ADAMANT
WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH SCIENCE & THE MEDIA ? © 2006-8 RUSSELL SEITZ all rights reserved
October 19, 2007
The Dark Side Of 9-11
50 years ago the Space Age began.
12 years after Sputnik I's alarming debut kicked the Cold War into high gear, I photographed the roaring launch of Apollo 11 for this Conde' Nast cover. I've seen my share of explosive volcanic eruptions but the 1969 event was like nothing so much as 9-11 run backwards.
Only louder..
The political dark side of NASA's thundering technological triumph has parallels in the aftermath of 9-11 as well . The focused idealism seen in the months following each event gave way to both millenarian dreams and dystopic fantasies, and a plenum of unjustified claims.
In the moon launch's case, the success of outspending our Cold War adversary led to NASA's evolution into a vastly expensive bureaucracy more devoted to defending its turf than expanding man's presence in the solar system.
In the 1950s many science fiction writers predicted men would walk on the moon, and though few were so bold as to assert it would happen within a decade, many of the greatest gathered at Cape Kennedy to witness the realization of their dream. They did a lot of predicting, but none imagined that after a half dozen lunar voyages , no one would set foot on the moon for another generation.
It's as though Columbus returned from the New World only to counsel Spain to stop wasting time and treasure on sailing ships, and focus on getting better galley slaves to open the New World to trade .
It's as though Columbus returned from the New World only to counsel Spain to stop wasting time and treasure on sailing ships, and focus on getting better galley slaves to open the New World to trade .
That is essentially what we got five centuries later, as NASA's dysfunctional bureaucracy doubled down on the ill fated Space Shuttle even as an explosion of entrepreneurial creativity led those with the Right Stuff to quit Cape Canaveral for Silicon Valley.
Within five years of 9-11, TSA had likewise discovered that the main mission of any organization that does not have to justify its mandate is to spend as much as possible, but while NASA merely wasted the taxpayer's money, mindless spending by Homeland Security translates into the waste of the nation's time as well. Treating passengers like Spam In A Can astronauts doomed to suffer unending delays to get off the ground more manifests bureaucratic sadism than safety concern.
NASA 's downward trajectory can teach us a lot about what else TSA should not be doing, but if history is any precedent, the last thing Homeland Security will do is study those lessons of its own accord.
