A BETTER LIFE FOR TODAY BUT TOMORROW? THAT'S DEBATABLE

America launched a new satellite this week.  Ho hum, right?  Well, at one time in our history that would have been a very big deal.

I remember well the day I sat staring out the window of my seventh-grade class in Dumfries Elementary School.  May 5th, 1961.  Alan Shephard, the first American astronaut was launched into space.  Would he return?  Or would he be lost forever?  What did it really mean?  Why did he go there?  I had no answers, only silent questions.  I remember my teacher explaining how extremely significant this day was in our lifetime.  I believed her.

At thirteen I couldn't possibly know what America's first trip into the dark unknown meant to my future.  I couldn't know that the technology discovered through subsequent trips would make it possible for me to microwave a frozen hotdog in one minute, or bake a potato in six.  From computer-game joysticks to cancer-destroying photodynamic therapy, from disposable diapers to high-pressure waterjets, the dark unknown returned to earth and made its impact of explosive promise for life as we know it.

Since that day, we've traveled to the moon, flew multiple space missions, and circled other planets in our solar system.  We've constructed a space station where people actually live, research and experiment.  Countries all over the world have implanted numerable satellites which make possible this very post to be read in Australia, Brazil and Europe.  Television.  Weather warnings.  Radio.  Cellphones.  Thousands of benefits to mankind as a result of space technology.  Benefits for better life on earth.

So yeah, the Kepler, launched this week.  It's in search of new earths.  Scientists hope to find planets like our own that have life or could produce life as we know it here.  I find that a strange irony in light of our President's announcement to open the door to destroy life to accomodate science with expanded stem-cell research. To override morality, faith and God to dissect human embryos in hopes of finding treatments for illnesses and cures for diseases to "prolong" life.  Such is vital according to our American president, and we'd be irresponsible not to give science more weight than mere moral objections.  So despite strong opposition from Pro-life advocates, Barak Obama invited a large group of like-minded people to witness his signature on the bill to allow researchers to destroy human embryos as if they were fertilized, incubating chicken eggs.

Make no mistake.  I am not surprised.  No.  I believed Obama's campaign promises to advance abortion throughout the world with Americans' tax dollars.  I believed Obama when he said the beginning of life was beyond his paygrade.  I believed Obama when he said he'd change America's course.  That's why I didn't vote for him.  And if I can count on Obama to fulfill his goals of changing the world, then I wonder what good it will be to find new planets with prospective new life.  If his record holds up and people continue to buy into his philosophy and ideology, any life beyond our galaxy can expect to be as limited as the remains of a human embryo in a garbage can.  selahV