Dan Rather SOMETIMES IT takes a long time for the phoenix to rise from the ashes. In NASA's case, it has taken 16 years and counting. In January of 1986, Christa McAuliffe's quest to become the first educator in space captivated the American public. It brought renewed attention to a space-shuttle programme that, even then, had begun to seem routine. As we all know, her brief flight ended in tragedy for her and the six astronauts aboard the shuttle Challenger.
This week, NASA formally announced its plans to continue Christa McAuliffe's mission. Barbara Morgan, a 50-year-old elementary-school teacher in McCall, Idaho, will fly on a space-shuttle mission to the International Space Station shortly after the station's central elements are completed. By current estimates, Mission Specialist Candidate Morgan will become the first educator in space sometime in 2004.
For Morgan, who trained alongside Christa AcAuliffe as her backup, this honour has been a long time coming. But she sees it as only the beginning, rather than the fulfilment, of the mission she and McAuliffe prepared for, "because the job of education is never fulfilled."
Morgan's apt statement reflects a new focus on education at the nation's space agency. Late last year, Sean O'Keefe, who had been deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, was sworn in as the 10th administrator of NASA. In a recent address, he cited the shortage of young people entering the fields of mathematics, science and engineering and underscored that one of the agency's "core mission elements" should be "to inspire the next generation of explorers." Barbara Morgan's planned flight is part of this push, and it is to be applauded.
NASA is still trying to recover from a series of high-profile failures and an era that saw "Faster, Cheaper, Better" become the bywords of this once proud and confident institution.
The American public, particularly the segment that still remembers the glory days of the Apollo programme, will wish Sean O'Keefe well in anything he can do to restore inspiration to its central place in space exploration.
There was a time, after all, when the people who ran NASA understood that encouraging Americans to dream - of the future, of a boundless frontier - was a good part of what the space programme was all about. But as encouraging as Administrator O'Keefe's first step is, his vision seems to rule out any giant leaps in the foreseeable future, or even big dreams.
O'Keefe wants NASA's missions to "be driven by the science, not the destination." This sounds reasonable, as far as it goes. But unless your reporter is mistaken, he hears in it a refutation of the kind of challenge that drove NASA's best years: President Kennedy's call for America to put a man on the moon.
More directly, it seems to quash dreams of sending astronauts to Mars. Sure, a Mars voyage would present enormous technological and fiscal challenges. So did going to the moon, which sounded a lot more far-fetched when first proposed than does any trip to Mars now. But we saw how working toward a goal - a destination - brought out the best in our science and our country. How it very literally took us places we had never been before.
NASA's new approach seems to be to focus on what is possible in the present. Perhaps this is prudent. But if NASA's new chief really wants to, in his words, "make science and discovery, exploration and research, cool" again for youngsters, he will ask his President to set our sights on Mars. That's a way to not only inspire the young, but all Americans. Indeed, all the planet.
