Is space worth it? Roger, Houston.

I grew up in the cultural afterglow of the Apollo program, weaned on Star Trek episodes, coming of age in the first Star Wars era.

Okay, yes, I was Luke Skywalker two Halloweens in a row. And space still fascinates me.

I know, I know. Vast distances and unimaginably hostile environments await humans outside of our safe terrestrial bubble.

This gorgeous earth of ours is, literally, irreplaceable.

But four decades after we briefly touched the moon, I remain convinced that some essential answers to basic human questions await us Up There.

Secular mysticism? Yeah, there’s probably some of that.

When I look through our family telescope in our back field in Westport, I’m experiencing what a lot of my neighbors must feel on Sunday morning when they settle into the pew.

There is one significant difference though.

If we find away to colonize and make practical use of the resources outside our atmosphere, it won’t be the product of divine intervention.

We will have clawed our way into space through our own ingenuity, grit and curiosity.

I think that spirit of exploration and possibility could prove invaluable in a society as restless as ours.

Put bluntly, America needs a frontier.

Obviously, there are some missing pieces. We need better practical reasons to go aloft. Tourism and a kind of Post-Apollo Manifest Destiny won’t cut it.

Without better commercial pay-offs, the expense and danger will make space flight seem like the fantasies of a schoolboy on Halloween.

We also need some radical new innovation, developing vehicles that use truly modern technology.

The space shuttle fleet was built using 1970s concepts and materials. The “newest” shuttle, launched 15 years ago, was literally built using spare parts.

To bring down the costs and dangers of space, we need to leapfrog out of the Carter Era.

To pay for that kind of wholesale upgrade, we’d need some new priorities. And maybe that’s worth thinking about, too.

The money we spent on the war in Iraq? That line-item alone would have allowed the U.S. to double NASA’s budget for the next half-century.

Just imagine the places we might have gone.