Atlantis

Today on the way to the faculty I walked past a language school advertising one of the numerous "work and travel" programs that are offered to young Czech students. The deal is that you sign up with one of these language schools (travel agencies also do this), they arrange a job for the student in the US or Australia or the UK or wherever, and then you get a little time at the end to travel around the country you just worked in. Lots of times the work is not particularly glamorous, but it's good pay by Czech standards, and you get to practice your English, see a new country, the usual.

Anyway, while walking past this particular language school I saw their poster for traveling through the US, with the usual things our country is famous for, and the things that non-Americans think of when they think of the USA. There were of course, the Statue of Liberty, the Grand Canyon, the beautiful California beaches, Times Square, the Capitol, and the beautiful Florida beaches too -- complete with space shuttle.

Whether we like it or not, we must lead. Soft Power matters when people in other countries say "I want that for my country someday," or "Gosh, that country can really do some special stuff!" Space exploration is one of these things. It's all well and good to have a nice big welfare state where nobody cheats and everybody is one big happy family. But it's not what makes one's country truly special, or admired. You can't put a welfare plan on a poster and it doesn't make schoolchildren dream.

There are definitely problems with the space program -- its bureaucracy has become horribly ossified, it sometimes seems to lack a vision, and it's terribly wasteful. But at the same time, it serves a purpose greater than many of the other ridiculous things that ooze out of Washington. And it's something that people around the world notice. And they notice it closing down too.