At this writing, John Glenn and the rest of the crew of the space shuttle Discovery are having their traditional prelaunch steak-and-egg breakfast.

Pleased as I am to see the old guy heading spaceward again, if I hear "Godspeed, John Glenn" one more time, I may go into orbit myself.

Seriously, though, this is a great day.

Publicity stunt? Sure it is. Political payola? Sure it is. And your point?

There's no doubt in my mind that Glenn had to figuratively throw his body in the path of a legitimate Senate investigation of the president's corruption in order to get a second rocket ride, but I can certainly understand his motivation.

He's only human... a human with the "right stuff," perhaps, but human nonetheless. He got just enough of a taste of the future to be really hooked on it, and then was grounded for 36 years simply because his celebrity was a commodity too precious to risk.

Losing such a celebrated hero could have brought the fledgling space program to a screeching halt back in the '60s.

Now the situation is reversed, and putting John Glenn back into space is just the publicity shot in the arm the program needs.

If it works, our space efforts might get some new funding and develop some new goals that will move us to the next phase in the exploration of our immediate vicinity.

To those who can't see past their noses and thus wonder how we can fund space exploration when there are so many unsolved problems here on earth: how can we not?

How can we occupy this tiny speck of dust in the raging inferno that is our universe without pushing upward and outward in a search for more knowledge and more ability to react to and deal with the greater environment?

And speaking of the environment, I'm sure environmentalists reading this would like to remind me that we haven't done too well by the environment here on earth. I can hear them warning that we shouldn't mess with the environment in the rest of the solar system until we correct our past sins.

Folks, the solutions to our problems lie in the future, not the past. We're not going to solve air pollution by going back to horses and buggies. We have to feed seven billion people. Can't be done.

Try to shake off your earth-focused technophobia for just a minute and ask yourself what you think the final solutions are. Shall we start killing off people to keep the population more manageable? Shall we force birth control, sterilization and abortion on Third World peoples to keep them from overpopulating the earth?

Shall we lower the standards of living of everyone on earth so that we use its resources more slowly? And what will that buy us? A little more time before we run out of fossil fuels and half the people starve?

Don't get me wrong. I don't think the end is near. I don't agree with environmental extremists who warn that we're destroying the earth and global warming is going to kill us all in another decade or two.

But I do believe that the resources that fuel our current technologies are finite and eventually will run out, maybe not this century, maybe not the next, but eventually.

And I do believe that we need to find ways to feed ourselves and live our lives without pumping toxins into the air and water, at least in such large quantities.

In short, we do need to apply creative thinking and monetary resources to improving our stewardship of the earth, absolutely.

But celebrating "Run to Work Day" isn't going to solve these problems.

The solutions lie in the future, and the path to the future leads outward.

The space program has provided technological advances that have improved health care and food production, that have taught us more about solar power and a thousand other beneficial technologies.

They say John Glenn's mission this week has been as a guinea pig to help scientists learn more about aging. Fine. If they're serious about that, there will have to be many, many more seniors in space. One trip won't do it.

I tend to think the real mission is to provide some positive publicity designed to crank some money out of Congress. Also fine.

To solve our problems faster, we need to fund space exploration at a higher level, and if it takes this kind of publicity stunt to do it, I'm all for it.