OPINION: The case for continuing the International Space Station
Since the dawn of creation, mankind has been driven by the urge to explore the world around him. The quest for knowledge consumes us. We have to know if we are alone in the universe or if life exists somewhere beyond the big blue marble we call home.
We’ve looked to the heavens for ages but only recently acquired the means to get there. Take the history of man, compress it into a year’s time and you’ll find that everything from the Wright Brothers to Neil Armstrong happened in a relative blink of an eye.
It really is miraculous but somehow, someway the wonder went out of it. The Space Shuttle program, while never living up to the expectations NASA and Congress had for it, nonetheless made space travel seem routine and hardly worth comment unless a tragedy occurred. America lost its drive, its vision for life in a brighter world out among the stars, settling instead for television franchises that let us live out the fantasy from the comfort of an easy chair.