February 4, 2003 Reviving Romance With Space, Even as 'Space Age' Fades By AMY HARMON
In 1962, as America was gearing up for a space race against the Russians, the iconoclastic science fiction writer J. G. Ballard published "Which Way to Inner Space?," a manifesto railing against his field's preoccupation with exotic space travel and calling on popular imagination to focus instead on Earth, human consciousness and biology. Like many good science fiction writers, Mr. Ballard may have been ahead of his time. But the explosion of the Columbia shuttle last week has prompted questions about space exploration to appear in the most unlikely places. Even in a space enthusiasts' stronghold like the Web site Space.com, the message boards this week reflect an unusual degree of doubt. "What are the benefits of space travel?" one of the site's participants asked plaintively. "Will someone please remind me?" Astronomers and space fans insist that the deep human desire to discover who we are in the universe will triumph over the momentary cultural queasiness. Just as 500 years ago people crossed the ocean despite the risks, the seduction of space will continue to lure us because we see it both as our future and because it resonates with our past. The calls to divert attention from Mars to medicine, they say, ignore the visceral hold that space exploration has on public consciousness, reflected in Galileo's dialogues in the 17th century through the latest incarnation of the "Star Trek" television series. "Before there was biology, before there was chemistry and before there was anything, people were looking up at the night sky," said Dr. Neil de Grasse Tyson, the director of the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York. "There is something deep in the human condition that crosses time and crosses cultures, where no matter who we are, no matter where we're born, we have all looked up and wondered what's out there." Eight hundred people an hour visit the planetarium on an average day, Dr. Tyson says, and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, in Washington, is one of the most visited in the world. "This is a tragedy, and surely people will debate what are we doing in space and why are we there," he added. "But I would bet that in the end the quest to discover will win." Since the 1880's, when America began to take the lead in electric light and power systems, steelmaking and skyscrapers, the nation has prided itself on a technical prowess that helped drive expansion first westward and then upward. But Prof. John Staudenmaier, a history professor at the University of Detroit Mercy and editor of Technology and Culture, a quarterly journal of technology history, says that the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the collapse of the Internet stock boom and now the shuttle explosion may have undercut the technological bravado that helps drive scientific exploration of all sorts. "There is this feeling of vulnerability right in the center of where Americans tend to feel most confident, our sophisticated technological systems," Professor Staudenmaier said. "For Americans, it's almost like being homeless. It leads to an identity crisis." America's enthusiasm for the space program had begun to wane well before Saturday's shuttle disintegration, which killed the seven astronauts on board. After reaching its peak around the time of the first Moon landing, in 1969, polls show interest immediately declining, rising when the Challenger shuttle was launched in the 1980's and during the aftermath of its explosion. But the increased interest did not last, dropping again in the early 1990's and remaining flat ever since. Something similar, could, of course, happen in the aftermath of the loss of the Columbia. "What's the space age?" said David Lavery, the author of "Late for the Sky: The Mentality of the Space Age" (Southern Illinois University Press, 1992). "Back in the 60's and 70's we talked about it all the time. Now it seems almost as gone as the nuclear age." The cause of the decline may lie in part with NASA, which critics complain has not managed since the first Moon landing to envision a daring enough mission to animate the public. Given the response in 1997, when the agency's Internet site was swamped with people scrambling to see images from the Mars Pathfinder mission, critics fault the agency for not tapping into the latent thirst for space projects. "It's very much an American characteristic to say we are always moving on, expanding, and the notion that we should reach for the stars is appealing to a lot of people," said Jack Santino, president of the American Folklore Society and a student of popular culture. "But I don't know that we were being asked to do that." But Dr. Howard E. McCurdy, a professor of public affairs at American University and the author of "Space and the American Imagination" (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997), said the trend could also be the result of a self-protective desire to disengage after the Challenger shuttle explosion in 1986 and the disappointment of never having sent a human out of the Earth's orbit since the Apollo 17 mission. "What happens is we have these fantastic visions and then we whack into reality, which causes us to be disappointed and lose faith in the vision," Dr. McCurdy said. "Then, instead of paying attention to practical science or even science fiction, we get more and more enthralled with fantasy." Science fiction itself has changed. From the highly realistic, almost evangelical science fiction about rockets and space travel in the 1950's, with movies like "Destination Moon" and stories by authors like Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, the genre came in the 1980's to be dominated by galaxies far, far away in distant futures that bore little resemblance to our world. In 1995, Disney World's reading of the cultural barometer prompted the amusement park to replace its "Mission to Mars" attraction with "Extra Terrorestrial Alien Encounter." "It's as if some kind of imaginative spark about space travel just died out," said Dr. Rob Latham, an editor of science fiction studies and an associate professor of American studies at the University of Iowa. Today's blockbuster science fiction movies tend to be either about alien monsters or cybernetic realities. Still, there are a few signs of renewed interest in space travel, both in fiction and in the real world. Disney is installing a "Mission: Space" exhibit at its Epcot Center in Orlando. The Mars series of novels by Kim Stanley Robinson, published over the last decade, has won popular and critical acclaim as a modern twist on the 1950's "hard" science fiction. And the newest "Star Trek" series, "Enterprise," is set in the 22nd century, 100 years before the legendary Captain Kirk. Often, its experimental technology is on the fritz. "We wanted people who were closer to us," said Rick Berman, the show's executive producer. "These people are not sure how well their ship will stand up. Perhaps because we're getting closer and closer to real exploration there's a desire for us see characters that we can relate to." Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Permissions | Privacy Policy _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
