To Mars And Back

The United States suffered a psychological blow to its self-esteem and its trust in its forward-looking technological advantage over its arch-foe, the Soviet Union, when Sputnik blasted into space, taking the U.S. completely by surprise, and giving the advantage to the U.S.S.R. in space exploration. The 1957 coup began the launch of a number of satellites and the scramble by the United States to overtake the advances of the U.S.S.R.

It didn't take all that long before they succeeded. The launch that led to the moon landing was a spectacular achievement. And subsequent space ventures have been additionally monumental in furthering our knowledge about space and its potential exploration, and the stuff of the universe. But it is immensely costly, an ongoing enterprise that requires constant technological advances in metallurgy and mechanics and the manipulation of materials properties.

The advanced technologies developed by NASA scientists in developing techniques and advanced materials have had spin-offs in military usage and advantages as well as civilian usage. And the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope is teaching astronomers and physicists much about the chemical and atomic structure of the universe, revealing new galaxies and going much beyond the hypothetical and conjecture to solid data collection.

And now, after collaboration with Russian scientists and astronauts, in the mutual interest inherent in the building, equipping and research facilities in the international space station, the United States is winding down its shuttle program. That wasn't meant to happen; though the shuttle fleet is being retired NASA planned for the future to take humans beyond low-Earth orbit.

The G.W. Bush administration's decision to put the shuttle program on hold was supposed to be temporary. The current Obama administration made the decision to bring the program to an end, keeping open the potential for future investments in spacecraft for the future - to launch exploration to an asteroid, return to the moon, possibly head out to Mars.

It's entirely possible another country will beat them to that enterprise, for there are now emerging competitors for the acquisition of futuristic plans to conquer space in a way that has not yet been done. We can shudder at the prospect of impoverished North Korea finding the wherewithal to fund an ambitious enterprise, while its population starves. We can fear Iran's resolute determination to acquire nuclear weapons at the same time it aspires to launch into space.

A likelier scenario might be China investing hugely in its own ambitions to launch into space, leaving all competitors behind in an effort to launch a bid for mineral extraction on nearby planets. China has no shortage of physicists and nuclear scientists and astronomers of her own. China's huge export advantage has it in line to become the world's supreme power house. One to whom the United States is dependent for holding its colossal debt.

But for purely unanticipated irony, we can muse how unlikely it might have seemed fifty years ago that the United States would be reduced to having NASA rent out seats in the near future on Russian Soyuz spacecraft to ship its astronauts back and forth from the international space station.