brainwagon

This morning, I was a bit late coming into work. I decided to sit until 8:26AM Pacific to see if Atlantis would be launched on the final mission of the Space Shuttle program. Low cumulus clouds threatened, but in the end the shuttle rose on its pillar of fire for the last time, and in eight and half minutes, discarded its main fuel tank and was safely in orbit.

Reporters have been trying hard to find some perspective on the event, and in my experience, mostly failing. They put microphones in front of kids and ask them if they want to travel to space someday. They talk to astronauts and former astronauts and ask what it was like to be in space.

I think all that is slightly off the mark.

I was born in 1964, and was a child of the Apollo space program. I remember watching the first tentative steps of Neil Armstrong on the moon on our old Zenith black and white set. Even at that young age, I was interested in space and astronomy. It was a few years later that computers entered my consciousness and come to dominate my time, but I continued to be interested in space and astronomy.

For kids my age, the usual default answer to “what do you want to be when you grow up?” was “an astronaut.” But more than just being an astronaut, there was sense of optimism: that if the moon was reachable, what other achievements could we reach if we applied our energy and our industry. We dared imagine a world without hunger, and without poverty. Diseases? Cured. Poverty? Eliminated! Ignorance? Educated.

Perhaps it was just a dream, but it was a healthy one. It was a dream that challenged us to greatness.

This morning, Atlantis launched for the last time. Vying for attention on CNN was President Obama, who held a press conference to discuss the meager 18,000 jobs that were created in the last month, the weakest performance since September of last year. When coverage returned to the launch, reporters interviewed a number of people, and the question of the expense of the launch was mentioned. After the launch, the economic news reasserted itself. One reporter said that the growth industries for the next year are likely to be in retail sales and in food service.

I was lucky. As a kid, I dreamed of being an astronaut. Today? Kids dream of being to make just a little more than minimum wage. It’s a pity that I didn’t see my wish fulfilled, but it’s a tragedy that a generation of young Americans won’t experience their dream, even as limited as they are.

Here’s the reality: the space program is little more than a jobs program. Certain industries and certain states (CA, FL, MD, TX) benefit from our dreams of slipping the surly bonds of earth, but the vast majority of Americans don’t get nearly as much benefit. In purely economic terms, the Space Shuttle is a disaster: it never delivered the cost savings that optimistic forecasters suggested were possible in boosting satellites to orbit. So, people argue that the money would be better spent elsewhere, that our dreams are simply too expensive.

The U.S. military spent more on air-conditioning temporary structures in Iraq and Afghanistan than NASA spends in a year. While I appreciate and laud the efforts of our troops, I can’t help but think that cutting our dreams so we have enough money to air condition tents isn’t the kind of society that we should be dreaming about.

For a generation, the space program provided us with inspiration and optimism. As the shuttle program winds down, for all its faults it still seems like the end of a dream. I can’t help but wonder what dream will unite the next generation of Americans in their quest for greatness.