European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - May 20, 1988, Darmstadt, Hesse Page 10 columns the stars and stripes William f. Buckley or. America s space Effort needs shot in the Arm at the annual meeting of the american Institute of Carona urics and astronautics in Washington last week you fell the mix of Pride and despair. The exhibit rooms were crowded with sketches of the future in space a space dominated by american instruments. But there was the sense or the window shopper. Most of what the visitor saw was not yet built or scheduled. Mean while the russians arc plodding along and enrolling feats of space wizardry that Lhoir poor cousins in America Only dream about. It seemed hard to retail the Day when we landed on the Moon and it was generally accepted that the colonization of space was the Manifest destiny of the United suites. The visitor stared at a miniature fac simile of the fatal challenger. Do they yet know for sure what caused n to exploder of yes. We knew that Al most immediately. Within a week or was surprising but it turned out that what brought the challenger Down was exactly what had been conjectured the very Day of its destruction. It was Loo cold. The rings separating the Compart ments were Frozen and As the huge bus worked its Way straining and groaning to achieve Glide Altitude its Hull worked but could not absorb the Little wills and turns required. If the temperature had been 10 or 13 degrees Wanner in would t Hove had any difficulty what would the russians have done in such circumstances the visitor asked the scientist smiled. The rus sians would have been in with the same challenger design two weeks later. They d just have waited until the weather Wanned up a bit what we have done is substantially to remodel the challenger imposing on it every species of life protecting device imaginable. Does that include an ejection capsule the answer to that question is not simple. There arc Means by which astronauts can seek in escape a defective missile launch but technicians have not been Able absolutely to Ascer Tain at what moment the astronauts aboard the fated challenger were disabled. It s entirely possible that one or More of them were alive when they hit the that grisly thought is Ellen Goodman leavened by Lite knowledge that their death contributed to the thought Given to the amount of time an astronaut would have at his disposal before Trig Gering the escape mechanism. But you know the scientist said what happens in these circumstances is that you gel a Book of specifications thai the succeeding Model will need o adhere to. Now i am not exaggerating when i Tell you that no one reads All i Host specifications. No one con read them How then Are they made up they Are an accumulation. Every thing committee a has Ever written or said is there plus everything written by committee b. Plus the life work of committee c and by the time you get to the end of the line you have a volume no Man can carry let alone read and act what happens then what happens is thai if whoever passes on your Model is in a mood to get you he knows very Well he can reach into that Book of specifications and find something that does t Fil. But even if everything did fit you Doni have a guarantee that there won t be another life lost. When you drive Home tonight you have no guarantee of the kind some congressional committees would like you to come up with that you will reach the hotel without some fatal Accident William j. Broad of the new York times recently listed inc projects out lined by the Reagan administration for space and commented ruefully on their Progress. Alex Roland a former Nasa historian now at Duke University was quoted. All of the Reagan projects Are in jeopardy first because or Lack of consistent compelling vision and Sec Ond because of the failure to Shepherd them through the bureaucracy and con As recently As 1986, or Reagan was talking about the new Orient express which would take off from Dulles Airport and accelerate up to 25 times the Speed of sound attaining Low Earth orbit or flying to Tokyo within two Well the prototype of thai express has been postponed to 199s. Our space Sim Ion envisioned As an so billion venture is now thought to come in at s32 billion and to be completed in i997 fever. And the principal casualty is the strategic defense initiative. They speak of deploying in in ils earliest form in 1997 it the earliest. And Congress balks Over inc Money spent. Its easiest to blame the challenger for the demoralization of our space program bul probably 1971 was the critical year. It was then Hal Congress decided against completing work on a supersonic transport our concorde we found ourselves in those confusing years looking out into space and retreating. The results of Hal re Ireat could be devastating. The struggle to keep . Education meaningful there was a time when people believed they could know it All. An educated person could read every Book Ever written learn every equation Ever devised. Knowledge was seen As a kind of Pic. You could keep slicing away at it until you had eaten the whole thing we have no such illusion anymore. Education in the information age is something quite different. Ever time we find an answer it leads exponentially to hits of new questions. It s rather like mapping the universe As it keeps expanding. We know More than our ancestors and yet we know a much much smaller percentage of the sum total of what is known once you get beyond the three is learning today becomes a process of specializing those who want to know a great Deal study deeply rather than broadly. The Best and the brightest of one Field May be ignorant of another unable to communicate in the explosion of information the Center docs l hold. This is Why we have such raging debates right now on College campuses about what every graduate should know it s an argument about creating a Core about reconstituting common Wisdom there is much agreement Hal we need something to hold onto in this Centrifuge. There is the belief that people who inhabit the same country or Community need to share some body of knowledge the Way they need to share a body of Laws. But it s much harder to agree on what to put in that Core we arc after All arguing about what is most important in our culture struggling for intellectual Power. One Small piece of this struggle has gone in at Stan Ford University this year Over inc Content of a required course on Western civilization. For eight years this class focused on 15 books classics of Western philosophy and Liler Alurac not surprisingly the authors were All White men to Many in inc University Community the subject had a sublet thai said our civilization was at Root a while male civilization and the body of knowledge Worth knowing then and now was european and male. It passed along this tradition with the other values in those lexis. After much debate sometimes heated sometimes thoughtful the Stanford faculty Senate voted at the end of March to open up this hard Core a bit. They renamed the course cultures ideas and values and added the study of one non european culture and of race gender and class. Into this situation walked Secretary of education William Bennett last week. Bennett has honed the skills of reverse negotiation Over these years. He is an expert Al gelling to he claimed that the faculty had been intimidated into lowering its standards and in effect Lelling Down the Side. The Side being was Lem civilization. Bennett seems to regard the inclusion of women and minorities of non Western cultures into the inner Cit Elc of learning the Way Many like him regard affirmative action programs. It Means an automatic sacrifice of excellence to political pressure. He was aurely one of the few who thought that civilization was actually threatened by a Stanford student chant last fall hey hey hoho Western culture s got to but the debate raised in California is not just about the West or the great books by while european men tradition it s about agreeing on a Cenor Awrore of knowledge in a society Hal is pluralistic m it information As Well As its population. We need to share texts 10 communicate across the information explosion. Bul cries for Unity whether they Are for family Unity or National Unity can Olen be a Call to silence diversity into one traditional voice. In an Era of Sproal ipalion can we identify a common Wisdom without retreating to a narrow mind like Many other institutions Stanford is trying to do something quite difficult to pass on tradition with out perpetuating it As an exclusive dub. Going Back 10 basics does t mean going Back in Lime. A Core curriculum that left Only a european male spine would with apologies to Allan Bloom Cloud the american mind. Vijh Langlot poll w Droop
