{"id":1958,"date":"2010-05-17T23:09:19","date_gmt":"2010-05-17T23:09:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=1958"},"modified":"2010-05-17T23:09:19","modified_gmt":"2010-05-17T23:09:19","slug":"reach_out_and_see_whats_out_th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2010\/05\/17\/reach_out_and_see_whats_out_th\/","title":{"rendered":"Reach Out and See What&#8217;s Out There"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Actor-writer-blogger-geek-extraordinaire Wil Wheaton has a brief but evocative <a href=\"http:\/\/wilwheaton.typepad.com\/wwdnbackup\/2010\/05\/some-of-us-are-looking-at-the-stars.html\">post<\/a> up about his memories of the <i>Challenger<\/i> disaster and watching the launch of <i>Atlantis<\/i> the other day. Here&#8217;s the bit that resonated the most with me:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>When mission control gave the order to go with throttle up, I held my breath like I have every single time since the shuttle program was reinstated in 1988, and when the shuttle separated from the boosters and glided into orbit, I got something in my eye. Just take a moment, if you don&#8217;t mind, and think about what it means that we can leave our planet, even if we&#8217;ve &#8220;only&#8221; gotten as far as the dark side of the moon. Think about what it means that something as incredible as putting humans into space and bringing them back safely to Earth today earns less media attention and public excitement than the typical celebrity breakup.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It is amazing that we can do this, and even though I&#8217;ve come to believe the shuttle program isn&#8217;t the best way to spend NASA&#8217;s tiny budget (which is a pitiful fraction of what it should be), I hope that there was a child watching the launch today who will feel inspired to reach out to the stars and see what&#8217;s out there.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>We humans are a flawed species, to put it mildly, and I think we could do a much better job taking care of our planet and each other &#8230; but when I see what we&#8217;re capable of doing, it gives me hope that the future I pretended to live in twenty years ago will actually arrive some day.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(For anyone who doesn&#8217;t catch the reference in the final sentence &#8212; and I know at least one of my Loyal Readers probably does not &#8212; Wil played Wesley Crusher on <i>Star Trek: The Next Generation<\/i>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Actor-writer-blogger-geek-extraordinaire Wil Wheaton has a brief but evocative post up about his memories of the Challenger disaster and watching the launch of Atlantis the other day. Here&#8217;s the bit that resonated the most with me: When mission control gave the order to go with throttle up, I held my breath like I have every single [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-final-frontier"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1958\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}