@ ~ Wednesday, June 30, 1993 -- North Shore News ition key to ‘tah STRICTLY PERSONAL IT LOOKS like the space station Freedom is still go- ing to get off the ground, with Canada’s ro’e ap- parently enhanced. This is excellent news, especially since the’ Soviet space station Mir has likewise survived the collapse of the gulag below, and continues te be manned. Humanity clings to a toe-hold in space. At the’same time, I note, renegade rocket builders in the United States are talking about . another run at launching a cheap orbit-and-return spaceship for the tourist market. . -The last time anybody suggested _ this, through the upscale travel agency, Society Expeditions of Seattle, hundreds of people signed up immediately, even though the | full price of the ticket was going ~ to bea million bucks. As it turned out, those hun- dreds of would-be space-faring tourists were Japanese, the only ones who could afford the $10,000 down payment. | oo etna el ' | presume they all got their money back when the project folded — shortly after the space shuttle Challenger blew up in front of the cameras of the world. The trauma of Challenger threw the American space program for a loop, and J don’t mean just the National Acronautics and Space Administration. It also ruined any chance of the various civilian engineers who wanted to build cheap spaceships getting the financial backing they needed. With the end of the Cold War, it seemed that space programs ev- erywhere would fecl the axe, so much of their funding having come from the military. There was talk of the peace div- idend going to space travel, but it was idle talk. Here on Earth there are (oo many starving people, too much ecological destruction going on, and nearly everybody's economy is in shaky shape. The demands on any peace div- idend, should it materialize, are back- and bank-breaking. How do you justify throwing money into the truly bottomless hole of space when kids are starv- ing en masse and the rainforests (including B.C.'s) are Jisappear- ing? ' Well, if you take the survival of our descendants — our species — to heart, 1 don’t think we have much choice. Even if we were somehow to reverse the process of en- vironmental overexploitation, stabilize our population and the atmosphere itself, repair the ozone layer, clean up our water and air, repair.our soil and forests, restore biological diversity, and actually create a green utopia on Earth, our great grandchildren would still : wind up going crazy. 1, for one, am happy indeed to see space exploration continue on any front, | don’t think it's frivolous, and | don’t think (any longer) that it merely serves the aims of the milisary-industrial complex. For a few years there, back dur- ing the darkest early '80s, when American and Soviet nuclear missiles were within trip-wire distance of each other in divided Germany, | lost faith for a while, and began to see the space pro- gram as being (oo inextricably bound up with the arms race to be redeemable, ' Saving the biosphere from hu- , manity’s onslaught seemed, around that period, to be a far more profound imperative than colonizing the moon or Mars, ex- cept to the extent that humanity ought to get its eggs out of this one basket, what with 58,000 nu- cleat bombs rattling around. But since then we have seen what an effective planetary monitoring tool NASA has become. If not for the space prograin, we might still be ignorant of the extent of the damage to the ozone layer, for instance. In the coming years, as the planet warms and cfforts to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions become serious, atmospheric monitoring from space is going to play a vital role in awakening us to the dunger. To me, the Space Age began in the "50s, when | started reading science fiction. But for most people, I realize it didn’t happen until the cameras were taken out into space in the late '60s, and aimed back. In an intriguing article recently, Tom Harris, one of the more clo- quent advocates of space explora- tion, wrote: ‘It’s no coincidence that within two years of the 1968 Apollo flight that gave us our first ‘Trade with other nations keeps our economy going. A clean industry that brings money into our economy. Each year over $38 billion worth of goods are traded through the Port of Vancouver, making a contribution of over $775 million to our local economy. Trade also means jobs. Over 9,100 people make their ‘living directly from our port's trade and transportation activities. Trade is important to us all ~ and the Port of Vancouver is proud to play a large role in keeping our'country competitive and prosperous. "Canada’s Front Door On The Pacific”. A message from the Vancouver Por! Corporation lanity’s future views of Earthrise over the moon we saw the formation of En- vironment Canada, the U.S. En- vironmental Protection Agency, Greenpeace, as well as the first world-wide Earth Day. “Secing our small fragile planet against the blackness of space forever changed our attitudes of what is and is not acceptable behavior in today’s world. Indeed, the space age opened none tao soon...” In other words, the dawn of the space age turned out to be the dawn of the ‘Earth age’’ as well. Seemingly by going away from the Earth, we began to green ourselves, Harris sees the change in con- sciousness that has occurred so far as being ‘‘pale’ compared with the changes that are likely to oc- cur if we seize the initiative now to advance into space. In space, we'll have to be “masters of applied ecology. Ef- fective recycling, conservation of resources, stringent pollution con- trol and even non-vielent means of conflict resolution — these kinds of holistic ideas will be taken for granted by those who have lived their lives in space.’’ if we turn inward, Harris sees ‘cur degeneration into a fron-: tierless society .,. a homogenized worldwide culture ... (with) little tolerance for new perspectives and innovations.” in a word: “Stagnation.” North Vancouver Recreation Commission Lifeguards will be on du Park and at Panorama ates Park beaches on the following days and times: PANORAMA PARK Daily 12:00-7:00om CATES PARK Sat, Sun, Holidays 12:00-7:00pm in the event of inclement weather or beach closure: . please phone 987-PLAY for further information. This schedule ts effective ‘July 1-Sept 6, 1993.