Fifty years after Alan Shepard became America's first astronaut, the U.S. launched its last space shuttle, marking the end of our space program -- and a new low for the American spirit.
"Space, the final frontier... to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before." The opening lines of "Star Trek" captured the attitude of '60s-era Americans; we were divided on other issues but united in support of our space program. If you ask many Americans, "What was the United States' greatest moment?" many will answer that it was July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon.
To understand the grip that the concept of "space, the final frontier" had on the American imagination, it's important to remember where we were at the end of World War II. Americans celebrated victory over the Axis powers, but the reality was that the U.S. state of war didn't end: a cold war with the U.S.S.R. replaced the "hot" war with Germany and Japan. During the next 12 years, Americans had little role to play in the Cold War except to prepare for the nuclear war that, for many anxious years, seemed inevitable.
Then, on Oct. 4, 1957, the U.S.S.R. launched Sputnik, and the space race began. The U.S. effort stumbled under President Eisenhower but then captured the American imagination after President Kennedy's May 25, 1961 speech, in which he challenged the U.S. to "catch up and overtake" the U.S.S.R. in the space race and to land an American on the moon before the end of the decade.
Kennedy's inspired challenge leveraged four facets of the American character. First, we were fascinated with outer space. The rocket era had begun with the 1944 bombing of London by German guided missiles -- V1 and V2 flying bombs. Comic-book astronauts Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon were firmly lodged in U.S. popular culture; in 1949, "Captain Video" appeared on TV, followed by "Space Patrol," and then "Star Trek." In 1950, the film "Destination Moon" was a hit, followed by "Forbidden Planet," "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "Star Wars."
Second, Americans believed in ambitious national projects. There was general acceptance of the narrative of the "Benevolent Community," where "neighbors and friends ... roll up their sleeves and pitch in for the common good." Americans mobilized in the '30s to end the Great Depression, in the '40s to win World War II, and in the '50s to win the space race.
Third, Americans believed that it was important for our children to get a good education. We valued scientists and engineers. During the heart of the space race, teenagers dreamed of working in high technology.
Fourth, there was robust U.S. optimism, a shared "can do" spirit, the notion that when Americans set our minds to a task, we could accomplish anything.
The end of the U.S. space program marks a shift in the American spirit. Obviously, we are no longer fascinated by space; our attraction was never the same after Armstrong's moonwalk. What's more important is that somewhere during the past 50 years, we lost our belief in the benevolent community and our confidence in ambitious national projects. President Ronald Reagan convinced many Americans that "government is the problem" and denigrated large-scale federal efforts as "social engineering." Reagan marginalized the space program.
One of the benefits of the early days of the space race was that it gave every American a role to play; as was the case during World War II, it created an ethic of shared sacrifice. Reagan's conservative philosophy thwarted this. In place of the benevolent community, he substituted blind faith in the free market. The notion of common good was subverted to the maxim "what's in it for me?"
Armed with this new cynicism, parents no longer encouraged their children to go to school with the aim of ultimately giving back to the community. Whereas in the '50s and '60s students imagined becoming engineers and teachers, in the '80s and '90s students dreamed of becoming investment bankers and property developers. A bright mathematics student who in an earlier era thought about contributing to the space program now imagined a lucrative job on Wall Street, fabricating an exotic derivative.
American optimism receded. Polls indicate that a strong majority of Americans feel the U.S. is now headed in the wrong direction; many suspect that our best days are behind us.
Nonetheless, the United States remains a great nation with many strengths, including resilience. The space program is dead, but that doesn't mean that our spirit has to go down with it.
What's needed is inspirational leadership. America needs to resurrect the benevolent community and take on a new challenge. The Great Seal of the United States bears the dictum, "E Pluribus Unum" -- out of many, one. That's the historic spirit of America that is needed now more than ever.
Adam Hanft: The Last Shuttle, the Endless Deficit, a Frozen Culture; a Meditation on Limits
America''s best days are behind us. Unless we can change soon, it's a long trip to hell. Read this: http://econintersect.com/b2evolution/blog2.php/2011/05/23/diagnosis-for-america-cancer. Enjoy!
JFK's assasination : A veil had lifted. There are corrupt collaborations between organized crime and white collar crime syndicates running our banking, finance and military industrial complex.
We went from believing in fairy tales and being happily working through life to an eery moment of national pause.
The feelings that money might have more to say in our America than we were led to believe in grammar school pledges, history class and watching manned space flights on old black and white blurry tvs.
The next series of events took us from a moment of pause to WTF is going on.
Robert Kennedy assasinated
Martin Luther King assasinated
Jackie Kennedy fleeing for cover to a corrupt greek tycoon to save her remaining family
Then the mother load : Vietnam
Vietnam put teeth in our beliefs. It made government corruption real not just discussion. We knew we had been sold out on a lie.
Our disbelief matured into Oh shit now what do we do ? With Nixon.
We wanted less corruption : Carter and learned the word Terrorism.
Reagan then introduced an "Answer" to this scary word "Terrorism". More war. More guns. Bigger industrial complexes. He defined red vs blue voters.
The division of Americans singular vision was over.
Bush = Americans now believe we don't have a Federal Democracy at all, but that large corporations ARE the government.
Boomers (I am one) may have been turned on by things like the space program and benefited by a greatly improved public education system but catastrophically did not inherit that cultural gene of their parents that moved individuals to work for the common good. We became a generation of narcissists, dedicated to self aggrandizement rather than improvement of the common weal. In effect we corrupted that into a weal of fortune (sorry, I couldn't resist). We wanted everything now, future be damned. We selfishly gobbled up resources we should have used for improving the lot of the next generation. An eroding space program is only a small part of the gathering calamity our children face.
To be frank about it, we aren't going back to the moon, or Mars, or anywhere else, I am afraid, and the reason is plain and simple economics--it is just too expensive to put people in space. It was one thing back in the relatively flush 1960's, it is quite another in 2011, with the country on the verge of joining Greece, Italy, and Spain as another of the world's bankrupts--and the biggest one. Yet, I would be a liar if I said I wasn't sad to see that last shuttle fly--some of that kid of the 60's is still there behind the cynicism of advancing age.
Not to mention that it was sucking up what budget there was at NASA, preventing them from taking on other projects such as going back to the Moon or going to Mars.
It was nice, but it just had to go.
You can put the blame on the GOP and Nixon, cutting out scheduled Apollo launches, then building a Space Shuttle on the cheap. Then they got Congress involved in micro- managing how it was to be built, a recipe for disaster.
They can talk all they want about commercial space but business is not going to foot the bill. Unless there is the government backing it and paying the bills, no new boosters, no man in space. And that's sad. We could have had a base on the moon by now, but its more important that the top 2% have a tax cut. Thanks Ronnie.
I am sorry, but this just does not hold a candle to how low our nation went when the supreme court decided to prevent the State of Florida from having an honest accurate vote tally so that Bush could be declared the winner of the election. As you recall, two of our supreme court justices had family members who were part of the Bush campaign apparatus and had these supreme court justices recused themselves from this decision, then Gore would have won the election and the world we live in today would be vastly different.
As you know, Gore had wanted to put in place equipment capable of detecting tsunamis in the pacific and the indian oceans and was blocked in this effort while VP. Had he been president, he could have gotten this accomplished long before that immense tsunami disaster.
Bush dropped the ongoing fight against terrorism and ignored over 50 serious warnings regarding the 9/11 attacks. Had Gore Been president he would have continued Clintons proactive approach to such concerns and quite possibly would have prevented the attacks, as Clinton was able to do regarding several other very large attacks.
Most of all, though the divide between the rich and the poor that is currently destroying our nation would not have become more pronounced.