Space: it’s back

They couldn’t hide it. The tone of satisfaction was apparent in the easy chatter last week between the crew of the space shuttle Endeavour and the Johnson Space Center.

“I refuse to get excited too early,” flight director Milt Heflin said on the eve of Friday’s successful release of their refurbished telescope. But as the Story Musgrave team piled up its series of perfect executions, it became tougher to be humble about Hubble:

The repairs made to the myopic orbiting observatory may have transformed it into the eye on the universe it was intended to be.

The clockwork professionalism of the NASA teams — earthbound and aboard the shuttle — may have reestablished space exploration as a positive national experience. It has momentum. Congress now can discuss how much to budget for space, not how much to cut.

America, beset with terrestrial problems, has the wealth to attack poverty, provide health care for its people and also make a long-term investment in technical research while expanding the scope of knowledge. It must feel it’s backing a winner. Endeavour began the rebuilding process for that confidence.

The country has something to feel good about, pride in accomplishment and a sense that all things really are possible.

Machines do not yet, and never may have the capacity to adapt and persist in the way that the EVA (Extra-Vehicular-Activity) teams did in repairing the Hubble. In the debate over the benefits of manned and unmanned space exploration, the humans won one.