David Spates "Therefore I Am" Published Feb. 4, 2003

Astronauts embody
humanity's wants

I'm writing this Saturday afternoon. The space shuttle Columbia flew apart just a few hours ago.

In comparison to the handful of commercial airplanes that crash every year, Columbia's loss of human life is small in number, but that's not why we mourn. That's not why we shake our heads. That's not why we stare with disbelief at the television and wonder to ourselves, "What's next?"

Twenty-one people died on Jan. 8 when a commuter plane crashed on takeoff in North Carolina -- three times as many people as were killed in the Columbia tragedy -- and that was just one of what will be a handful of U.S. airplane crashes this year. No one lowers their flags to half staff for the airplane passengers. The president doesn't hold a press conference after a "routine" airplane crash. Their lives are just as important as those of the astronauts, right? Absolutely, they are.

But this is different. It's a space shuttle, not an airplane. This is humanity's yearning to break free from gravity's confines to explore the universe's vastness. Exploration has always come with a price tag, and this time the cost was seven lives. Astronauts aren't more important than airplane passengers, but astronauts do represent a grand notion. We humans are a curious bunch. We hurl a few of our sons and daughters into space and wait for their return so they can tell us about what they learned. This time, no one returned.

A space-exploration tragedy like this reminds us that astronauts are a want rather than a need. We don't need astronauts. We don't need to explore space. Humanity could live out its days in peace and tranquility without ever floating in zero-G. Space exploration is an option. We choose to do it. We don't need to see what our planet looks like high above the wild blue yonder.

But the wants are what make life worth living. If we humans limited ourselves to our needs and ignored our wants, we'd be miserable.

The needs are very boring -- food, water, shelter. The wants are what get us out of bed in the morning. The wants stir our imagination. The wants demand that we try new things. Without the wants, humanity is stagnant and dull. We don't need to better ourselves, we want to.

That's what space exploration is all about -- bettering ourselves. It's why those seven men and women bravely took humanity another step in the right direction. Their efforts made us better. It's our responsibility to learn from the disaster and ensure it doesn't happen again. In 30 years or so, my son and daughter will be joining your sons and daughters for trips into outer space. They need us to feed humanity's hunger for self-betterment and knowledge. If we don't, we've failed them already.

I've always been a big fan of NASA and the space program. Space exploration is a milestone endeavors in a planet's history. In 5,000 years, much of what we think is terribly important today won't even be a footnote in history. Elections come and go. Scandals are forgotten. Even major wars probably will fog through the lens of time, but I guarantee the Earthlings of 7003 will know the year humanity stepped foot on the moon. It's a big, big deal.

It's no coincidence that the first space shuttle was named Enterprise. Star Trek embodies the ideals and desires of space exploration -- people from the this "blue marble" coming together to forge ahead into the final frontier. "To boldly go where no one has gone before" isn't just a line Gene Roddenberry pecked out in the 1960s. It's why we do what we do. We strive for new experiences, new knowledge and new territories.

I mourn the men and women who died on Columbia, and I applaud their bravery and dedication to humanity's advancement.

I was 15 when Challenger exploded. I saw it happen on live TV. Now, like then, space travel has become so commonplace that it's easy to forget how dangerous it is. Just because there have been more than 100 space shuttle missions doesn't mean they've become routine.

Humanity's growth is anything but routine.

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David Spates is a Knoxville resident and Crossville Chronicle contributor whose column is published each Tuesday. He can be reached at davespates@chartertn.net.