Giant Steps

Today is the 40th anniversary of the first men, Americans I might add, to walk on the moon. It is also the 40th anniversary of the incorporation of a store, an American store I might add, called Wal-Mart.

There was an article yesterday in the Chicago Tribune that compared the two events, wondering which had more of an impact on the lives of people. Wal-Mart came out the winner.

There may be some unfortunate truth to that. Wal-Mart, for better or worse, eventually changed the way all Americans shop. (I will say this though: I know people who shop at Wal-Mart, but I don't know anybody who actually likes shopping there.)

Sam Walton did indeed give America a new way to shop. The space program gave us Tang. For a while there in the 1970s there was also a food product product I remember as being called Space Sticks; they came in a chocolate flavor, individually wrapped and I ate at least one every day with my lunch at school. (They were actually called Space Food Sticks; you can find out more here. I knew I wasn't making these up.)

It's sad that those are the memories I have of the space program, because let's face it, no matter how great a deal you can get on groceries and what-not at Wal-Mart, that deal doesn't match the greatness or the grandeur of the fact that the United States was able to fly men to the moon and return them safely. Yes, Americans were able to set foot on another planet. The falling prices of products at a giant box store simply don't compare with that amazing feat.

The United States has squandered what it earned by going to the moon. How could we let people become disinterested and blase inter-planetary travel? Nothing should be more exciting or interesting to us. And yet...a space shuttle takes off every now and again and we don't care unless there's a crash or explosion. We do pay a little bit of attention when the toilet backs up at the space station, but there's not a lot of grandeur involved with outer space plumbing problems.

What America needs to do with space travel is what it used to do pretty well once upon a time. Set lofty goals and meet or exceed them. Let's strive to put men on Mars and do it quickly. Let's promote the everyday uses of items invented for the space missions. Let's start educating children early about the worlds beyond ours and make sure they stay interested in science. Heck, let's try to make science education interesting in the first place rather than a dull and daunting task of a class to be tolerated and then forgotten.

Calvin Coolidge (he was president of the United States a long time ago) said, "The business of America is business." He was right. Americans have always been good at making a buck. That's why people want to come here. We used to make stuff, and we've always been good at selling stuff.

More importantly though, Americans were once really great at being pioneers. Let us be pioneers once more. To be ourselves, to be truly American, we need to take Giant Steps again.