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have brought the NASA's space program from the place where it inspired the entire country -- during the Vietnam War, I might add -- to where it is now. In the late 50's and early sixties, I remember getting up early and watching the Mercury and Gemini launches. They were magnificent but dangerous. I also remember the weekend that Grissom, Chaffee, and White were incinerated in Apollo 1 during a routine ground test. A little over two years later, Armstrong and Aldrin were on the moon. Where I lived, the famous first step took place an hour or so after dark. We had neighbors over to watch with us. It was a big event.
Nixon sent 7 Apollos to the moon. One didn't quite make it. He canceled the last two. That was it for the manned space program until the first shuttle flight a few years later. The shuttle is nothing more than a big flying truck, and it was never meant to be anything else. It carries things. like parts for the International Space Station, and satellites too big to launch any other way into low Earth orbit. There has never been much science done on the Shuttle. The main purpose of the Space Station simply seems to be keeping it in orbit. A lot of what is done on it is meant for business applications anyway. I can't recall any serious science being done on the Space Station either.
But running a fleet of aging, increasingly decrepit shuttles costs most of NASA's budget. There is some left over, less each year, which pays for the Hubble Telescope -- itself expected to become non-operational in a few years - and a handful of other satellites that actually are doing science. This does not get publicized at all. We have a satellite orbiting Saturn that has sent back astonishing photos and scientific data. It even sent a lander down to Saturn's moon Titan which sent back photos and data showing methane oceans and continents made of water ice. Does anyone know the name of this satellite? There is an infrared telescope which was recently launched that should show the black hole at the center of our galaxy. We know it's there and how massive it is. Now we should see it, or more accurately its event horizon. Does anyone care? There is another satellite on its way out to Pluto, where it will arrive in a few years, giving us a good idea about this dwarf planet and the many others that orbit along with Pluto in the Kuiper belt, out beyond Neptune, the last true planet. Objects like Sedna, and Quaoar, and Eris, about which we know very little, despite the fact they are big, perhaps the size of our moon. There is plenty to wonder at, just here locally, but the press and population as a whole is unaware of any of it.
I blame the "Reagan revolution" and its aftermath which has in this area as in so many others seriously damaged if not destroyed America's capacity to hope, and to wonder.
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