On Politics 5/14/09: Magic, 350 Miles Up

It may seem an odd juxtaposition here in the blog; combining our space program and politics. However, like most things in life, some commonality and linkage does exist.

Over the past two days, I've watched with a combination of awe, fascination, and a slight degree of fear as our astronauts have flown the space shuttle in rescue of the Hubble Space Telescope on the NASA TV channel, successfully grabbed it ("grapple", in the weird vocabulary of NASA missions), and tethered it to the shuttle's bay for repair. You probably have the NASA channel on your local cable or satellite provider, lost in the hundreds (literally) of other channels that you never watch and routinely bypass. Is there anyone who watches more than 10-15 of their channels on a regular basis? But, I digress.

It is immediately evident, listening and watching yesterday's precision shuttle approach, acquisition of the HST (the telescope), and today's careful execution of the step-by-step plan for the astronauts first "EVA" (that's spacewalk to you and me) the amount of planning and rehearsal that has gone into this effort. In installing the replacement camera today, their protocol even calls for how many full turns of the wrench tool they should be doing to secure it. Very, very impressive stuff. All of this, while traveling about 17,500 miles per hour around the Earth. It brings a whole new meaning to "don't look down".

The political piece of all this is the ongoing funding requirements for NASA. In our current economic difficulties, much is made how we need to fix what is wrong with our country first, whether it be the banking system, our ending of poverty and hunger in the most prosperous country in the world, or curing any number of diseases that endanger us. All are valid positions and arguments, passionately espoused by ardent activists for their respective causes.

My answer is this: Space exploration is one of those rare things that advances all of mankind, not just our country. The now standard everyday items that have been developed and implemented as a result of previous space exploration are too numerous to mention (Dolby sound reduction technology is a biggie for me). Besides that, is there a time, other than the darkest days of the Middle Ages, where human advancements stopped? I believe that it is more important in the most difficult of times to continue to move forward with technological improvements or humankind adventures. Progress inexorably moves on, taking the rest of us, willingly or not, along with it.

If nothing else, this is just way cool stuff :-).