One of my earliest ambitions was to be a Starship Captain. At some point, however, I realized that the human race was still a helluva long way from building anything like James T. Kirk’s USS Enterprise, so I lowered my sights a bit and decided instead that I would become an astronaut. This was around the time that NASA was glide-testing its newest toy, the space shuttle Enterprise (which was named after the fictional Star Trek vessel), by taking it aloft on the back of a 747 and releasing it to fly, unpowered, back to the ground. It was an exciting time for a young boy who was interested in space, but too young to remember the Apollo missions. It seemed like we — the human race in general and Americans in particular — were on the verge of Great Things. I used to imagine myself piloting (or at least working aboard) a second-generation space shuttle, commuting between a busy spaceport on Earth and a wheel-shaped station in Earth orbit. I didn’t think this was a mere daydream. I was convinced that it would happen. It seemed inevitable that human beings would one day answer the same siren song that has always compelled us to see what was over the next hill, the same call that caused us to walk out of Africa and go sailing across the uncharted oceans. I used to believe that humans would go to the stars simply because they’re there, and that it would happen in my lifetime.
Time and reality eventually burst my bubble. The year 2001 came and went and we still didn’t have cities on the moon. NASA has revealed itself to be a poorly-run bureaucracy in search of a mission, the aging shuttle fleet is down to a paltry three vessels, and the International Space Station is disappointingly modest in scope. As for President Bush’s recent call to send people to Mars… well, it’s a nice thought, but it’s wildly impractical given our current economy. Besides, it seems to me that most people don’t care about space anymore. They’re too busy worrying about the war in Iraq, the porn on the Internet, the rumors about layoffs at work, and a million other prosaic and mundane details of life in the early 21st Century.
But every once in a while, I hear about something that renews my hope and my faith. On these days, I am reminded that curiosity is still a part of human nature, that there are still adventurers among us, and that there are alternatives to doing things the way they’ve always been done.
Today I read that a privately-built manned spacecraft has successfully flown to an altitude above 200,000 feet — about 41 miles high — and returned safely to Earth. This vehicle, which is called SpaceShipOne, didn’t quite make it into space, but it has the potential to do so, and soon, and all without the help or influence of NASA or any other government agency. Details, including a really cool photo of the ship in flight, can be found here. This article features a different photo as well as a nice graphic detailing what may be the craft’s next flight, a run for the coveted X-prize, which will be awarded to the first non-governmental craft to reach space — defined as an altitude of about 62 miles — twice in as many weeks.
My spirits have really been lagging the last few days, what with all the grim chatter about Abu Ghraib and the killing of Nick Berg (not to mention some closer-to-home issues I’ve been dealing with for months now), but this news has done wonders for me. I feel like I did when I was ten years old, watching the old shuttle Enterprise detach from the back of that 747 and soar away. The current ugliness of our war-torn planet Earth suddenly seems much less permanent, and the essential quality of our species a lot more noble…
