These days have been filled with activity, from road travel to arriving here in Houston where we are spending time with Carla’s friend and roommate from her university days. She and her husband have treated their guests with incredible hospitality and have been so welcoming.
One place I had in mind to visit while here is the Houston Space Center, the command post for NASA where engineers and managers oversaw space travel to the moon and back; it was also the training ground for the crews before flights and their place of recovery after time spent in weightlessness.
Our hosts bundled us up in their car and drove us to the far south end of Houston where the NASA site is located. Now it is more an active museum than a working post, however they still have equipment that trains hopefuls for the Space Station and for future Mars landings as well; it is not only a look into the past, but the present and future as well. We toured the building that had a horizontal Saturn V rocket that boosted those leaving the safety of earth to make the long trip to the moon. It is awe inspiring to see these huge engines, each one producing 1 million-pounds of thrust, providing the kind of power to take precious cargo up into orbital speed at 18,000 miles per hour.
As a child I remember getting up early (Pacific Standard Time), to watch the space launches, many of them lasting just minutes in orbit before making a fiery entrance into the earth’s atmosphere. Walter Cronkite interviewed scientists as we waited to see and hear those powerful liftoffs. I think much of the country sat before their television sets to see these exotic and dangerous missions. A seminal moment came while watching live feeds from the moon when Neil Armstrong pronounced that he was taking “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” as he was the first to set foot on the surface of an alien planetary body. It was a captivating moment for me, and for a riveted nation and world.
We also toured a building in which there is a segregated Space Station laid out on the massive floor to train astronauts for extended times in orbit. In addition there are training areas for a Mars’ launch that is anticipated to occur in the 2030s. Although it is no longer used as command and control center for space flight by NASA, it is a very active museum and training center for further treks into unknown frontiers of space.
All this evidence of man’s evolution in intellectual and technical advances helps to prove a point that is essential to understand. A “giant leap for mankind,” which going to the moon represented, did not solve the fundamental problems of human existence. As a lover of science and technology, I am also keenly aware that in themselves material advances do not represent wisdom. These leaps in technology we have seen have certainly made things possible that would have been science fiction not long ago. But–are we happier, more at peace, living in greater harmony with our environment and each other?
Real peace, real happiness will not come from advances in the intellect or through technology, rather it comes from knowing the Self. It is through the exploration of knowing who and what we truly are that lasting happiness, peace, joy, love, harmony and guiding wisdom are natural outcomes. Exploration of the inner space of Spirit must advance at least as rapidly as physical science, for it is only in God-awareness that we have the balance and wisdom to know what, and what not, to do next–it is the one way forward so that we may have spiritual and material advances that truly benefit one and all.