Space Exploration

If we are to continue our march toward the technological future of the human race, the answer must be a resounding "yes" - the space shuttle program should continue and manned space flight is worth the cost and risks. The shuttle might not be the best or most efficient possible design for operations in space; however, it's the only game in town. We have no choice but to continue to use the shuttle if we plan to participate in the rigors and rewards of space. Since the first human yearned to find out what was on the other side of the hill across the valley or yearned to fly, we have been on a journey of discovery.

A showcase for inventors set in Columbia The Howard County Economic Development Authority will sponsor an Innovation Showcase for Inventors from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. May 6 at the Center for Business and Technology Development, 9250 Bendix Road North, in Columbia. Inventors are invited to display their inventions for review by the business community. Ronald L. Docie, founder of Docie Marketing and author of The Inventor's Bible: How To Market and License Your Brilliant Ideas, will speak at 9 a.m. Information: Nancy Gebhart, 410-480-7362 or 410-313-6550.

The photo of a space shuttle launch filled the screen, its powerful exhaust ricocheting from the ground in a billowing cloud of smoke and vapor. Tons of metal lifted skyward. Although the scene looked familiar, one item in the photo was clearly different. The external fuel tank, the blimp-like bulk to which orbiter and boosters clung, was not its usual rusty-orange color. "For the first two launches, they painted the tank white," explained instructor Daniel Bateman. "You're looking at STS-1, the initial flight of the first space shuttle, Columbia."

WHEN THE SEVEN astronauts stepped aboard the space shuttle Columbia, they saw themselves - or at least America saw them - as carrying on a tradition that began when the first human walked out of Africa looking for new lands, that continued when Christopher Columbus set sail across the Atlantic, when Roald Amundsen urged his dogs across Antarctica. It is the tradition of exploration that, whether or not it is a fundamental human impulse or a choice of certain cultures, is certainly a part of the American experience.

The American media do two things extremely well: They cover things that go boom -- wars of the kind now looming in Iraq and tragedies of the sort that overtook the space shuttle Columbia's seven astronauts. They also chronicle consumerism -- who's accumulating what, in what quantities and at what cost. Beyond that, things get spotty, and particularly so when the subject at hand involves ideas, processes, technical subjects, things that require an adult attention span. Nowadays, the National Aero-nautics and Space Administra-tion and its manned space program are on the spotty part of the media spectrum.

NASA robots chase tumbling asteroids and speeding comets. They take snapshots on Mars and soar out of the solar system as ambassadors to the stars. They monitor the health of Earth and probe the deepest mysteries of the universe. All without risking a life. So the death of seven astronauts on the shuttle Columbia a week ago has renewed an old debate about the value and purpose of sending humans into the hostile environs of space. Critics say that the costs are hideously high - 14 lives lost in two shuttle accidents since 1981, a rate of one death for every eight flights.

WASHINGTON - It's hard to imagine an America that has stopped putting humans into space, but let's try. The Columbia tragedy serves to remind even the biggest boosters of space travel, as I have been in the past, of how much the space shuttle program is a relic of Cold War politics and technology. Most of the national debate that the Columbia disaster has ignited in the media and among politicians has been polarized between two alternatives: scrap manned missions or continue the space shuttle and international space station programs, once NASA fixes whatever went wrong this time.

BOSTON - Should I confess that I didn't even know they were up there? When Columbia ripped the clear blue sky with a trail of horrific beauty, I didn't know for a moment whether it was a launch or a landing that had gone so terribly awry. This was the shuttle program's 113th voyage into space. Count to 113 in baby steps - and space exploration is still in that toddler state - and get barely halfway down my block. But the shuttle had already become routine, a word we use to tempt the gods.

ARLINGTON, Va. - Jack Lousma, the commander of the third Columbia shuttle flight in March 1982, was shoveling snow outside his home in Ann Arbor, Mich., when his son called from Texas to say, "Turn on the TV, something has happened to Columbia." Mr. Lousma, who was also a crew member on one of the Skylab missions in the 1970s, is a retired Marine pilot who seems unflappable in person and on the phone. He says he thinks the age of the aircraft "had nothing to do with what happened. It has had only about 30 flights and is designed to be able to fly 100 missions.