This is being published on Sputnik Day, October 4, the 62nd anniversary of the Soviet Union’s launch of the first orbiting satellite, back in 1957. I remember it well, having just started sixth grade. Just 13 years later, I found myself tracking Sputnik’s successors from a radar site in Turkey.
Of course, Sputnik kicked off the space race, culminating in the U.S. putting men on the moon, July 20, 1969, which I wrote about five times during the 50th anniversary week.
Those were exciting times, and I’m glad that we were able to develop the technology for the Apollo moon program; technology that, by the way, laid the foundation for many of the things we enjoy today. I’m also glad that people like Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, is spending his time these days applying technology to other pressing problems.
When he and his wife, Melinda, read that huge numbers of children in the world are still dying before the age of five from diarrhea, they jumped on it. They discovered that the issue is not just lack of clean water, it’s the lack of sanitation. So the Gates challenged scientists and manufacturers to develop self-contained toilets and sewage treatment plants, devices that can run without being connected to electricity or running water. And they are succeeding!
By Janicki Bioenergy – Janicki Bioenergy, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58429271
Some people would say that the Gates are contributing to Shalom – the Hebrew word for peace – but not just the absence of conflict but human flourishing.
Shalom: peace, safety, prosperity, well-being; intactness, wholeness; peace…
Bringing sustainable sanitation to the developing world is a worthy endeavor, an astounding use of technology. It’s also an example of good things that are happening in the word that don’t make news! (That’s another whole subject!) By the way, I learned about the Gates’ sanitation work in the first episode of the Netflix 3-part series called Inside Bill’s Brain.
Seek the peace [shalom] and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” (Jeremiah 29.7, NIV)