On this day five years ago, John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, returned to travel the stars aboard the space shuttle Discovery. His 1962 adventure into space advanced science and engaged the imagination of a nation eager to explore. His return in 1998, however, failed to impress an American public bored by decades of the shuttle routine.
This year the National Aeronautics and Space Administration continues to meander down a three-decade long program of business as usual. The White House, promising an extra $130 million, seeks to ensure that the space shuttle will continue to fly and fly safer, but that NASA will not commit men to exploring the stars anytime in the near future.
In John Kennedy's first year as president, NASA's budget doubled. It would double again and again during the second and third year of his administration. By 1969, NASA was receiving the largest portion of the federal budget in its history. With an explorer's vision, Kennedy challenged the nation to land a man on the moon, and ensured that the resources of the nation were committed to seeing it through.
But how would visionary leadership look today? If the money currently being spent to wage war in the Middle East were to be used instead to further space exploration, we would not double NASA's budget; we would multiply it 10 times over. The outlay for war would support 10 International Space Stations, 40 shuttle flights a year and hundreds upon hundreds of rocket launches. The knowledge gleaned from just these traditional programs would push space science forward a hundred years in the first decade. We would engage upon bold new initiatives, possibly even sending manned spacecraft to Mars. These dreams are not hindered by technology, or the limits of science. These are dreams waiting for political leadership.
The answers to our problems here on Earth will be solved only by challenging ourselves on every front of human progress. Space will challenge the human character in particular. For no space traveler, upon returning to Earth, cares on which continent his craft lands-just that it does. The unity of the human race is bound in this last of unexplored frontiers.
In 1962, after becoming the second man to orbit the Earth, John Glenn remarked poetically, \I don't know what you could say about a day in which you have seen four beautiful sunsets."" Our generation must rekindle this same poetry and imagination for outer space. Our heritage as explorers now waits on bold leadership. And the nation will one day look to our generation to discover the bright dawn that has yet to follow John Glenn's sunset flight.
