650 million people were watching as Neil Armstrong became the first man on the moon. The world was captivated by the inspiring story of a man travelling to another world, not to mention the national pride and the inspiration it brought to young people across the United States. So what changed? For the young people of the country who are learning and preparing themselves to fill the next generation’s worth of scientists, engineers, leaders and so on, there has been a noticeable waning of interest in space exploration.
This is no coincidence. World events, government policies and international politics all frame the interests students have, beyond the obvious ways you might expect. History and government teacher Diana Shea commented, “You really started to see the emphasis on this with President Kennedy in 1961, when he addressed a joint session of Congress on what became known as the space race.” This meant a massive shift in governmental resources towards advancing space exploration to “beat the Russians” and become technologically superior. This meant a synonymous shift in public sentiment and focus on space as well. Media, toys, and even clothing branding all hyper focused on the excitement of exploring the cosmos, which lasted for many years as a result of government fund allocations for this time. “It does impact our culture and the school systems in particular, because then you really start to see emphasis on math and science,” according to Shea. It is not only the media, but schools and students themselves put emphasis on STEM areas to train the next generation of researchers and engineers, as result of increased government funding on these areas. Space was widely regarded as the exciting “final frontier.”
In more recent years, the scenario has changed. In 1972, the last Apollo mission went up, and no human has been on the moon again since. The space race had been “won” by the US (solidified by the USSR’s fall in 1991), and the global excitement around space began to wane. “You see in the 1980s that the cost of space starts to rise, and the government is looking at cutting funds,” Shea commented, “…and in the early 80s, you had the space disaster of the Challenger exploding.” This does not directly explain a lack of intrigue on the students’ part these days. What does is the fact that a governmental shift away from the priority of space meant it was in the public’s attention less.
Despite these gradual changes, however, it is certainly not to say that education regarding such STEM fields has waned as well. Woodgrove senior Jaden Park attends the Academies of Loudoun for engineering, and said that, to him, “As we begin to understand more, there becomes less curiosity of the unknown.” The “novelty,” as Shea put it, of that initial space race is lost, and so the topic loses interest to even STEM-loving students like Park, who think it simply is not as important anymore. He described feeling like we are in a low-point of space progress: we have already achieved the moon, and for other goals like Mars, he said, “Since it feels like a future that’s really far away, I don’t personally find it that interesting.”
In reality, the progress we have made in space exploration is greater now than most people know—joint efforts from NASA and international space agencies have brought us closer than ever to putting humans on Mars and on the moon again. Still, a lack of current government funding has meant there is not as much media attention toward it, and not only from the “current stripping down of government funding programs with the new administration,” said Shea. Park explained, “Seeing as we have a finite amount of resources, we should be putting a reasonable amount of effort towards it, but since it’s not a crucial task right now, we shouldn’t push off other things for it.” He is a STEM-centered student, but believes that other aspects of science and technology are more important now, such as “the AI and digital frontier.” Space is a frontier that everyone is aware of, but with problems on earth, a lack of government and media focus, and other more publicly-relevant technological innovations, the public seems to think it may not be the final one. Still, the innovations made in the space exploration field hold importance, and as we come closer to a new era of exploring Mars and the rest of our galaxy, it is not over yet.