Symbolic Landing

The United States is not what it once was; despite being in the midst of a heavy international economic crisis, the American government is looking to spend money.

The Atlantis space shuttle, which was one of the last running American space flight projects, landed yesterday. Some see this as a decline or rather, a setback for space research by a decade; others see this event as marking the U.S. as a great power with a declining role. To some degree, both are partially correct.

The space race was a product of the Cold War. Because of the immediate danger of their total annihilation of each other, the two superpowers — namely, the U.S. and the Soviet Union — could not fight a traditional war, so they continued their battle for prestige in space. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the rivalry came to an end, and development of parts for space programs ended.

On the one hand, the Russians did not have the money for space programs, and the Americans realized that the billions of dollars spent on space projects could be better spent on other projects. If this was a good decision — that they spend $100 billion on a space project or mostly threw away their money — the fact of the matter is that much of the time this topic will be the focus of their discussion, since space programs are also exploited in everyday life, in the event that a discovery were to be made. Program development was added to the discussion as well. Moreover, to a large extent, these space programs have broadened our world’s knowledge of borders in a tremendous way.

In 1957, the first space probe was sent into space. In 1961, the first man reached the cosmos. In 1969, the first space shuttle went to the moon. But in 2011, we have reached a point where Americans are not able to send their own people on their own space shuttles to the international space station; they are only being sent on Russian machines, which are now technologically totally behind the American space shuttles. This space research — in the 60s, 70s and 80s — looks at it from the perspective of how they are progressing, and it seems as though they are in a horrible regression.

The golden age of space research is long behind us, and the question at hand is if there will be sources, no matter how many, that will be the start of a necessary new golden age in the following decades. Because of this, there is no absence of plans.

The gradual breakdown of the space program and its mutilation signify that the United States has not been that great in a long time. Of course, amidst a heavy international economic crisis, even the American government has to better watch where it spends its money. On the one hand, great powers are great nations because of their prestigious projects and future technologies that are not needed; but on the other hand, the space program is not a two-year phenomenon. What could better demonstrate the change in the role of U.S. power? Is it that the Chinese are financing American living standards and keeping them on a certain level, or is it that the recent Olympics were not in the U.S. and that China finished ahead of the U.S. on the medal platform?

The retirement of the Atlantis also asks permission somewhere along the line for enough of a difference that the Chinese do not overtake the Americans — because in science, research is one of the proven ways to be a success. Over time, however, if in America (and the Western world) there is not a way for their basic attitude on this to change, to making improvements, then they are working on it.