NO COUNTRY FOR OLD SPACEMEN

Dear Readers,

I doubt that many people knew about today's postponed launch of the Ares 1-X rocket, NASA's latest product that was designed to take man to the moon again. In fact, most people today probably think NASA is a new cellphone company, or maybe a new Apple product that somehow escaped being called an I-NASA. Sadly, (I am a long-time fan of real space stuff) apart from the occasional Shuttle explosion, NASA has pretty much disappeared from public view and it's administrators are realizing that it's become a faded hero in search of a role.

Recent U.S. Presidents have tried to revive the coolness of space exploration by dreaming up new things for the federally-funded space agency to do - like technical genius George W. issuing a 'challenge' to fly to Mars - but have never really put the people's money where their rhetoric is, leaving NASA to work up detailed plans for missions that will never get off the ground, so to speak. The failure today (because of the weather) to launch the Ares rocket can't help much, and even if it does go up tomorrow- as now planned- the whole program is doomed to expected budget cuts that have already made it obsolete. In a world awed and increasingly run by palm-sized gadgets, the irony is that the launch of a 370-foot technical marvel attracts less interest than the latest I-Phone App.

The trouble is that, after all the great interstellar science-fiction of the 20th century, real space travel turned out to be, well.., boring. The sight of American Astronauts actually dancing around on a dry, dead and colorless orb like the moon was awesome at first, but quickly faded where it counted most -in the TV ratings. Earth-bound technology's best brains turned to creating special effects for movies, inventing the home computer (all all that flowed from that) and designing a virtual gaming universe that was far more exciting than the dull, real thing.

So all we have left from 'The Space Age' are commercial satellites (and their sinister cousins, ICBM's), an international space station that is a pointless dump, and a lot of space debris circling the earth like a restless junkyard. Oh, and a few hundred pounds of rocks from the moon that have told us the obvious - we're it in this universe. The aging group of 60's -era Astronauts must be bewildered at the neglect of space exploration that will certainly continue for the foreseeable future, but in a sense, it's their fault - their skill and courage proved that space is just not all that interesting - compared to Space Invaders.