The case for space
Skepticism falls away in wake of shuttle's launch

By Greg Dobbs
July 30, 2005

CAPE CANAVERAL - Despite the problem that developed with detached foam insulation tiles, you'd have to be brain-dead not to have been impressed, let alone captivated, with Tuesday morning's blindingly beautiful blastoff of Space Shuttle Discovery. And you'd have to be inhumanly cynical not to appreciate the human ingenuity that figured out how to propel it, and guide it, to the orbiting International Space Station, its cosmic target. It makes you proud to be an American.

But plenty of Americans - smart, informed Americans who are passionate about exploration - are less than entirely inspired by Discovery. Not just because its 1970s technology seems outdated, which might help explain the trouble with the tiles, but because its mission seems outdated. Robert Zubrin, president of the Colorado-based Mars Society, recently told PBS, "Flying 'round and 'round in shuttles, watching ants function in zero gravity . . . is not worth sending humans into space."

Or so it seems. We don't get any sense of exploration anymore; there isn't even much to make us say, "Gee whiz!" Discovery launched exactly 36 years and six days after the first men landed on the moon, yet the awe Americans felt when Neil Armstrong said, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," has been replaced by . . . well, by ants functioning in zero gravity. You know Armstrong. But can you name a single shuttle astronaut today?

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