The Stuff of Dreams

Future generations on Earth will mark the second half of the 20th Century as the time when people took their first steps off this planet. Long after the burning political issues of the day have been forgotten, our time will be remembered for the lunar landings, the unmanned expeditions to the planets and the start of the routine use of space. There is only one time in history when humanity could undertake this. Now is that time.

Last week’s tragic loss of the space shuttle Challenger and its seven astronauts has renewed public interest in the space program, which waned through the shuttle’s first four years of success. People want to know what went wrong that caused the shuttle to explode, and they also wonder whether there is a deeper, underlying problem that needs to be fixed.

There is talk of establishing a new national commission to think about goals in space and how to achieve them. There is talk of curtailing the manned missions and beefing up unmanned ones. There is uncertainty about what effect the loss of Challenger will have now and in the future.

This thinking is healthy, but it should be conducted against the realization that, unlike most things that the government does, the space program is special. It draws on some of mankind’s deepest strengths, motivations and talents, and its justification lies not in cost-benefit analysis but in intangible aspirations and dreams.

The issues and questions being raised now are not new. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has long recognized that automated, unmanned spaceships have many assets, but they cannot do everything. “Humans are better than machines when unexpected events occur,” says Georg von Tiesenhausen of NASA, who last year helped produce a study called the Human Role in Space. The report identified 37 tasks that must be performed in space, and concluded that humans are “beneficial” or “essential” for almost all of them. Machines are good for speed and for repeating the same jobs over and over. But they are limited by the fact that they cannot improvise. Artificial intelligence is not about to overcome that.

It is true that since the end of the Apollo program the space agency and the nation have lacked a clear goal. The space shuttle and the projected space station are means to an end, but the end itself is not well defined. It is hard, however, to figure out what that goal should be without running the risk of ignoring other potential goals and benefits. The space agency is assembling and perfecting the building blocks of future activity, but at this early point in the process no one is exactly sure--nor can be--what that activity will be. To ask today what good the shuttle is would be like asking in 1820, when there were no paved roads or gas stations, what a car could be used for.

The nation is right to mourn Challenger, its astronauts and the innocence that went flaming into the sea with them. Going into space is a risky business, and we have been sheltered from the risk for 25 years. But the risk should not overshadow or detract from the grand adventure that began with Yuri Gagarin and Alan B. Shepard Jr. and will continue as long as people look at the night-time sky and wonder.