There is a line from scripture, proverb 29:18-19 KJV, that deserves reflection when considering the awful state of our politics, public discourse and national condition:
Where there is no vision, the people perish: But he that keepeth the law, happy is he. A servant will not be corrected by words: For though he understand he will not answer.
There is a great crisis of hopelessness amongst young Americans who have lost faith in what can be achieved through American politics. This manifests itself in myriad ways, but among the most acute is the lack of appreciation for liberty, freedom and democracy. These words have become hollow for them, and recent poll findings make this evident:
According to a The Economist/YouGov poll conducted between December 16-18, only 54 percent of U.S. adults ages 18-29 agree with the statement, “Democracy is the greatest form of government.” Twenty-one percent agree strongly and 34 percent agree somewhat with this statement. Another 34 percent say they neither agree nor disagree, and 12 percent say they disagree.
Younger voters also may be less likely to vote in 2024, despite their previous voting behavior, according to a Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics study. Of those aged 18-29 who said they voted in the 2020 election, only 49 percent said they “definitely” will be voting in the next presidential election; 17 percent said they will “probably” vote in the 2024 election.
The result has been a loss of faith in the future, and with it, a loss of interest in the present. Apathy, anger and fear flourish where there is no hope, aspirations or dreams.
Yesterday, I visited the Kennedy Space Center again. It is a reminder of what can be achieved by a nation with purpose and vision.
It is the place from which mankind leaves the Earth to explore space, and it is the fulfillment of the vision of the 35th president of the United States, who gave a speech about the subject at Rice University in Texas on September 12, 1962:
John Kennedy’s summons towards national greatness, exploration, challenge and purpose ranks as the greatest exhortation towards achieving an impossibly improbable goal ever given by an American president. Even more incredibly is that every word of the speech came to pass. Mostly, the address is remembered for its crescendo and call to arms:
We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
Perhaps no phrasing could more perfectly capture the pioneering spirit of the American people than that one. It is a call towards the greatest adventure in human history, while simultaneously being a statement of national character and the human spirit.
There is a lack of storytelling and listening in our vandalized public discourse that is shocking when considered against the clarity of this presidential address. Consider this explanation of human history and progress laid out against the challenge to explore the next frontier:
Despite the striking fact that most of the scientists that the world has ever known are alive and working today, despite the fact that this nation’s own scientific manpower is doubling every 12 years in a rate of growth more than three times that of our population as a whole, despite that, the vast stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished still far outstrip our collective comprehension.
No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of man’s recorded history in a time span of but a half-century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only five years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than two years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than two months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power.
Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America’s new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight.
This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers. Surely the opening vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward.
So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait. But this city of Houston, this State of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward — and so will space.
William Bradford, speaking in 1630 of the founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony, said that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage.
If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in the race for space.
Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolutions, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it — we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding.
Yet the vows of this nation can only be fulfilled if we in this nation are first, and, therefore, we intend to be first. In short, our leadership in science and in industry, our hopes for peace and security, our obligations to ourselves as well as others, all require us to make this effort, to solve these mysteries, to solve them for the good of all men, and to become the world’s leading space-faring nation.
There is a great wisdom contained within Kennedy’s address that can be perfectly applied to the advent of the age of artificial intelligence and the moral infants of Silicon Valley designing the technology. It is not up to them to decide how their inventions will be used. As Kennedy says, it is up to us:
For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say the we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.
President Kennedy does something in the speech that is rarely heard in American politics today. He lays out a substantive argument aimed at rallying and convincing all Americans about shared possibilities. He makes the case for his vision:
It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the office of the presidency.
In the last 24 hours, we have seen facilities now being created for the greatest and most complex exploration in man’s history. We have felt the ground shake and the air shattered by the testing of a Saturn C-1 booster rocket, many times as powerful as the Atlas which launched John Glenn, generating power equivalent to 10,000 automobiles with their accelerators on the floor. We have seen the site where five F-1 rocket engines, each one as powerful as all eight engines of the Saturn combined, will be clustered together to make the advanced Saturn missile, assembled in a new building to be built at Cape Canaveral as tall as a 48-story structure, as wide as a city block, and as long as two lengths of this field.
Within these last 19 months at least 45 satellites have circled the earth. Some 40 of them were “made in the United States of America,” and they were far more sophisticated and supplied far more knowledge to the people of the world than those of the Soviet Union.
The Mariner spacecraft now on its way to Venus is the most intricate instrument in the history of space science. The accuracy of that shot is comparable to firing a missile from Cape Canaveral and dropping it in this stadium between the 40-yard lines.
Transit satellites are helping our ships at sea to steer a safer course. Tiros satellites have given us unprecedented warnings of hurricanes and storms, and will do the same for forest fires and icebergs.
We have had our failures, but so have others, even if they do not admit them. And they may be less public.
To be sure, we are behind, and will be behind for some time in manned flight. But we do not intend to stay behind, and in this decade, we shall make up and move ahead.
The growth of our science and education will be enriched by new knowledge of our universe and environment, by new techniques of learning and mapping and observation, by new tools and computers for industry, medicine, the home as well as the school. Technical institutions, such as Rice, will reap the harvest of these gains.
Today, there are more than 7,000 satellites in Earth orbit, which connect all of the Earth together. Everything that John Kennedy talked about happened. He was right.
Consider this extraordinary paragraph about national priorities, challenges, opportunities and cost. Imagine the reaction today to an American president saying the following:
And finally, the space effort itself, while still in its infancy, has already created a great number of new companies, and tens of thousands of new jobs. Space and related industries are generating new demands in investment and skilled personnel, and this city and this state, and this region, will share greatly in this growth. What was once the furthest outpost on the old frontier of the West will be the furthest outpost on the new frontier of science and space. Houston, your city of Houston, with its Manned Spacecraft Center, will become the heart of a large scientific and engineering community. During the next five years the National Aeronautics and Space Administration expects to double the number of scientists and engineers in this area, to increase its outlays for salaries and expenses to $60 million a year; to invest some $200 million in plant and laboratory facilities; and to direct or contract for new space efforts over $1 billion from this center in this city.
To be sure, all of this costs us all a good deal of money. This year’s space budget is three times what it was in January 1961, and it is greater than the space budget of the previous eight years combined. That budget now stands at $5,400,000 a year — a staggering sum, though somewhat less than we pay for cigarettes and cigars every year. Space expenditures will soon rise some more, from 40 cents per person per week to more than 50 cents a week for every man, woman and child in the United States, for we have given this program a high national priority — even though I realize that this is in some measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not now know what benefits await us.
But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to Earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun — almost as hot as it is here today — and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out — then we must be bold.
The final words of the speech are declarative. The president lays out the impossible, and asserts that it will happen:
However, I think we’re going to do it, and I think that we must pay what needs to be paid. I don’t think we ought to waste any money, but I think we ought to do the job. And this will be done in the decade of the sixties. It may be done while some of you are still here at school at this college and university. It will be done during the term of office of some of the people who sit here on this platform. But it will be done. And it will be done before the end of this decade.
I am delighted that this university is playing a part in putting a man on the moon as part of a great national effort of the United States of America.
Many years ago, the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it? He said, “Because it is there.”
Well, space is there, and we’re going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God’s blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.
John Kennedy did not live to see his vision fulfilled, but billions of human beings watched this moment that his dream created. It was brought to life by more than 400,000 Americans in every state of every race and creed who made it happen. It was an achievement fueled by American genius, ingenuity, determination, daring and courage.
More than 60 years have passed since that time, and soon America will return to the moon and beyond.
Consider this:
Before 1946 there had never been a photograph of the Earth. What it looked like was a function of imagination. Here is the first image ever taken from space:
It comes from a captured V-2 rocket fired from White Sands, New Mexico.
Twenty-two years later the most famous photograph in human history was taken on Christmas Eve of 1968 by Bill Anders aboard Apollo 8 as the space craft rounded the moon. It is called EARTHRISE:
Think about the proximity of 1968 to today and consider the immense privilege it is to be alive in this age of “miracle and wonder.” No human beings had ever seen what our beautiful planet looked like before these photos.
Fifty-four years have passed since that stunning photo — before the release of this image from NASA’s Webb telescope:
What you are looking at is the beginning of time. Someday, our descendants will reach those stars.
Think about those three photographs spanning over 77 years against the 4 billion of Earth’s existence. Look at humanity’s expanding perspective over those 77 years as the lens has broadened and the aperture of knowledge has expanded. The grainy images of a slice of cloud-covered Earth in 1946 have given way to the sublime and existential.
These images are incontrovertible evidence of the possibilities of presidential leadership, vision, national purpose and wisdom. Reaching the stars, like repairing America, will take imagination, daring and time. It is worthy work.
I can tell you the problem , and you already know it Steve -
How can one party be so committed to foisting the Orange Menace to the pinnacle of their party? There obsession is beyond Jonestown and the Heavensgate cultism. And for what? The Fat Man is such a bumbling moron who fancies himself the greatest. All I see is a laughingstock - and to all of those that follow this tool, a level of ignorance unmatched since 1939
Next to climate change the biggest problem in the US is extreme economic inequality. The young people have lost hope because of that more than anything else. We need to get serious about real solutions to that problem.