How can humanity expect to reach for the stars when the greatest invention we've ever achieved here on Earth is the mechanical pencil? Our imaginations are far more powerful than our abilities..... the only successes in mankind's endeavours into space exploration were fueled by animosity (the "space race" between the U.S. and the Soviet Union). We planted an American flag on the Moon........ not a World flag. We've sent robots to Mars and probes to the edge of our solar system..... all emblazoned with American flags. How is the International Space Station international when the only countries that are contributing to it are the only countries on the planet that can actually keep their people housed and fed? They're putting more powerful computers in modern cars than they are in spaceships. People like Arthur C. Clarke had the right idea....... but their fault lay in the fact that they hoped too much...... their dreams relied too much on the idea that maybe, just maybe, there was more to the human mind than simply greed and avarice and an inherent desire to dominate everything - our planet, our home, our fellow humans. I know almost for certain that this is wrong. The invention of the space shuttle came at the tail end of the strong drive for space over the past few decades. It was a good idea..... but unfortunately, no one in the upper echelons of the world government seem to care about it anymore. When the space shuttle Columbia ended its majestic life on February 1st, 2003, it took away any hope I possibly had for us to ever really get off the ground. President Bush got on TV and claimed it was a terrible loss of one of the greatest tools of discovery in the history of Earth...... and then he got right back to planning his war with Iraq. No one cares about this stuff anymore.

I must admit that I don't care about most day-to-day affairs either. I haven't watched the news in months. Occassionally I'll read the local newspaper, but as far as global and national events..... I have no idea. When the September 11, 2001 deal came to pass, I was still in college. I was sitting in my dorm room reading something when someone came in and told me to turn on my TV. Everyone was completely shocked and dismayed..... except for me. I didn't really care. It seems all pointless to me, people die every day, but no one notices until it happens in a big flash of fire and smoke on American soil. If we can't get things figured out down here, how are we supposed to ever hope to get up there?

I already said that no one seems to care about voyaging out into space anymore...... but sometimes I don't think they even cared in the first place. Like I said, the first missions into space were a race borne of rivalry between two giants..... we invented a rocket powerful enough to put people and objects into orbit decades before it would have otherwise been invented. We landed people on the Moon, a century or three before we should have. That is one of the biggest travesties I can think of in this whole thing..... Luna has been with us for as long as we've existed. All of the events on Earth, all of mankind's toiling and bickering, is lost on our nearest neighbor. And we soiled it the moment the eagle landed and we put up a flag. It ended any serene, romantic notions of the Moon that humanity had fostered since the beginning of history. Except in the imagination...... I am still fascinated by the Moon; even though I know in my brain that it's a barren lump of rock, when I'm sitting outside at 2 AM watching it rise over the treetops with (or without) my telescope, it still conjures up powerful and mystical feelings. I like the idea of exploring other worlds and stars and nebulae... but if it's only going to happen in an attempt to further someone's personal gains, then I'm not interested. And with the way things are shaping up, to me, that seems the only reason anyone anymore would want to explore space.

But while we may have gotten lucky in reaching orbit and subsequently the Moon, I don't think the luck will hold. I think mankind is at the beginning of its end.... I believe we've come as far as we can go, we've peaked, and we won't get any further. Perhaps after we've wiped ourselves out, some new race of Earthlings will rise out of the ashes and set forth where we left off - but this time, maybe they'll do it right. Or perhaps one of the Voyager spacecraft, currently nearing the edge of the heliopause boundary, the edge of our solar system and the boundary at which our Mother Sun's influences ends, will be picked up by some weird alien race and they'll come see what's up. Maybe they'll offer us advice. Until something (definitely not someone) sets us straight, the loss of the space shuttle Columbia will ultimately be a smashed insect on the windshield of the juggernaut of humanity. The star system of Sol was our home once, now it's our domain, in the future it will be our prison, and after that it won't matter, because we'll no longer exist.

2/2/03

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