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Volume 15, Number 4 September/October/November 2003
Policy Insight
by Clifford R. McMurray
No More Preaching to the Choir
The goal of the National Space Society,
as can be found on our membership brochures, is “creating a spacefaring
civilization.” That doesn’t mean “standing around watching while
other people create a spacefaring civilization.” Each of us has a part
to play, however small, in changing the world. We all must help shape the future
to our vision, or stand by and watch the world being shaped by others with a
different vision.
But how do we do that? Most of us aren’t aerospace engineers or scientists,
and we don’t have personal fortunes large enough to invest in a private
space program of our own. What can we, as individuals, do to create a spacefaring
civilization?
The first thing we must do is stop preaching to the choir.
The barriers to the creation of the future we want are not primarily limitations
of technology or funding. Those barriers are not trivial, but they can be overcome.
The real barriers are barriers in the minds of our neighbors. Our vision of
possibility for the human future is still a minority vision. Even among the
millions of people who idly wish for such a future, the “common wisdom”
is that it is still many decades or centuries away. To change the future, we
must first change minds. And the only way to do that is the old-fashioned way—we
have to talk to people who don’t agree with us. We have to take our vision
into the public arena of ideas and fight for it with informed and passionate
argument that respects our opponents while seeking to convert them into allies.
This year the loss of Columbia and her crew has focused public attention and
debate on our future in space to a greater extent than at any time in the last
decade. As we wipe our tears away and go back to work, we must not lose sight
of the fact that we have a very narrow window of opportunity, while public and
Congressional attention is focused on space, to help shape opinion and policy
to move toward the future that we and our fallen heroes both want. This happened
after Challenger: the policy of flying everything on Shuttle, including commercial
payloads, was scrapped, and a commercial launch industry was born. Similar shifts
to wiser policies are possible now as they would not have been without this
tragic loss.
Don’t mistake this observation for callousness. Like you, when Columbia
was lost I mourned the loss of friends I’d never met in the flesh. But
the supreme sacrifice of the Columbia crew will be meaningless if it doesn’t
lead us forward. And this rare opportunity will be lost if we don’t stop
talking just among ourselves and start talking to our neighbors. I urge each
of you to take action today. Write your local papers and national opinion magazines,
expressing your hopes for America’s future in space. Urge all your friends
who care about our future in space to do likewise. Next year will be too late;
the media will have moved on to other concerns.
Letters to the editor should include your name, address, day and night telephone
numbers (most publications won’t publish letters unless they’ve verified
that they come from the person whose name appears on the signature line, and
this verification is most often done via phone call), and e-mail address. Short,
succinct letters stand the best chance of publication. No letter should be more
than a page, and half a page is better. Each of us has a lot to say, but we
need to learn to be pithy.
Most newspapers and magazines now accept letters to the editor via e-mail as
well as through the post office. Here’s e-mail contact information for
a few of the major national opinion magazines and newspapers:
NEWSWEEK
letters@newsweek.com
TIME
letters@time.com
U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT
letters@usnews.com
WALL STREET JOURNAL
wsj.ltrs@wsj.com
WASHINGTON POST
letters@washpost.com
NEW YORK TIMES
letters@nytimes.com
After you’ve written your letter to the editor, you can share it with your
fellow NSS members by sending a copy, along with a note as to which publications
you submitted it to and whether it was published, to NSS headquarters at e-mail
address nsshq@nss.org. A selection of
the best letters will be posted to the NSS website as inspiration to other members.
It sounds so old-fashioned, but it’s still true. The only way people will
know what you care about is if you tell them. So share the dream—before
it slips away.