Sometimes I wonder if America's fascination is more with the small items they can fit in their pocket rather than the big events that have marked the progress of man. Most kids today seems more impressed with the iPod, iPhone and now the iPad, rather than the fact that each year the United States and its partners are sending men and woman into space to watch over this great globe and prepare for even greater things. Maybe if we had an iShuttle kids would pay attention. I have to give NASA credit for trying to keep up. Twittering astronauts, as well as NASA applications for the iPhone, shows the Agency understands these trends.My concern is that the cools things today are still the miniaturized items rather than the big things. We seem to be getting the medium confused with the message. In the parlance of the Internet economy, what we need is more content. The brave men and women pushing at the edges of space (and our knowledge of space), be it in manned or robotic vehicles, are all about content. That is why I am worried about a White House that waits until the second year of an administration to even talk about America's plans for space. We do not want more committees. Rather, we are looking for leadership. Only that will get all of us, particularly the kids, to look up from our iphones and stare into the heavens again. Let's hope we see some of this leadership next month when the President travels to Florida to discuss his vision for our space mission.
