Saving our space program.

• Author: Deutch, Bob
• Position: Science & Technology - Column

BEFORE COMPROMISE budgetary legislation was passed earlier this fall, Pres. Barack Obama had called for grounding NASA's space program that would have taken astronauts back to the moon and beyond. In seeking cheaper, faster ways of keeping the U.S. in an exploratory orbit, budgetary issues should not be the only consideration. The country needs a robust space program if we are to realize fully our psychic potential as explorer and player in an ever-expanding frontier.

Our nation finds itself on a treadmill, moving in a simple, two-dimensional motion, burning calories but not exactly sure where it is going. What is required for our national health is a balanced complexity of motion (and its attendant experience) that allows one to feel simultaneously "here" at the center and "out there" at the boundaries. Now, more than ever, in the midst of an economic downturn, and facing a future felt to be receding, Americans need to exist on two planes: the mundane and the mythic.

Our Founding Fathers established the U.S. as an idea, not an ideal. The idea was of liberty and creativity combined, never to be constrained by the status quo. The vision of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and their band of brothers was rooted in the pragmatics of daily life and cast beyond the pale, into the boundless frontier.

The early 21st century certainly is a different time than the late 18th but, underneath the momentary talk, Americans maintain a deep appreciation and need for what this country represents. For instance, in the mid 1990s, I was talking to citizens concerning the proposed luxury car tariff against Japanese automakers, a hot topic at the time. In one discussion, a young woman, a native of Detroit, said, "For a couple of generations, members of my family have worked here in the American auto industry. I'm scared about the Japanese competition, but I think tariffs are a bad idea." I asked her why. Upon hearing her response, the earth seemed to shake under the feet of the 11 people in that room, including me. She uttered just three short, but profound, sentences: "America is a good idea. The idea is freedom. Tariffs are a bad ideal' The U.S.'s intrinsic nature is to be open and exploratory. That particularly is a good idea now. Curtailing the space program is a bad idea.

The thinking of this one woman reflects the essence of the relationship that liberty has to creativity--breaking out of routine and expected patterns and going...