Final Endeavor Mission Slated For Friday Liftoff

The space shuttle program is winding down as another shuttle, Endeavor, is scheduled for its final launch this Friday. There is so little popular interest in our space program anymore that it probably would have been largely ignored by the media were it not for the human interest angle with astronaut Mark Kelly being on of the crew. Kelly is the husband of recently-shot U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who apparently will be able to watch the launch.

It is a shame that so many care little or nothing about space exploration. To me, it represents the future of science and carries enormous significance for our ability to maintain our fragile Earth's ability to sustain life. But public apathy has instead allowed NASA, the federal agency charged with the responsibility of setting our goals and implementing them, to escape the needed scrutiny it needs to avoid slipping into a weighted-down bureaucracy instead of a dynamic, tightly managed organization with clear and ambitious missions.

When our last president presented his plan to go back to the moon and set up a permanent base there, the press reacted to it as if it were just a lame, fill-in news story. Soon after Bush laid out his vision, the story quickly died.

Space travel has little political traction with the ideological polarization currently intensifying in our country. The political right sees anything to do with the government as being inherently evil (unless it involves increasing discrimination against minorities and the poor, depriving women of reproductive freedom, promoting one particular religious worldview over others, or funding the military to ridiculous levels). The political left, on the other hand, seems to delight in negatively comparing public spending on space exploration to entitlement programs that it would like to see strengthened (the old "we can send a man to the moon but we won't help the poor" argument).

Hopefully, private industry will step in and help to revitalize space exploration. But don't expect a lot of media coverage on this. After all, the commercial news media of today is more interested in anticipating public interest for its stories, not creating it. Too bad.