Look to the stars, post-Columbia

The loss of the space shuttle Columbia hit me particularly hard, but I think what hurt more were the calls in the aftermath for an end to manned space flight.

That's because if all would have gone as expected, I wouldn't be writing this column.

Instead, I'd be piloting a craft far superior to the space shuttle between the planets right now.

• • •

As a boy, I grew up in the dawning of the space age. At three, with millions across the globe, I saw the first pictures of space broadcast from an orbiting craft. At four, I followed Apollo as it circled the moon. At five, I watched a man step for the first time onto that distant world.

And each time during the next two years that humanity set foot on the lunar surface, this farm boy looked above the stalks in our cornfield at the moon, just to see if he might glimpse our astronauts up there. Maybe I'd catch a glint of sun off the lander or their ship as it quietly orbited in the lunar sky.

Talk was we soon would have an orbiting space station. Development of a spaceship that could fly like a plane was proposed; this "shuttle" would ferry men and construction materials to the Skylab station and then a base on the moon. These would be launching pads for a manned mission to Mars, probably by the early 1980s.

Most astronauts were fighter pilots, I'd read. After a few years learning to fly in the Air Force, I could enter the astronaut program in the early 1990s. I studied maps and travel books to locate Cocoa Beach, Fla., which was where my future home would be. All the astronauts lived in Cocoa Beach.

I wouldn't be spending much time there, however. By the mid 1990s, we'd be building that permanent base on Mars and traveling to Venus and Jupiter. Those were long flights, and I was going to be on them.

• • •

It was not to be.

Two disasters prevented me from ever becoming an astronaut.

In fifth grade, school eye tests discovered I needed glasses. Back then, fighter pilots and astronauts didn't have four eyes.

The other calamity was far more insidious. It was the American people's loss of interest in the space program.

Some blame it on NASA getting dull. Some say because the Russians gave up on going to the moon, we felt no urgent need to keep going.

I say it was a lack of imagination.

• • •

A professor in college once told me the best way to learn about a person is to look at his checkbook. He was right - hobbies and vices have a way of creeping into our wallets.

The Seventies were tough times economically. Twice there was oil rationing, and inflation burned up a dollar's value as if it were dry grass caught in a prairie fire. Priorities had to change.

Unfortunately, America's priorities weren't particularly forward-looking.

There were many then, as there are today, who didn't share the excitement of exploring. They didn't understand the words of Thomas Jefferson when he sent Lewis and Clark west on the Corps of Discovery: "Those who come after us will ... fill up the canvas we begin."

Some said that space travel brought no return on the dollar for the investment, even though the Apollo missions advanced computer technology, the food and textile industries and even resulted in smoke detectors now mandatory in most buildings.

Others said the money ought to be spent on helping the poor, on curing diseases, on feeding the hungry.

I have no problem with abandoning all space travel if the money would be allocated for that. But the simple fact is it's not.

• • •

If anything, much money is spent on personal weaknesses that often result, if indirectly, in child poverty, illness and malnutrition.

A case in point: Gambling.

For the most part, it is harmless entertainment. But a few years ago while in Wisconsin, I calculated gambling's cost in a newspaper column. Enough money was spent on reservation casinos, racetracks and the state-run lottery annually in Wisconsin that 36 new high schools, with swimming pools and auditoriums, could be constructed each year to house 1,200 students.

Since not all school districts were that large, and since elementary schools and junior high buildings typically did not need to be so lavish, each school structure in that state could be replaced once every 12 years. Wisconsinites - like Americans everywhere, in-cluding Iowa - made their choice. They selected gambling over education. They chose it over child poverty, medical research and feeding the masses as well.

There's more. Each American consumer in 1997 spent an average of $292 annually on alcohol and $251 on tobacco, according to the Monthly Labor Review. That sends yearly spending on two products - of which one typically is among the leading causes of many mortal ailments - into the billions.

Don't tell me we don't have the money.

• • •

Americans are a courageous people who possess a special generosity and friendliness known the world over. But we Americans have selfish streaks as well. At our worst, we forget about the plight of others so it will not interfere with personal pleasures.

But in our hearts, most of us wish to do the best.

The loss of Columbia and her crew struck hard because all of us lost a symbol of hope, a hope that lives inside us, even when we push it far to the back. Improving the lot of others is the highest calling of any human being, and we must always believe that someone is there to help or we risk losing the very will to live.

The Columbia seven's lives were sacrificed in the quest to improve our quality of life. They represented the best part in each of us, and when they died, so our faith in humanity also was challenged.

Perhaps, though, if we gaze above the corn stalks at the stars once more, we will see lights that inspire us to those greater heights.

(originally published Feb. 10, 2003)