Space Shuttle Lands on Another World

by Eric Francis Coppolino, July 27, 2011

When the space shuttle Atlantis glided majestically through the early morning darkness and touched down at the Kennedy Space Center on July 21, it landed on a different planet than the one Columbia first took off from in April 1981.

Atlantis landed on a hotter, more crowded planet, one engulfed in economic and ideological crisis. Even if we could afford it, it’s doubtful the religion-obsessed, anti-science, antiprogress politicians who dominate our current moment could muster the vision to develop something so ambitious—which may be a good thing.
We hail the shuttle mission as a technological achievement, yet Atlantis is an appropriate name for a spacecraft returning to a world that cannot handle the power or responsibility of its own technology.

The last shuttle returned to Earth entering through a more radioactive atmosphere, with its air and oceans contaminated by a vast diversity of persistent toxins. It’s true that by 1981 the environmental situation was at a critical level, yet in three decades that crisis has grown exponentially. The number of chemicals being produced, and the amount, is unconscionable; the amount of plastic going into the oceans; the dumping of solvents into the oceans to break down the millions of gallons of crude oil that are spilled every year.

Storms, extremes of temperature, melting ice caps, hurricanes, tornado supercells, earthquakes, and famines are more frequent, to the point where they now seem commonplace. In 1981, most people did not know what the word tsunami meant. They didn’t learn it studying for the spelling bee.

Many municipal water supplies are contaminated by the mood-altering drugs used to quell what is in truth a mass-epidemic psychological crisis.