The mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope is a magnificent and historically important event.  The images coming to us from space as the astronauts work on repairing the telescope are beautiful, up close and personal and once again instill awe in those of us that watch.

For most of my life the increasingly incredible pictures and videos that have come back from space have taken we humans out of our planetary realm and realities and lifted up into the cosmos.  The world literally stopped and listened on transistor radios when John Glenn orbited earth in the early 1960s.  The whole world watched as Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon in July 1969.  The first space walks allowed us to live through others the almost unimaginable reality of a human floating freely in space.

Since then we have become detached from what NASA and other space agencies are doing up above as we have allowed ourselves to become somewhat jaded.  The first time things happen we are captivated, as they continue in on-going frequency they seem to lose their impact.  We no longer stop what we are doing to stand, listen and watch in awe. We again get absorbed both in our personal lives and the seemingly urgent and much more important political, cultural and economic dynamics of our world.

The Hubble telescope has been in orbit for 15 years.  In that time it has altered the knowledge and theories scientists have held about the universe and its infiniteness.  It has shown us …

It was 50 years ago this week that the Russians launched Sputnik, the first man made satellite to orbit the earth. It changed the world.  In fact, there are few, if any events of the last 50 years that had such a global impact on just about every aspect of humanity. I can still remember the night that, as a young boy standing in the front yard with my parents; we looked up at the starry sky waiting for Sputnik.  There it was, a slow man-made star moving across the sky. We listened to its’ beeping on the radio. It filled me with wonder.  I did not see it as Russian but rather as man made, that we humans had done this.  The phrase “The sky’s the limit” was now a phrase of the past. This was space!