Student Letter to U.S. Congressman Amo Houghton
By: Jamaal Carryl
College Now Course - SCI 1
December 2, 2003
Mr. Amo Houghton
1111 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20525
Phone: 202-225-3161
Dear Mr. Houghton:
My name is Jamaal Carryl, and I am writing this letter to address my concern with
space exploration. After watching the unfortunate and demeaning event of the Columbia
Space Shuttle, I have been reading and hearing about possible changes to the Space
program. The biggest possible change, and the one from which I grasp has come under
debate, is the change of the exploration process from manned to unmanned. After reviewing
the details, I would like to voice my support for manned space exploration.
After watching the innovative and captivating film, October Sky, the topic of space exploration has in some ways confirmed my support for manned
flights. As I watched the film that saw a boy by the name of Homer, fight, change
his views about a nerd, and fight the opinions of his hometown, all in the name of
flying a rocket into the sky, it confirmed for me that sometimes just the experience
of doing something is often worth the risk. In Homer's case, the risk was to lose
the respect and love of his dad and town people. Nevertheless, he looked at the risk
and did it anyway because it also contained a life change experience than he knew
he would treasure forever. This is just like manned space exploration. The few that
get to go to space know ahead of time the risk of losing, in this case their lives,
but many do it anyway because they know the experience would be something that would
change their lives forever. In both cases, Homer or people could just have observed
these things, unmanned shuttles, a rocket on TV, but they knew the experience just
would not be the same.
For most of the early history of the world rulers, historians, scientist and even
the average person, have often wondered what the skies above us contain. Moreover,
for many of those people in early history they ended up going their entire lives without
the opportunity to find out. However, for people after the 1960's, this was no longer
just a dream or wonder. Today, only a select few people get to go to space and explore
what lies beyond the skies of their cities. This is my first reason why I think we
should have manned space exploration. It is a good opportunity for people to learn
about what is out there, but more importantly, it is the experience of being out there.
The opportunity to see different planets, stars, comets, is an experience that no
high priced advance technology can bring to such a magnitude as being up there and
close to it. I am aware that an unmanned shuttle would be able to pick up the same
basic information and report it back to us; it would not provide the experience that
many have died dreaming of, even if it is just for a select few.
To some extent, I guess it puts the question on the table of whether or not an experience
of a lifetime is worth the risk in loss of life. Pondering the question, I have to
say yes. Why, you might ask? Because these people knew going in what the risks were
and decided to stay committed to it anyway. They felt that the experience was something
that they really wanted, and for some, many have prayed and dreamed for. While it
doesn't mean they don't value their life, it means that they would be happy to die
for what they desire a lot. It is just like our great national military. The proud
men and women of our country many times join the ranks because they want the experience
of taking part in the various things it offers. However, it comes with the same risk
as the manned space exploration program, loss of life. Knowing the risk, our proud
men and women sign on the dotted line for "X" amount of years anyway. Also, looking
at the money issue, while space exploration costs a lot, it results often do not involve
as much death, and has more wide spread support. The military spread huge amounts
of money, and it results in many deaths most times, and often does not have wide spread
support. If we could just look to advance the shuttle, perhaps by making them reusable,
we could save money that way. So, if the military isn't under debate, why should manned
space flights be? After all, you will find that more than double the amount of people
die in the military during a war or operation in another country than in and space
accidents. Perfect example, seven people died in the tragic Columbia space shuttle
accident. Compare that to as many as 4-12 soldiers that die every day in the current post war efforts in Iraq.
With that said, I, Jamaal Carryl, urge you, I beg you, to leave the space program
the way it is with manned flights. I hope that my views and other information above
will not only show just how strongly I feel about the matter, but also how others
felt in history and why they thought the experience was worth the risk. I know money
is a big issue and one that I did not address much, and that is because I feel that
you cannot measure everything by a dollar sign. I am aware that manned exploration
is a tremendous expense, but some things are worth spending for. This is one of them.
After all, look at people here in America. We buy huge SUV's with big TV's that burn
money as fast as we get it, just for the sake of having an SUV. The manned program
is something that I think we can squeeze in.
Sincerely,
Jamaal Carryl
