All eyes not on Washington; some looking off into space

All eyes not on Washington; some looking off into space

In the United States this weekend almost all eyes were on Washington, where Congress and the administration were working on a bailout of the nation’s financial markets.

But elsewhere, news was being made — news that to varying degrees is tied to how Americans are spending their money and the effects that those spending habits will have on the way the rest of the world will see the United States for years or decades to come.

One of the most dramatic international developments occurred 213 miles above earth, where a Chinese astronaut, Zhai Zhigang, made a spacewalk from China’s Shenzhou 7 orbital module. Zhai and two other astronauts, Liu Boming and Jing Haipeng, ended their 68-hour flight with a safe landing Sunday.

This was China’s third manned space flight and the liftoff and some of the mission in space were telecast live by China’s official network, CCTV.

Clearly, China is taking its time in developing its space program, with only three flights in five years and only 14 trained astronauts, but just as clearly the coverage of the flights is a message to the Chinese people that the nation’s rulers are committed to an ongoing space program.

Which, of course, raises the question as to whether the United States, which will soon be reliant on a Russian rocket to get its own astronauts to the international space station because the present shuttles will be taken out of service before a new shuttle is ready, is prepared to be less than the world’s pre-eminent space traveler.

A four-decade streak

The U.S. position has been unchallenged for almost 40 years, since American astronauts became the first — and so far only — men to walk on the moon. Despite two disasters, the shuttle program demonstrated technological superiority to any other nation’s spacecraft.

The United States has not been resting on its laurels, but the Chinese have been more aggressive in setting goals for its space program, goals that could one day put China ahead if there were a race to put astronauts back on the moon or, for the first time, on Mars.

This weekend’s success by China should be a gut check for the United States. We are facing enormous economic challenges, daunting budgetary realities and are carrying a disproportionate share of the burden in combating terrorism. Part of that burden is by virtue of choices made by the Bush administration.

All these pressures might cause some to conclude that we simply can’t afford to be a full participant in a new space race.

But before such a decision is made, it should be remembered that much of this nation’s pre-eminence — scientifically economically and militarily — was a direct or indirect result of the U.S. space program.

NASA’s success provided the engine for technological developments in computer hardware and software, in ceramics and metallurgy, in communications, medicine, surveillance, weather forecasting — the list is long.

The American people and our leaders in Washington are coming to realize that we cannot have it all. But the time has come to ask ourselves if superiority in space travel is one of the things we want to do without.