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Editorial: The Space Shuttle Era

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By Mark Wilder - email

  • Editorials

  • Friday, May 18 2012 7:20 PM EDT2012-05-18 23:20:53 GMT
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    If you text and drive it's a matter of WHEN and not IF you will be involved in an accident.  The odds are stacked against you when your eyes and hands are more focused on your cell phone than they are the other motorists on the roadways.

  • Tuesday, May 15 2012 7:20 PM EDT2012-05-15 23:20:31 GMT
    On our editorial suggesting that the governor raise taxes to fund Medicaid, we received these comments: "If the budget is passed at this severely cut rate, the shortage of physicians, hospitals, and clinics
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  • Tuesday, May 1 2012 7:20 PM EDT2012-05-01 23:20:35 GMT
    If your commute includes I-85 in the mornings I'm sure you've noticed men alongside the roadways picking up trash and road debris and thought to yourself "who would want to do that?"
    If your commute includes I-85 in the mornings I'm sure you've noticed men alongside the roadways picking up trash and road debris and thought to yourself "who would want to do that?"

  • Friday, April 20 2012 7:20 PM EDT2012-04-20 23:20:42 GMT
    For the next sixty seconds I want you to give yourself permission to push pause on whatever you are doing and listen and reflect for a moment. I did this recently after reading an article titled "Top five

  • Wednesday, April 18 2012 7:27 PM EDT2012-04-18 23:27:31 GMT
    Representative Christopher John England (Tuscaloosa) has sponsored a bill in the Alabama legislature that would allow convicted felons of drug crimes to receive food stamps under certain circumstances.
MONTGOMERY, AL (WSFA) -

Last week, with the final landing of the space shuttle Atlantis, an era of American history came to an end. It is especially poignant for Alabamians because the rockets that launched the shuttles came from the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville.

For 30 years, 5 different shuttles carrying 350 astronauts over 500 million miles, during 135 flights,  brought back advancements in everything from medicine to military to telecommunications to the Hubble telescope, with price tag of over 113 billion dollars. What will be our motivation for going back into space? Will we be able to afford it?

50 years ago our race to the moon was a political competition with the Soviet Union.  Ironically, we now cooperate with Russia on the space station, and, even more ironically, for the time being, we must depend on them to take us back there.  Who will we compete against now?

I suggest that none of the above matters.  We will go back into space because human beings are curious.  No other motivation is necessary. Costs and benefits are only a by-product.  When we do go back, I hope Alabama's connection, the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, will get us there again.

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