I’m a bit surprised at the strength of some of the reactions to my Space

Shuttle piece last week. For some people out

there, the Shuttle is not just a gummint program, or a handy way to get into

orbit: it is an object of veneration, and any words said against it are

blasphemous.

One reader faction thought it wicked of me to suggest that the motivations

of the Shuttle astronauts might not be all selfless nobility — might have

something to do with thrills and glamor. For heaven’s sake (these people

say) they died in the service of their country! Think about their bereaved

families!

This is absurd. Even if I allow that dying while working for a government

program is the same thing as dying for one’s country (I want to think about

that), I wasn’t saying that the dead astronauts were bad people. I was

saying that they were human — a thing which includes a susceptibility to

exciting adventures, and some capacity for self-deception. If you have

recently lost someone, and I tell you I think that the lost person was a

pretty normal human being, attracted by thrills and glamor, are you

offended?

[Incidentally, I got a friendly email from an ex-NASA employee saying that

the notion that astronauts are in it at least partly for the excitement, is

a thing often heard from Shuttle engineers and support staff. Would like to

get further corroboration of this.]

Another reader ranted at me for being a coward. Now, I may or may not be a

coward; but I am baffled to know how anyone could decide the matter from

reading that piece. Which sentences, exactly, give away my cowardice? This

one, perhaps: “Even with two young kids who need me, and a wife who (I feel

fairly sure) would miss me, I would still, if given the opportunity to go

into space tomorrow, be on the next flight to Cape Canaveral”?

Most of the abuse, however, was directed at my small-minded, blinkered

failure to see that this — the Shuttle program — is the beginning of a

marvelous spiritual adventure, in the course of which Mankind will free

himself from these clayey origins and populate the universe.

Well, maybe it is and maybe it isn’t. Given the technological obstacles,

though, if we do go out and populate the universe, it will be several

decades before we even have a toe-hold in the nearer parts of the Solar

System, and surely a century or two, at least, before we tackle interstellar

travel. So while I think it would be a very nice thing to go out and

colonize the universe, I don’t feel any sense of urgency about it.

[And if I DID feel a sense of urgency about it, I’d be asking why we

scrapped the Saturn V, which put men on the moon, in favor of the Shuttle,

which can only put men in low earth orbit.]

The Shuttle isn’t a spiritual adventure, it’s a government program, one that

costs $16 billion a year — around $100 per federal taxpayer. There is

nothing wrong with criticizing that, nor in suggesting that the people on

the payroll are motivated not entirely by the loftiest human aspirations,

but also by more ordinary ones.

As for the “benefits” of the Shuttle program: You may place into my hand

one of those NASA booklets listing all those “benefits” only if, at the same

time, you place into my other hand a parallel list, signed by a reputable

economist and notarized, estimating what the cost of each benefit would have

been without a Shuttle — using earthbound resources, or unmanned space

vehicles. (I feel sure that someone must have done this calculation, but

had no luck with Google — anyone know?)