It's the people with really bad ideas that push humankind forward. Great inventions all seem monumentally stupid the first time someone tries it.
A very long time ago, probably in France, an old woman called her husband. "Hey, Pierre!" she said. "Remember those spoiled grapes in the cellar? I just stepped all over them with my poor, dirty feet, and I think you should taste them."
Any sane person would've said no. Pierre said yes, and wine was born.
Years later, another person with more guts than brains would be the first to drink a cup of carbonated, fermented barley and hops that looked like piss.
And the success of seemingly bad ideas isn't limited to inventing booze.
During the Stone Age, one demented caveman looked at a cow. Then he-- you know it was a he-- looked at the fire in front of his cave, and he had an idea.
It's possible his plan didn't work quite right the first time. Throwing the whole, living cow into the fire may have been less satisfying than he had hoped. His wife probably begged him to stop trying. But eventually he learned to cut the cow up first, and man has been grilling steaks ever since.
And don't even get me started about the first person to taste cottage cheese.
More recently, someone decided to give $50,000 to Ball State so we could plug in gigantic lights, let big men throw a ball -- and each other -- around in the grass, and blow-up gun powder every once in a while. The donor thought it sounded like fun.
Behind each of these people was a crowd of unbelievers, shaking their heads and rolling their eyes.
The unbelievers were wrong.
And not every seemingly moronic stroke of genius is as ultimately inconsequential as wine, steak and football.
Just a few decades ago, the most brilliant American scientists decided it would be a good plan to strap a person to the top of a giant metal tube full of fuel, light it on fire, and hope it hit space. Then the ship would drop like a stone for miles and miles until it ran into the ocean.
Amazingly enough, a few brave Americans actually took the scientists up on their offer.
They orbited the earth. They went to the moon. They built a city in space.
On a few occasions, these brave Americans made the ultimate sacrifice so the crazy pursuit of knowledge could continue apace. The names of those disasters are still spoken with the respect they deserve: Apollo 1. Challenger. And now, Columbia.
The official investigation into the Columbia explosion has pointed a finger straight at the same culture of recklessness that led to the Challenger explosion 17 years ago. In so many words, it says the NASA administration became cocky.
In the face of the death of seven amazing human beings seven months ago, returning to space seems like an even worse idea than it might under normal circumstances.
But that is exactly what we have to do.
Of course, we should do everything we can to learn from our mistakes. NASA needs to make fundamental changes to be as safe as possible. But when that work is done, the crazy, inspired, daring Americans who choose to go to space must be given our support to do so.
The benefits of working beyond our planet are hard to see now, and the nay-sayers are silently shaking their heads and rolling their eyes.
But, like usual, they're wrong.
Write to Stephen at stevehj@mac.com
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