The launch of the Space Shuttle and a nation's destiny

As I watched Space Shuttle Atlantis take off yesterday and remembered watching, as a teenager in California, Space Shuttle Columbia in April 1981 take the shuttle program into space and recall all its ups and downs (with the disasters in 1986 and 2003), I also understand the sense of destiny that makes a nation proud (in this case the US and its space quest).... The emotions are always the same - goose bumps, tears that cannot be held back, and a sense of pride of having had the privilege to live and study in the US for a significant part of my life. .... And then I always reflect on my country...What about my country, what is its sense of destiny?...It seems to have none, perpetually lost is its pettiness, unable to overcome the burden of its glorious past and the gifts its peoples gave to the world starting with the greatest of all - democracy.

The shuttle program is coming to an end with the Atlantis mission but I do not have any doubts that the United States will be leading the way for future travel in space... What about beautiful, tormented Greece? I have my idea of what it should forward to...I only wish all of us look ahead individually and collectively and dare to dream...

I remember being enthralled in 1986 by reading the Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age by Walter McDougall, my professor at UC Berkeley at the time (I still have an autographed copy somewhere). I remember watching Philip Kaufman's 1986 epic film The Right Stuff , later Ron Howard's captivating Apollo 13 in 1995, as well as numerous documentaries on the first moon landing on 20 July 1969....Truly great, emotional, thought provoking and inspiring feats linked to a nation's assumption that it can conquer space and proudly show the world that it can be done and that there is more to it than Yuri Gagarin's earth-shattering feat as the first man in space on 12April 1961. Despite the setbacks, the mission must go on...

Again my thoughts return to my country and hope that amidst its current travails, it possesses the wherewithal, the backbone and the chutzpah to rise proudly and dare project its destiny for generations to come....one that contributes to the moral, intellectual, and ideological well being of the world. Let the dream and the reality of the conquest of space act as a guide and inspiration...

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