Tallying Up Space

The Space Age began as a new theatre of the Cold War with the launch of Sputnik in 1957, but it quickly became more than that.  The demand for ever better, ever smaller technology to operate in space helped transform the American economy.  It also reshaped much of the world economy, to the point that the Soviet Union could no longer compete with the West.  Satellite intelligence gathering gave U. S. presidents a critical edge in avoiding World War III.  Communication satellites allow real-time interaction between virtually any two points in the world.  Improvements in weather prediction using storm-tracking satellites and other new technology have saved untold lives, and natural resource satellites can help lift regions and nations out of poverty.  Space probes and telescopes have given humanity a completely new universe.  Life could well be abundant throughout the cosmos, intelligent life elsewhere is perhaps more than possible, and the ways of Creation are mind-boggling.  Men have walked on the Moon, and humanity is poised to go deeper into space.

There has been a price to be paid, of course.  Transforming economies create new industries, but they also destroy old ones.  National space programs have spent hundreds of billions of dollars over decades that many argue could have been better spent elsewhere.  And lives have been lost.  Not many by battlefield standards, or compared to terrorist attacks or highway accidents, but lives have been lost.

On balance, the push into space has been a positive for mankind, and we're just getting started.