U.S. needs space goals

COurier-Journal.com (Louisville, Kentucky) U.S. needs space goals
America's space program has suffered its greatest losses in the months of January and February.

An electrical fire, fed by 100 percent oxygen, in the cockpit of Apollo 1 took the lives of astronauts Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee and Ed White on Jan. 1, 1967.

A damaged thermal protection system led to the re-entry disintegration of the space shuttle Columbia on Feb. 1, 2003, killing astronauts Rick Husband, William McCool, Michael Anderson, Ilan Ramon, Kalpana Chalwa, David Brown and Laurel Clark on their way home.

And 25 years ago today, the nation watched as Challenger exploded 73 seconds into its flight, doomed by a series of events starting with the failure of an O-ring. The crew lost with that ship: Dick Scobee, Mike Smith, Ron McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judy Resnik, Greg Jarvis and Christa McAuliffe.

The point of revisiting the tragedies today is not to underscore the inherent dangers of spaceflight. It carries great risks, even as it brings great rewards.

Rather, it is to reconnect with the spirit of dedication and sacrifice required of exploration and discovery. A lot of smart and brave people have been willing to put everything on the line, including their lives, to further our knowledge of the solar system, the galaxy and the universe. Just this week, astronomers announced the Hubble telescope may have found the most distant and youngest galaxy yet known.

The shuttle program that delivered Hubble to space, and ferried the astronauts who repaired it, is scheduled to end this year. The next steps for NASA, and this nation's goals in space, are not clear or apparent now. America's space program is also in need of one of those Sputnik moments that President Obama called for the other night.

Astronaut John Young, who lost comrades in the disasters of January and February, suggests that more than astronauts' lives are on the line in finding a niche for humans in space.

“We are being irresponsible in our failure to make the scientific and technical progress we will need for protecting our newly discovered, severely threatened and probably endangered species — us,” he wrote. “NASA is not about the ‘Adventure of Human Space Exploration'; we are in the deadly serious business of saving the species. All human exploration's bottom line is about preserving our species over the long haul.”