"When I first looked back at the Earth, standing on the Moon, I cried.” The words of Apollo 14 astronaut Ala Shepard on his time on the lunar surface 44 years ago.
Precious moments like these, as Plato commented, compels the soul to look up and lead us from this world to another.
One such administration has allowed us to procure a morsel of this majesty as well as the greatest acts of discovery, innovation and inspiration that the human race has ever undertaken.
This something is a force of nature like none other.
That force of nature is NASA. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration. 1961. NASA's first manned space mission, Mercury-Redstone 3, blasted out of the earth's atmosphere leaving its petty squabbles trailing in its wake and broadening our horizons like never before, as one expects when contemplating celestial matters.
The dreams of a nation and the Western world were being realised.
Rewind a few years or so before and it was Russia, in the midst of the tenebrous Cold War, who had launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, into space in 1957.
The surprise success of Sputnik 1 - unbeknown to the US, was an intercontinental ballistic missile casing WITHOUT explosives - precipitated bedlam and consternation in the West.
NASA was founded by President Eisenhower the following year on the FEAR FACTOR that their great Soviet rivals would control the skies and beyond - and so the Space Race began.
Despite the catastrophic Vietnam War, haemorrhaging money, campus unrest and the struggle of the civil-rights movement, in the world of science, a revolution was brewing. A cultural shift towards embracing science and the world of tomorrow, not just in a technological sense but also ecologically. A flurry of engineers, mathematicians, technologists, geologists and of course scientists bandied together to inspire the human race to leave earth, with destinations in mind.
An economic boom that was instigated by a cultural mindset of the future came from phenomenons such as the home, city, transportation and food of tomorrow enabled the US to reap the benefits of economic growth.
When the human race permits itself to dig deeper and broaden its horizons, those goals and dreams can pervade the ambitions of us all.
Take the consciousness to save the planet. This was brought upon us as a direct result of this public awakening towards science at the turn of the 1970's.
1) The Clean Air Act (2) Doctors without borders org. (3) Environmental Protection Agency (4) Clean Water Act (5) Earth day - to name but a few. Back then governments provided that funding -without question as they had seen the huge, tangible benefits the space program had provided.
Prosperity reigned supreme.
Like many things however, what caused the greatest exploration of human kind was instigated by war. Once Russia had lost the space race the US effort faded away like the abyss of a black hole.
The dreams of exploration to Mars by the 1980's; died.
Today, the mindset is quite different. The seeds of inspiration are dying. Corporations promulgating rampant capitalism and phoney governments propagating the ways of the establishment under the rubric of aiding and abetting the masses.
"We can't afford it" - is the common cry when talk of space travel is mentioned.
*Cough* NASA budget equates to half a penny on a tax dollar *Cough*. Excuse me.
The bankers who almost solely caused the latest recession were given a $850b bailout; far greater than the entire 50+ running budget of NASA. That equates to two years of their asinine military spending; coincidentally lining the pockets of the military industrial complex, a crucial donor for so many corrupt politicians and lobbyists.
The fact is, for every dollar the US spends on NASA, their economy receives eight-ten times that in return - and they have invested billions across the country.
The Mars Rover landing, a $2.5b investment, was spent on Earth and not Mars - supporting more than 7,000 jobs in 31 states.
Outside of the US, the UK space sector has contributed over £9b to the economy and directly employs nearly 30,000 people - with future projects in rocket engines potentially creating 21,000 jobs. In the last decade there has been an average growth rate of 7.5% in the sector and secures a return of £6 for every £1.
This remarkable return is achieved with a paltry 44 UK Space Agency staff in 2011 - primarily based in Swindon - which is a fraction of the workers their French (2,400) and German (1,230) counterparts possess.
NASA has billions, UKSA has millions....
The Canadian, Russian and European space programs have undergone budget cuts and chronic underfunding, preventing them from funding probes and replacing ageing satellites.
The return on these investments are plain to see but unbeknownst to popular beliefs, a myriad of inventions from the space program are used daily by us all. Here's just ten of many more:1) CAT Scanners - Now a cancer detecting technology, for NASA it started out as a way to find irregularities in space components (2) Insulation - protected space crafts from radiation (3) Cordless tools - drilling for moon samples (4) Long distance telecommunications - satellite communications (5) Memory foam - Aircraft seats and helmets to soften landings
(6) Solar energy (7) Shoe insoles (8) Smoke detectors (9) Workout machines - prevent muscle atrophy in zero gravity. (10) Water filter.
I really could go on.
Less than 1% of the US budget is designated for their space program and even less for those outside of the US. That tiny percent however contributes all of this. Imagine how much more could be accomplished with another percent and another, and another still. Deficits are in the stratosphere, is this an answer?
Space colonies? More crucial inventions? Alternative energy sources? Travelling to Titan's frozen, methane seas searching for life? Discovering the untold wonders of the cosmos? Perhaps see the omnipotent creator jamming with his fellow cohorts flitting in and out of a black hole in alternate universes? Why not?!
"The contemplation of celestial things will make a man both speak and think more sublimely and magnificently when he descends to human affairs" — Marcus Tullius Cicero, c. 30 BC
Progress is being made and the mindset is changing, but slowly. There is such a long way to go to get close to the golden years of half a century ago or so.
However the scientifically literate numbers are growing with many indebted to the work of Neil deGrasse Tyson, Laurence Krauss, Bill Nye, Brian Cox among others for providing that platform as indefatigable raconteurs to this cause that releases a frisson of excitement in so many
It's important and also mesmerising to realise that the atoms that created life on earth and the wonder of the infinite universe itself, all the planets, asteroids, black holes, nebulas, stars etc - that majesty, that magnificence and that which is awe inspiring..... is also in us!
As Carl Sagan put it: "We are star-stuff". 