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Show Grass Roots America r uf Americans Cannot Afford to -r-S Abandon Space Exploration By Jerry Martin The successful Apollo 17 mission to the moon closes a magnificent chapter in American history, an era in which this country achieved the greatest scientific and engineering feats in all of man's history. It would be a tragic mistake and possible a fatal error for the United Stales to abandon space at the very lime when America has developed a commanding capability in the necessary technology tech-nology to travel to other planets. Yet. because of the short-sighted view of some. America seems destined to repeat the mistakes it made in the past regarding the slrat- . egic and technical importance im-portance of space exploration. Next year, nine astronauts astro-nauts are scheduled to go into earth orbit for up to 56 days at a time in the "Sky-Lab" program. pro-gram. In 1975, the United States and the Soviet Union are scheduled to rendezvous in space, a mission designed toper-feet toper-feet ways of rescuing astronauts and in 197S, the space shuttle is to begin. But the flightof Apollo 17 is said to be the last of its kind, possibly in this century. That is not likely. But there is a serious question whether wheth-er the next man on the moon or some other planet will be an American Ameri-can or a Kussian. It's difficult to believe, just three short years after man first set fool on the moon, that the space program is so far down the list of national nat-ional priorities that many of the most talented talent-ed and skilled members of our space team are leaving the program. Everyone associated with the National Aeronautics Aero-nautics and Space Administration Ad-ministration deserv e the gratitude of the nation, along with a renewed commitment to continue our space program with an adequate budget. It was only 14 years ago that the Sov iet Union amazed the world by orbiting or-biting the first Sputnik. America's prestige suffered suf-fered a damaging blow and the world began to wonder whether the sun might be setting on the United States as the world's foremost leader in technology . The orbiting of Sputnik caused us to give space the priority it deserved. President Kennedy vowed vow-ed that the first man on the moon would be an American. After years of struggle to catch up in space. NASA fulfilled that historic pledge. In the process, America Amer-ica and the world has reaped a harvest of in-calcuable in-calcuable value. The scientific and technical "fallout" of space exploration ex-ploration now permits a totally paralyzed person lo open a window, tune a TV. turn off a light-all light-all by simply blinking an eye. Orbiting satellites h a v e revolutionized communications. permitting per-mitting thousands of international in-ternational t e I e p h a n e calls to be handled efficiently ef-ficiently and launching an era of global television tele-vision contact. Weather satellites are providing valuable data lo warn people of hurricanes and America's "Spy-in-the-Sky" satellites offer a constant monitoring of Sov iet missile and nuclear nuc-lear developments. The military potential of space is just beginning to be realized. For sev eral years, there have been reports that the Soviet Union may be developing dev-eloping an orbital bomb and other devices capable cap-able of destroying U.S. missiles and space craft. That's the real significance sig-nificance of the space race. It used to be said that the nation that controlled con-trolled the seas, controlled con-trolled (he world. In World War II. America's aerial superiority allowed al-lowed us to w in ov er an enemy far heller prepared pre-pared than we were when the conflict started. In the y ears ahead, the fate of the world may well be determined by 1 'he nation that is master in space. America should not repe.it the I'olloy of neg-lecliug neg-lecliug this area of technology. tech-nology. If we do, the de-eline de-eline of America's in-tercsl in-tercsl in outer space may well be followed by (he decline of the United Stales as a major power. |
