Everyone with an interest in promoting the space program should read this article in The Hill by Jim Mills. In it, Mr. Mills describes the lack of awareness of the space program by both our national leadershipand the public at large.
Though he describes himself as a "lifelong, card-carrying space buff," Mr. Mills admits that he was entirely unaware of the launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery until he read about it in the newspaper the next day. From this "confessional," he goes on to describe a space program that no longer seems to capture the imagination of the American people, much less the national leadership. Assuredly, there is nowhere near the level of public attention as there was four decades ago, at the height of the Apollo Program.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves. So Shakespeare has Cassius say to his partner in assassination. Those of us who wish for a strong American space program and who dream of creating a space-faring civilization would do well to look inward and ask ourselves what we could be doing differently in order to bring the magic and grandeur of the exploration of space back into the hearts of the American people. Clearly, what we have been doing for the past few decades has not been working very well.
In addition to its political activism, the Committee for the Advocacy of Space Exploration is working hard to ensure proper media coverage of the extraordinary events taking place in the field of space exploration. But it is also up to every individual who cares about space exploration to do what they can to spread the word. Unless and until the space program again captures the heart of the American people, all of our dreams will remain just that- dreams.
