The Core of Discovery

Sadly i write that the space shuttle program is coming to a close.  You probably knew that, as did i; and still it comes as a shock that today (February 24, 2011) is to be the last launch of the space shuttle Discovery.  The remaining operational shuttles will have their turns at last launch as well.  And then, the chilling statement (for me) is that after the last shuttle launch the US will no longer have a [public] rocket, as it has for the last 60 years.

60 years -- and I live in those 60 years!  What a great time!

I did not expect to write about the space program again in this blog.  Surely you all know how much of an affect the space program has had on the nation's economy, yes?  Do you have any idea how many men and women, myself included, went into science and engineering *because* of the whole idea of discovering what is out there, and how to get there?  Without all of those men and women in science and engineering you would probably not be reading this on whatever device you are using.  The whole reason for Discovery - both the shuttle and the idea - was in knowing that we can make something possible; we can find out more.  Curiosity, exploration, the limitlessness that is our potential.  That's the coeur of discovery.  Is space, or the heart for Discovery, really any different from Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery?

There are still a lot of people who don't "get" science.  I won't argue about whether or not the universe is, indeed, limitless -- certainly the planet Earth, as we know it, is not.  There are legitimate complaints that too much environmental degradation has occurred because of the misdirection, mistakes, mismanagement, lack of forethought that has occurred in the industries that arose.  Yet I tremble at the thought that children today grow up without any big dreams, without knowing that we can make something that was previously unheard of into something big, something beautiful, something that works.  That their own potential is the thing that is limitless, and to stretch as much as possible to find out whatever is there to find out.

Some good, some not so good, came out of the Corps.  I suspect it is something that would happen eventually.  The same, perhaps, as that someone would go into space.

Maybe our artists have already begun to lead the way... i hope.  After all, Jules Verne took us to the moon over one hundred years before Neil Armstrong set foot on it.  The "great leap for mankind," indeed.  Evidently it required 100 years of thought (is that the same as having 100 monkeys? parable or not?) before we could physically achieve it.

We are creative, we are creators, it is a human's nature to find stuff out.  Sometimes it's good, sometimes not so good, and still it is part of who we are.  Sometimes the discoveries are on the inside, sometimes about the world we have lived in for the last three million years, sometimes about who we can become, or how to fix what we have, about our own individual limitless potential -- it is our coeur.  May we always have the coeur for Discovery.