Time for a new challenge

Published 2:30 pm Saturday, July 9, 2011

As the Space Shuttle Atlantis climbed past the launch tower at Pad 39A and into the Florida skies at 11:29 a.m. Friday, the final flight of the final American space shuttle began ticking off its long list of “lasts.”

Last countdown for a shuttle on the pad. Check. Last launch hold. Check. Last time those main engines would light up. Check. Last time the nation would hold its breath at the point of solid rocket booster separation, the point where Challenger met its awful fate. Check.

In a little less than two weeks, God willing, the crew will return Atlantis to the Earth’s atmosphere in preparation for its last landing at Kennedy Space Center, where it will become a museum piece, a monument to a time when America knew how to dream big, when Americans believed in the power of space exploration as a means of lifting mankind out of its pettiness and conceit.

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With each day that closes on Atlantis’ mission and with each “last” that is ticked off the checklist, America moves closer to becoming something it hasn’t been in almost 50 years — a nation without a manned space program. What that says about the state of the pioneering spirit that made America great is shameful.

America’s manned spaceflight program suffers from a lack of vision, passion and commitment — the vision to set far-reaching goals and understand how reaching them will improve the nation, the passion to share those goals in such a way that people who are caught up in the problems of their own lives grab onto the dream as their own, and the commitment to do the hard things it takes to make the dream a reality.

Presidents, congressmen and senators from both parties have let the space program — and the nation — down by their lack of one or more of those necessary qualities. As a result, NASA has a largely undefined mission after the landing of Atlantis.

Since President John F. Kennedy famously challenged the nation to put a man on the moon, the world has reaped unimaginable benefits from America’s manned space program. But even setting aside the tangible benefits of computers, communications and other advances directly related to the space program, it is important to acknowledge how America’s manned space program has made us a better nation.

Striving for things that are hard improves the character of a people. Achieving those things that seemed impossible improves their self-image. And failing at things that are important to them encourages resolve. All three traits are sorely lacking in America today.

The time is ripe for a new challenge. But do the nation’s leaders today have the vision, the passion and the commitment to issue that challenge? With a president whose support for NASA has been tepid and a series of congresses that show little desire to fund the agency to the degree necessary for visionary projects, the answer would seem to be, “No.”

But with the nation mired in recession and its morale falling further each day, there is, perhaps, no better time than the present for a bold new vision. Whether it is this president or the next, the time has come for a true leader to rescue the American manned space program from the fate that awaits it when Atlantis returns home. In doing so, he or she might rescue America, too.