In December 2003 I took part in a closed-door roundtable discussion on NASA’s goals in space and how to relate them to the public, led by then NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe. Among the participants was filmmaker Jim Cameron, creator of such epics as Titanic, Terminator, and the upcoming Avatar. At one point, as I was voicing my frustration at NASA’s past failures to communicate its activities in a compelling way, Jim zeroed in on the real problem. “It’s not enough to tell the story,” he said. “You have to have a good story to tell.”

I thought of Jim’s comment the other day when I was watching spacewalking astronauts of the shuttle Atlantis repair and refurbish the Hubble Space Telescope. I sat there in front of my computer–none of the kaleidoscope of channels on Comcast were covering the event–and watched live video of the astronauts performing the equivalent of brain surgery on the beloved telescope, transcending the limitations of bulky spacesuits and stiff, pressurized gloves in an extraordinary weightless ballet. And once again, as I always do when the space program is at its best, I felt amazed, inspired–and grateful.

In short, I felt the way I almost never do any more when I watch astronauts working in space, even when the tasks are just as challenging, the views just as magnificent. Fixing Hubble, giving it new life and new capabilities, is the kind of thing that’s worth the cost and the risks of sending people into space. What we’ve gotten from that orbiting discovery machine, aesthetically as well as scientifically, is priceless. Yet, for all the engineering magnificence of the International Space Station–and, for that matter, the shuttle itself–it’s hard for me to avoid the feeling that all those flights, those countless hours of station-contruction spacewalks, haven’t gotten us much farther along the road to new explorations, new discoveries. Maybe someone out there will convince me I’m mistaken. But right now, I long for more missions like the Hubble repair, more good stories to tell.

Welcome to my new blog, Chaikin’s Space. I’m going to be talking about space exploration, and why after more than half a century it’s still one of the things that makes me glad to be alive.

This painting of the liftoff of a Saturn V moon rocket, Power to GO by the supremely talented artist Paul Calle, does a lot to show why I feel this way. It’s not just the sheer intensity of the moment, or even the incredible ingenuity that went into actually creating a moonship and getting it to work. It’s what it says about us humans, and our dreams, and what we’re capable of accomplishing when we pull together.

And it’s about where that rocket is going. Even now, when I think of the fact that the moon is no longer just a light in the sky but a place where people have been, and will return to, I feel the thrill of being on a grand continuum of exploration. I feel thankful that as a teenager I got to witness the voyages of Apollo as they were taking place, and that as an adult I could tell the story of Apollo through the eyes of the astronauts. Ultimately, one of the things that really “lights my candle,” to use Apollo 12 moonwalker Pete Conrad’s phrase, is the story we are all living through. It’s a story that has already spanned generations and will continue, I firmly believe, as long as humans exist, one that provides a spectacular context to our day-to-day lives.

What a story, and what a time to be alive.

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