Big and Broad and Wide Open SPACE
Limitless possibilities in Space
As I write this post about space, my locale is less than an hour away from the start of a lunar eclipse. And whether you were watching in person or via some captured footage, who can forget watching when the first people from our planet ventured forth into space? And then landing on the moon? From that vantage point in space, I marveled like so many of you at how beautiful and magnificent and tiny our planet Earth appears in the grand vastness of space.
SPACE is obviously a pretty broad topic. Just click on the first word in this paragraph and you can read a whole lot more on the topic of space in this link to Wikipedia's article. It will take you some time and not likely to be completed in one sitting. Space travel and exploration got pushed to the forefront of American's thoughts when President John Kennedy issued his challenge and visionary moon speech to congress.
Exploring Space: John F. Kennedy's Moon Speech to Congress - May 25, 1961
Like him or not, President Kennedy lead a country into the wide open frontier of space. I've read a great deal of American history about the wild west and going west into the vast frontier of the North American continent. Somehow I just don't quite think of space like that. But it carries a lot of the same risks....less probably. In space you don't have nearly as many people venturing forth as there were in the move westward. The risk is more calculated today. The technical knowledge and expertise is brought into the loop in space travel today. Going forth into the wilderness with horses as a means of transportation is a lot different than launching from a pad aboard a rocket ship into space. Still, both bespeak adventure...a quest into the unknown big and broad and wide open space.
And then there's the hubble space telescope. Problems? Aplenty! But it's still out there and the photos are amazing.
Do you remember where you were (provided you were alive at the time) when the Challenger space shuttle disaster occurred? I sure do. We learned a lesson again about the risks of space travel, something many of us had begun to think almost routine.
Economic challenges around the globe appear to be curtailing many country's ventures into the wild unknown of space. I doubt that will be a forever kind of thing. From the very beginning of our existence, humans have explored. We have ventured beyond our own borders being pulled and propelled by this unquenchable curiosity and desire to know. Space is still out there and I am confident that in time we'll venture forth to even more stellar heights and distances than ever before.