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There are many space programs, grand dreams, that could reconnect us with our cosmic selves, give shape to NASA's activities and stop the space agency from making $10 billion wrong turns. They are ideas that were filed in the round basket in NASA's rush to re-ignite the shuttle's engines: a manned expedition to Mars, a moon base, a reinvigorated program of unmanned solar system exploration, or even the so-called Mission to Earth, which would strive to understand our own planet before we ruin it for good. Like ambivalent lovers, NASA and the American people have to choose.
Wait a minute, I can hear you saying. Don't these things cost money? The phrase budget deficit comes to mind. Is this as important as finding the unified theory of physics or housing the homeless? Yes and no. Yes, NASA could save money in the long run by having a clear goal, but why is money so scarce? Every year the U.S. Government invests some $300 billion in a Manichaean mythology that the world is divided by an eternal conflict between the forces of good and evil, light and dark. Why not invest instead in a different mythology? Why not invest a pittance of the military budget in a new mythology of cooperation and evolution, of the earth as a living organism with eyes molded from stardust, still dumb but trying to learn?
The Soviet Union has begun a generation-long program to explore Mars that is expected to end with cosmonauts landing on the Red Planet, so prominent in the sky these nights, soon after the turn of the century. A Soviet scientist has announced that an automated roving vehicle will land there in 1994; one of its jobs will be to look for fossils. Fossils on Mars?
Why shouldn't we join the Soviets in their great adventure, as they have continually beseeched us? As humans we shouldn't care who makes the big discovery or what language it is reported in. But as humans we should like to see a thing done as well as possible, and it is still our turn to lead, to help invest in the new mythology. The American space program has become a kind of monument that we have bequeathed to future generations and the other peoples of our planet. It is a homage to humility and hope, a promise, like great art or science, that we can escape, that we can loose the bonds that chain us to ourselves and soar. The rockets are soaring again. But they're not going anywhere -- yet.
There's a famous story about Robert Wilson, the founder of Fermilab (where they do look for the grand and unified theory). Wilson was asked once by a penurious congressional committee if Fermilab contributed anything to the national defense. No, answered Wilson, it just helped make the country worth defending. So did the space program.