![]() ![]() The costs are too great when people are living in fear of losing their homes.” “But it’s the wrong time for us to be doing it. I guess it’s important to keep up with Russia and China on that,” said Tarantino, a legal secretary who works in Oakland. “It’s not that I’m against exploring space. Space exploration is too expensive in an era of foreclosures and widespread hunger. The issue is money, said Maryann Tarantino, 55, of Clayton. But honestly, these days it doesn’t affect us that much compared to other things we need to work on.” “When I was a kid, I was totally into space and wanted to be an astronaut. “The government and scientists haven’t made a good case about why we should care (about space exploration) anymore,” said Atoosa Savarnejad, 39, a freelance writer in San Jose. So what has become of our zeal for outer space? Is it enough that humans have been to the moon? Or that since we can already see the Mars landscape on Google, why bother going there? Or are we now so focused inward as a culture that we have stopped looking to the stars?įor some, the issue is purely pragmatic: Our biggest challenges exist right here on our own planet. The last launch of Atlantis is scheduled, weather and mechanics permitting, for Friday, with nothing immediately planned on its heels. And shuttle expeditions became so routine, the general public often didn’t know when a craft was in orbit or not.Īnd now many aren’t aware - or at least don’t seem terribly concerned - that the program is ending. Though only venturing into low-Earth orbit - a mere 250 miles to the International Space Station, not much farther than a drive from the Bay Area to Pismo Beach - shuttles kept a solid American foot in the doorway to more.īut somewhere along the way “astronaut” became just another career. ![]() Lost in our love of space, we gazed up at the flecks of glitter in the night sky and wondered what was out there and how far we might someday go.įor the past 30 years, NASA’s space shuttles have served as the primary vehicles for our collective out-of-this-world imagination. Astronauts were rock stars, flying in the face of gravity and Earth-bound limits, setting celestial records nearly every day. Way back last century, America went space happy. ![]()
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