-Jamaica
