Space exploration has enticed generations of children into pursuing a career in aeronautics. But is the space program really worth the money spent on it?
I have been fascinated with space exploration since I was a young child; walking on the moon, orbiting the Earth, sending out robot probes to Mars, and various other planets, all that good stuff. I think that is why Science Fiction is so fascinating, especially the scenes with space ships and big, laser-beam space battles. I have recently been re-reading my paperback copy of "Apollo 13", and finding myself getting involved with the terrible problems faced by those brave astronauts, makes me wonder why I ever wanted to be one myself. It also makes me wonder why we do it in the first place. After all, in over forty years of space exploration, we have not yet gone past our own moon in manned flight.
Is it worth it, spending billions of dollars every year to build space shuttles, space equipment, train astronauts, and conduct weird experiments in Earth orbit, when that's pretty much as far as we get: Earth orbit? I don't think so. Since 1992, my prevailing thought is that God did not put us out there in space and I really don't think He actually wants us going out there in the first place. It is just like the Biblical Tower of Babel, those people were punished by God because they were building a tower to Heaven, and were getting just a little too big for their britches. We do the same thing when we build "spaceships" and then think we know everything there is to know about space flight. We are basically building ships to fly us up to Heaven.
Before Apollo 1 ever even left the ground, it proved us wrong, by killing three astronauts through asphyxiation, while a fire raged out of control in their pod when nobody could get through the door to assist them. Then, during Apollo 13, three men were almost killed through nearly the same process, halfway to the moon. They survived, but the American Space program was profoundly rocked. In 1986, the Challenger shuttle exploded 73 minutes after it left the ground, killing all aboard, including a civilian school teacher. In 2003, another shuttle, this one named Columbia, exploded on re-entry, killing all aboard. Besides all that, virtually every mission ever flown has had some sort of serious or potentially serious problem.
Why did all these tragedies and near tragedies happen? Many reasons, including shabby construction of the rockets and shuttles, plus rushing to meet impractical time lines. Back in the 1960's, it was decided early in the decade that we were going to put a man on the moon before 1970. Well, we did it, but we used shabbily constructed and dangerous rockets and crafts to do it. There were more malfunctions than there were triumphs, but at least they met that artificial deadline and put a man on the moon. That man was blessed by God to be able to come back to Earth where he belongs, because it certainly wasn't the technology that he could trust to get him there and back in one piece.
Another reason why I believe all those problems in space flight occur, is because our science is shoddy as well as our technology. The first mission to land on the moon was surprised to discover that the moon does not have three or four feet of loose dust on its surface, as had previously been suspected. The first lander, with its ridiculously huge, round "feet" tells that tale. For Pete's sake, just a couple decades before, many people still believed the moon was made of green cheese. Science has declared that the sun is made of this and that and those, and Venus is made of this and that and those, and yet, back here on Earth, scientists cannot even determine what is at the core of our own planet.
That is shoddy science, and it has been the prevailing form of science for the past several decades. Getting the job done before Russia could used to be the science we lived by, no matter how many lives were on the line. Now, we share missions with Russia, but we still take ridiculous chances with human life. When the shuttle Challenger exploded it had already run twenty-five missions into space, talk about an old ship. No wonder it blew up, old vehicles do wear out you know, especially ones that repeatedly go in and out of space where there are extremes of hot and cold, and re-entry practically fries the ship in the first place.
A similar problem occurred where space shuttle Columbia was concerned. That ship was the very first space shuttle to fly, having been built in 1979, and first flown in 1981. During its final flight, parts of the heat shield had ripped from its hull during take off, and that left the ship partly unprotected during the extremely hot re-entry. Shoddy construction, aged equipment and bad science can be blamed once again.
