1992 Designated as Year to Celebrate Final Frontier

“Space, the final frontier . . . .”

When William Shatner, as “Star Trek’s” Capt. James T. Kirk, first uttered those words in 1966, thousands tuned in to watch space launches. A TV audience estimated at more than half a billion watched the Apollo 11 launch that put the first person on the moon on July 20, 1969. Press coverage of the space program was ubiquitous.

Space travel was seen as a perilous adventure. The deaths of Virgil (Gus) Grissom, Edward H. White and Roger B. Chaffee in a launch pad fire in the Apollo I capsule on Jan. 27, 1967 only underscored the danger.

By 1986, however, space travel had become so routine that only an estimated 500 reporters were on hand for the ill-fated launch on Jan. 28 of the space shuttle Challenger in which all seven crew members were killed.

When the shuttle program resumed in September, 1988, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration reportedly received more than 5,000 requests for press credentials.

Interest in space exploration is still high. In a Gallup Poll last May, 61% agreed that the space shuttle “has been a worthwhile and important program.”

This year--coinciding with Columbus’ Quincentennial, the 35th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik and the 35th anniversary of the first International Geophysical Year--is also the first International Space Year (ISY).

All this makes 1992 a particularly appropriate time for the first ISY, which was proposed in 1985 as a yearlong observance of international cooperation, space technology, exploration and discovery.

Keep this frequency open.