The Gift of Apollo

There are no words, truly, for how saddened I am by humanity's insistence upon politics and war over imagination and inspiration. Perhaps it was growing up on Star Trek and Cosmos, perhaps it was watching shuttle launches on the classroom TV, perhaps it was simply my own inherent desire to one day see it for myself... but I have spent my life taking for granted the inevitability of man's ascent to the heavens. And by that I mean, of course, our ascent into the stars.

It has to be inevitable, really, if we are to survive as a species. And yet day after day, year after year, decade after decade, generations succumb to the exhausting mire of violence, of conflict, of paranoia. And from this all emerges a cynicism that renders me dumbfounded. How is it that a people with such potential and ambition have thrown in the towel on what should be - what must be - a matter of global importance to a degree that such goals are now once more laughed at or looked upon with scorn? It is as though we never had the ambition in the first place.

It's why I feel no politician, no candidate, represents me. There is no one holding office or currently occupying a seat of power who inspires me to dream, who promises the greatness of man's abilities, who will take the money spent on the military and defense and give it instead to NASA.

In five years NASA will, if all goes according to plan, return to the stars with a new spacecraft. And it's my hope to take my family to Florida to watch the launch. I will not allow my son to grow up without that dream. I will not allow him to dismiss our greatest achievements or let them slip to the dusty archives of human history from which we cannot recall even the lessons learned from previous wars.

Better, surely, that we once again take for granted not another attack from some extremist foreign or domestic, but rather mankind's place in the awesome vastness of creation.