By Tom Plate

The tragic fate of the space shuttle Columbia offers vital clues for both America and Asia. It dramatically symbolizes technology's inherent limitations and potential fallibility. The world must understand that modern technology, as impressive as it is, is a god that can fail.

In part because its technology has been for so many decades its strong suit, America has proudly and easily held the global lead in the race into space. In the early '60s, when it was in need of an overriding national mission, what did it do? Shoot for the moon.

Even today, technological ability influences U.S. options in many aspects of policy, including in international relations.

Have a big problem with a Middle Eastern tyrant? Get those cruise missiles ready for firing. Want to project muscular influence across the far reaches of the globe without having to airlift and house millions of troops on site? Simply extend the technological umbrella of the vast U.S. missile and nuclear arsenal, ignoring moral qualms about not committing to a no-first-use policy.

The flaw in blindly worshiping the technology god is that it isn't always the right answer and for many problems can be precisely the wrong one. The Columbia disaster should remind us that you can ride the technology moonbeam only so far: Ride it too hard and too long, and it can blow up in your face.

Alas, America has been otherwise so successful with its technology that others fervently wish to follow in its wake. Scarcely waiting for all the debris from the Columbia disaster to settle to Earth, Chinese President Jiang Zemin was quick to pronounce that there would be no pause in China's space program.

Last month, Mongolia watched as China's Shenzhou IV spacecraft plopped down on its territory after its planned week in orbit. "This latest mission," mindlessly enthused China Daily, "further testified to the maturity of China's space technology and laid a solid foundation for the country to realize its long-cherished dream of manned space flights."

That's China's dream?

Its first manned mission may arrive in October to coincide with National Day celebrations. If successful, that would confer on China historic status — at least in its own mind. It would also put a halo over the Chinese military, which enjoys major sway in the country's so-called civilian space program — as, increasingly, will the Pentagon over the U.S. program under Bush administration plans. Given this parallel development, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out where the world is headed: a Cold War-like race in space.

It's sad to see China going down this road, but perhaps it's inevitable. There is only one superpower; so there is only one working definition of what it takes to become a superpower. "This cause of exploration and discovery is not an option we choose," President Bush said last week at the memorial ceremony for the seven astronauts. "It is a desire written in the human heart."

That presumably includes the heart of China, which, while it can't house, feed and clothe much more than half its population, is also caught in the grip of that old-time technological religion.

Space technology is expensive. Even the United States — wealthy as it is — has had to cut its program down to size. The Japanese, who are far richer than their Chinese friends, appear to have made the decision to focus only on the commercial satellite-launching game; curiously, they fail to divine much of an export market on Mars.

But Beijing, seeking to shadow the United States in its technology worship, is off to the space race. Why not? What else does it have? Hardly anyone believes nowadays in communism, the god that failed all 1.3 billion Chinese. What else does it have to deify?

One good humanitarian answer would be a global space program in which all nations would work together — a kind of Team Earth. This would put the emerging Sino-U.S. relationship to the test, to be sure, and force the two civilian leaderships to shunt their respective military establishments into the back seat. But such vision and courage would not only circumvent a space race in Asia; it would also present (to whatever might be out there in this universe) the impressive specter of a united Earth.

Now that would be a program worth praying — not to mention paying — for.

Tom Plate, whose column appears regularly in The Honolulu Advertiser, is a professor at UCLA. Reach him at tplate@ucla.edu. He also has a spot on the Web.