![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
"Our Future in Space Is History"
Feb. 8th, 2003 01:35 pmFrom the New York Times
EARTHBOUND
Our Future in Space Is History
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Years ago, the aged chief of Enewetak, in the Marshall Islands of the Pacific, was asked if he knew that men had landed on the Moon. He took a while replying. "Yes," he said finally, "and I hear they came back."
This meant something to the chief because his people were at last returning to their atoll, once a test site of hydrogen bombs. For him, coming back, despite assurances, was not risk-free. Nor is it ever for astronauts, as the Columbia disaster reminds us. But more than the chief could know, the words "they came back," in another sense, have echoed through the American space program since the end of the glory days of the Apollo lunar landings.
( Read more... )
EARTHBOUND
Our Future in Space Is History
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Years ago, the aged chief of Enewetak, in the Marshall Islands of the Pacific, was asked if he knew that men had landed on the Moon. He took a while replying. "Yes," he said finally, "and I hear they came back."
This meant something to the chief because his people were at last returning to their atoll, once a test site of hydrogen bombs. For him, coming back, despite assurances, was not risk-free. Nor is it ever for astronauts, as the Columbia disaster reminds us. But more than the chief could know, the words "they came back," in another sense, have echoed through the American space program since the end of the glory days of the Apollo lunar landings.
( Read more... )
