Brent Colton is a retired CIA operations officer now in the employ of the Creighton Corporation, a privately owned think tank that advocates various opinions on world issues, but it’s his clandestine job to solve the dirty problems for their private clients for a million dollar fee with no questions asked. When recovering stolen technology from a Vietnamese industrialist, Colton obtains evidence that he secretly partnered with a U.S. Senatorto rig the recent presidential election and elect him to the nation’s highest office.

WILL WE EVER TAKE THE NEXT GIANT LEAP IN SPACE EXPLORATION?
by Terry Heath, 2005

As we approach the date of July 20, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the first successful landing of men on the moon by the two American astronauts of Apollo 11, the space shuttle Discovery presently sits on the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It is unable to lift-off and return our nation to space after a two and a half-year hiatus from orbital flight because of problems with the shuttle's external fuel tank. Once this setback is resolved it is expected the shuttle will blast-off in the next few weeks and rendezvous with the orbiting International Space Station with delivery of supplies to the astronauts currently on assignment there, making this America's first manned flight into space since the destruction of the orbiter Columbia in 2003 as it attempted re-entry.

It's good to see that NASA is attempting to fulfill its commitment to the upkeep of ISS as one of the members of the sixteen countries operating the station, but one has to wonder just what NASA's long-term goals for the civilian uses of space are. Has there ever been an independent long-term agenda developed by the government agency on what this nation's goals for space exploration should be that doesn't include the whims and needs of self-serving politicians who happen to be the temporary occupant of the White House or others in the ranks of the Washington politician's hierarchy?

Everyone over the age of forty witnessed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin land their lunar module Eagle on a crater-filled plain in the Sea of Tranquility on that mid-July Sunday in 1969. Subsequently, an additional ten men, all Americans, stepped on the soil of the moon between 1969 to 1972. Yet, in the decades since, three of those pioneers have died and the remaining nine are either approaching or are in the seventies age range and all have long left public service. But few American citizens recall who those men were and even less of us know why our government abandoned all manned exploration of the moon just three short years after our first landing with our last mission there, Apollo 17, left lunar orbit to return to Earth in December, 1972 when it seemed we were poised to remain there on a long-term basis.

The National Space and Administration Agency was formed in 1958 during the Dwight Eisenhower presidential tenure to run this country's growing space exploration program. But it was newly inaugurated President John F. Kennedy in 1961 who determined that this country's space program should include putting an American on the surface of the moon and return safely back to Earth by the end of that decade as one of the major goals of his presidential administration.

Now one has to admit in hindsight that JFK's sponsored Apollo moon-landing program and the subsequent billions of tax dollars spent on that endeavor was the results of the Cold War battle that we Americans were waging against the then Soviet Union in that hectic time frame of the 1960's as the Soviets were pursuing their own major space exploration and our side did not know what their ultimate goal would be. This was the U.S. government's second major attempt to advance science and technology for our own military and civilian benefit in a twenty-year time-span in the mid-point of the 20th Century with the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb during World War Two being the first. But we were in a war against the evils of fascism in that time and then we were battling against the Soviets for control of the world during the second to justify such a development. NASA has now been asked by President George W. Bush to prepare a new initiative to send our astronauts back to the moon as a stepping stone to eventual exploration and colonization of the nearby planet of Mars. So what would be enough justification of pursuing such an obvious expensive project for the third time in the last seventy-five years? Solely based on our scientist's need for exploration and examination on how the solar system and the universe were created? Doubtful, especially under current political and financial circumstances. We will need some other catalyst to propel such a program forward to get public support or we must consider alternative choices and finances. The problem for the space agency is that they have never recovered the interest and excitement of the short-term attention span U.S. public over their early successes of space exploration because the typical American has a philosophy on life that seems to be 'I want it done and I want it done now!' Once we made it to the moon in 1969 there seemed to be no justification for our staying there on a permanent basis so President Richard Nixon gutted the program during his time in office, despite the wishes of the National Space Council that was headed by his own vice-president, that urged additional exploration of the moon to be followed by a journey of American explorers to the planet Mars in the mid-1980's.

Do we now have the resolve as a nation and people to support a thirty or fifty-year engineering and scientific program to reach our neighbor planet, solely based on a need for scientific exploration? We didn't in 1970. What makes one think that we as a more cynical and self-absorbed society will support such a long-term commitment at present? The problem we face is that there will always be too many short-term problems here on Earth that politicians and bureaucrats will want to fix in their particular jurisdiction that will take away funds for such a long-term goal. There are too many congressmen and senators in Washington always on the prowl for monetary pork for their particular district or state in the shape of a bridge or community building and voting to reduce the budget of the space agency for their petty needs is an easy temptation. The first George Bush proposed a return to the moon in 1989 on the twentieth anniversary of the first lunar landing but Congress balked at its high cost and the idea went nowhere. The next chief executive, Bill Clinton, learned from Bush's mistake and made no bold moves regarding NASA during his eight years in office. Current President George W. Bush proclaimed in 2002 that we should make the exploration to the moon as a stepping stone to the eventual manned exploration of Mars and the remaining planets of the solar system with an eventual goal of returning us to the moon by the year 2020! That's twice as long as it took for us to get there the first time back in the 1960's with 1960's era technology. How can a proposal that would take twice as long as previous and cost how many billions more be justifiable to the U.S. taxpayer?has a new administrator named Michael Griffin and he seems sincere in reiterating the space agency's aim of making a return to the moon and eventual return to Mars as part of President George W. Bush's vision of space for the next thirty years. But he is a government bureaucrat and will have to deal with the reality of working with the politicians of Washington. And with each presidential administration only in office for a maximum of eight years it seems unlikely that the proposed Moon-Mars journey will take place in current form as successors to the White House make changes to the plan for their own political benefit. America and the world fully support such a monumental project for a Moon-Mars program then it seems unlikely that we will ever go to either at public expense. If this country is serious about a return to the moon and eventual exploration of Mars and the remaining planets of the solar system then NASA is going to have to take as many investment partners as they can, whether they be other governments or entities from the private sector in exchange for a piece of the action and potential profits that could arise from the exploitation of space. of American moviegoers have spent some of their leisure dollars this summer going to see the movies 'Star Wars-Revenge of the Sith' and 'War of the Worlds,' which would indicate that there is a segment of the population who are interested and would support a greater need to explore the real solar system. One recalls that in the movie '2001: A Space Odyssey,' writer Arthur C. Clarke portrayed the 21st Century globe and its citizens as fulfilling its commitment to space exploration with plans for manned visits to the remaining planets of the solar system. We have an opportunity to actually do this. But we won't be able to on the government's dollar. It will have to be accomplished by private-sector visionaries who are more interested in the overall good of the world and what we can learn from other worlds to insure our own planet's survival than what their stockholders demand from them in a short-term quest for quick profits. But are there any visionaries left in the world who would be interested? If not, then it will be at least another one hundred years before the moon or Mars have visitors from Earth.

Terry Heath California E-Mail readermail@terryheathbooks.com