As a boy I looked to the stars.
I had my own telescope. Star charts. I had a subscription to a Odyssey an astronomy magazine for kids. I wanted to be an Astronomer.
I had watched The Right Stuff easily over 100 times. At night I walked in the footsteps of Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, Chuck Yeager, and others.
I could identify constellations. Still can. On more than one occasion knowing where something was in a given month has saved my ass, literally. Such as now, if memory serves, is the time for Gemini and Canis Major.
A love of the stars is something I want to pass on to my daughter.
On September 12th, 1962 John F. Kennedy, the patron saint of the Democratic party, was at Rice University. On that day he gave a speech to a furrowed brow crowd of faculty and students among who were some whom demanded to know why our government was “wasting” money with a mission to the moon.
“….We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say that we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours….”
But most importantly were these words:
“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too….”
But the times have changed you see.
Neither party, Republican or Democrat, have a patron saint in more. John Kennedy taken down in his prime, and Ronald Reagan now shakes hands with him in another world beyond ours, perhaps.
President Obama does not believe in dreams.
Even those that go unfilled. How many boys and girls of my age at the time looked above our heads and longed to be among the stars and dance with the lights?
How many adults look in to the night sky, and remember the excitement we felt finding Andromeda or Aries for the first time?
I never became an astronaut. I never became an astronomer. I made my living with in a different field, and in a different realm. It was a good living, a good job. But not what I wanted to do.
When we landed on the moon and thereby ended the great Space race we put the United States at the forefront of technology, and accomplishments on the world stage. From 1957 until 1969 we and the Soviet Union worked our tails off to accomplish something that people only dreamed of and saw in cartoons.
It was a golden age not just for a country, but for a world.
Today we make nothing here. Our appliances are made in Mexico. Our cars are made in Japan. Our TV’s are made in Taiwain and our children’s toys are made in China. We worry about what the world thinks of us and cower in the corners while our soldiers die for other people in a foreign country so that they can be as free as…us? Do we really have freedom today?
We’re strip searched practically at the airport by incompetents who allow a bomb toting hate filled individual to board a plane because they are afraid to question him due to political correctness. We have individuals who kill their fellow soliders on a military base because the chain of command is scared to death of being punished themselves by political correctness.
In 1962 we chose to go to the moon. Not because it was easy, but because it was hard!.
We chose to rise above, to be more than we could be, to set a standard to break molds to not go quietly in to that good night.
Unfortunately today we choose to only go in to the night without a roar, but with a whimper.
And perhaps it is time for our star to go out as well?
Tags: Astronomy, Constellations, NASA, Obama, Politics, Science, Space, Success, Technorati