if I may be so immodest, here is a newspaper column I wrote some years ago about this:
http://www.cumberlink.com/articles/2003/10/23/editorial/rich_lewis/lewis01.txtChina's in space, we're indifferent
By Rich Lewis, October 23, 2003
The doctor says I am not completely recovered, although I am breathing on my own again, and should be able to walk by the time spring training opens.
And I am assured that my recovery, and that of all Red Sox fans, could go much faster if the Yankees lose the World Series.
Still, as I lie wrecked, my thoughts have been turning toward other worlds altogether.
As you probably heard, the Chinese put a man into orbit last week.
This is an odd situation. The Soviet Union did it first, sending up Yuri Gagarin in 1961. We did it a year later with John Glenn.
Seven years after that, in 1969, we put a man on the moon and went back a few times, the last time in 1972.
Since then, we've had space stations and shuttles but nothing else involving machines with people inside.
The Soviet Union, of course, simply fell apart. Russia can barely keep the trains running anymore, let alone exotic spacecraft.
In the United States... well, we simply lost interest.
So now here come the Chinese 40 years later reinventing the wheel... or, in this case, the capsule. Col. Yang Liwei's visit to space was so Sixties as to be almost quaint. They shot him up in a can; he zipped around for a few hours, marveling at the view; he came home a hero.
For Americans, it was a long look back and an indifferent "been there, done that."
But for the Chinese, it was a thrilling leap forward, a gigantic triumph.
And I envy them that feeling. Those of you who were around at the time can remember very well the tumultuous celebration and congratulation that accompanied both Glenn's orbit and the moon landing. Glenn became a national hero the likes of which we really haven't seen since. Neil Armstrong's botched line ("that's one small step...") became, in its corrected version, a mythic American slogan, right up there alongside "give me liberty" and "ask not."
The space program has yielded little but disappointment and tragedy since those days. Americans generally don't think very highly of space exploration anymore, if they think of it at all.
But that's our problem - a sign perhaps of a tiring national spirit. To other nations that have never tasted the economic or technical glories to which we have grown accustomed, space is as alluring an opportunity for achievement as it once was for us.
As Peter Pae recently wrote in the Los Angeles Times, "for the majority of the world, space is still considered the ultimate frontier." He notes that "dozens of countries are now racing to reach space" and that more than 50 nations "now have national space programs."
Some of these aspirants are not likely to get far very soon, like Nigeria, but others have the dedication and brainpower to get there fast, like China and India.
China wants to put a man on the moon in 10 years. It took us seven after Glenn, so what's so unlikely about that?
And China is said to have a particular longing to see some of its citizens walking around on Mars. I don't doubt they will do it.
As I say, I envy them the thrill. Beyond that are difficult political and military questions that are harder to answer. Would China attempt to claim the moon or Mars as Chinese territory? Do these 50 space programs mean the skies will someday be filled with weapons, lifting our endless Earthbound conflicts to another level?
Given human history, probably. And in that sense, last week's seemingly "cute" Chinese accomplishment might better be taken as a wake-up call.
Interestingly, our growing indifference to space exploration in some ways retraces China's own historic errors.
In the early 1400s, China was technologically ahead of Europe by hundreds of years, and well positioned to colonize the world.
As historian Judith Wyman explains in her book, "When China Ruled the Seas," in 1405, Emperor Zhu Di sent an explorer named Zheng He and more than 300 ships on a series of voyages to explore the world. Some of those ships were 400 feet long. Columbus' flagship, the Santa Maria, was 85 feet long.
For more than a quarter century, China's fleet ruled the entire South Pacific and the Indian Ocean.
But Zheng died in 1433 and the later emperors concluded there was nothing of value outside the motherland. By the mid-1500s, it had become a criminal offense for Chinese to venture abroad. The country has been trying to catch up to the rest of the world ever since - which is why Col. Yang's little trip meant so much to them.
We probably won't make space exploration a crime here in the United States, but we seem to have adopted the view that there is nothing of value off our own planet - which, after all, we largely rule with our military and economic might.
The question is whether we will pay a price in the future, as China did in the past, for that failure to keep looking outward.
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