But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why 35 years ago fly the Atlantic? … We choose to go to the moon (thunderous applause) in this decade … because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills. … .

- President John F. Kennedy, address to Rice University, 1962.

It is difficult to find the silver lining in the tragic events of the morning of Feb. 1. And yet, it would be even more difficult not to.

The news that the shuttle Columbia had burned up on re-entry came as a shock, for the simple reason that trips into space seem almost routine these days. The last accident of consequence took place almost 20 years ago and nearly killed the shuttle program and a space program that fewer and fewer Americans were paying much attention to even then.

NASA’s budget hasn’t received the enthusiastic support in recent years needed to fund true space exploration. The men and women who boarded the Columbia last month were trusting their lives to a contraption built in 1979 – built by the lowest bidder, to boot.

However, the loss of Columbia has put these things back into perspective – for a time. The true American spirit can be found among men and women such as those who gave up their lives on Columbia.

Before we let the memory of what happened on Feb. 1 fade, it is time to renew the debate on the importance of reaching for the stars. Some will say we ought to abandon the manned space program as too costly and too dangerous. Others will argue that we would be better advised to devote ourselves to solving problems down here.

We should, of course, worry about the safety of our astronauts. But we must remember – as they do – that achieving great goals often involves great risk.

Sending gadgets and robots off into space is fine. But it was a human footprint on the moon that captured the world’s imagination not so many years ago. One can only imagine the response of Presidents Kennedy or Ronald Reagan or Teddy Roosevelt to those voices of timidity and doom.

The American spirit has always been a wonderful combination of a “can-do” mingled with “aw-shucks, anybody could have done it.” If one listens to the words of JFK, Reagan, Roosevelt or President George Bush on Feb. 1, one is struck by the fact that these men are not in love with the use of personal pronouns. “We,” comes more easily to them than “I.” These men, like our country, have always played the politics of addition, not subtraction.

“I’m just tickled to death that this thing is being done by squares, you know, average Americans, and not by these pretentious intellectuals. Because this is the great genius of the average American. They take something momentous … and make an unmomentous thing out of it.”

- Longshoreman/philosopher Eric Hoffer, on NASA’s Apollo program, 1969.

Reaching for the stars has paid dividends back here on Earth. But did we really achieve JFK’s goal of landing a man on the moon before the end of the 1960s to discover Velcro, Tang or dozens of other consumer products that have made life more comfortable? Really now.

Let us renew our faith in the timeless values of heroism, self-sacrifice and love of our countrymen. It’s fine to study our planet, build space stations and launch satellites that make it possible to watch more football on television. But the spirit of exploration has more to do with how a nation thinks of itself than what it produces. Let us reach out further to the asteroids – yes, even to Mars and beyond. And let us set a deadline, like JFK’s.

Reagan once said America is an empire of ideals. Our ideals are now the accepted and proven standard the world over for maximum freedom consistent with law and order. We should not shrink from the challenge of taking these ideas into space, to be embodied in a city on the moon named Grissom or Resnick or Anderson.

When I was a boy, an American might sound like they were from Boston, like JFK, or the Midwest, like Reagan, or New York, like Roosevelt, or Texas, like Bush – all speaking plain American. Now an American might have a lovely Indian lilt, or the precise English of a man from Somalia, or a warm accent suggesting Mexico or the Ukraine or Palestine or Israel or China. But they, too, are speaking plain American. It is our unity of ideals, not our diversity of cultures, that makes America great.

If we turn our backs on space now, it would be as if we gave up a child just because he or she was difficult or recalcitrant or disobedient. Reaching into space is an investment – maybe the best investment of all – in the American spirit.

Syracuse native Craig Shirley is president of a public relations firm in Washington, D.C., and a director of the American Conservative Union.

LOAD-DATE: February 20, 2003

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: PHOTO; The Associated Press; SPACE SHUTTLE COLUMBIA lifts off from the Kennedy Space Center April 12, 1981 – to astronauts aboard, a thing of beauty with a personality all its own. Color

TYPE: COLUMN

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