[Mb-civic] Swear Not, By the Moon

[Jim Burns]

I revised this a couple of days ago, from something  I wrote a while
back...  How sad, that in just the last day, another setback...
___

 
It's exhilirating that the shuttle has returned to orbit, but those of
who grew up with the promise of the original space program know what
much further wonders, could have been ours, by now. Had government
funding, and policy, been further expended during the Apollo era, many
of the marvels shown in such science fiction films as 2001: A SPACE
ODYSSEY (lensed in 1968), could have been, today, not future
possibilities, but past accomplishments.

For over three decades, many visionary space goals have been thwarted by
those who don't believe that there's a tangible benefit to a manned
presence, in space. 

(In the early years of his first administration, Richard Nixon, for
example, cancelled a NASA program that aimed to have a man on Mars, by
1980!) 

It can still be daunting, to contemplate all of the benefits that might
have ensued, had we pursued what once seemed to be NASA's, and the
world's, implicit destiny. 

But, since 9/11, I've been haunted by another thought: 

Would the Muslim fundamentalists, and those others who call the Unted
States "the Great Satan," have been able to feel the same way, if we had
already achieved our vast space stations, and colonies on the moon? 

Could they really have believed that the devil had a home, in the
heavens? 


Jim Burns