Fifty years ago this week, the Soviet Union stunned the world by orbiting a space satellite, Sputnik.

In 1957, Americans felt that we might lose the Cold War if the Russians could gain the “high frontier” of outer space. Fortunately, our political system rose to the challenge, providing the world with a lesson in the power of good leadership and mobilization in a free society.

Unfortunately, we are seeing little of that “can do” spirit today. And these techno-failures are hurting us here on Earth, to say nothing of the lost horizon of American leadership in space.

Back then, the 34th president was determined to gather the tools to do the job right. Dwight Eisenhower knew that we needed more than rockets to out-fly the Soviets; we also needed scientists who could out-think Moscow. Within a year of Sputnik, Ike signed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration into law; in addition, he inked the National Defense Education Act, establishing science training as an urgent priority.

And it worked: Barely more than a decade later, in 1969, America put two astronauts on the moon. Uncle Sam had won the space race.

But since the ’60s, interest in space has stagnated. At the political level, Americans have lost enthusiasm for “big” projects like the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Apollo Project. Yes, the government is often incompetent, but voters seem to have neglected the idea that reform can make the government more competent. Instead, we have given up: Rather than risk higher taxes, we would rather have bad roads, and bad mass transit, forever.

Meanwhile, in their personal lives, Americans have chosen to go psychically inward – first with drugs, then with New Age navel-gazing and, more recently, with the Internet.

The problem, of course, is that some things need doing by the collective. There’s such a thing as a “public good,” which transcends the aggregation of private interests.

Perhaps none of us in a certain neighborhood feel like being firefighters; in which case, we’d better hire someone willing to undertake that chore and provide the best possible equipment, for our own selfish sakes if nothing else. Similarly, we need energetic people to go exploring, opening up new frontiers and establishing new places to live, on worlds beyond our own.

The 1968 movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” presumed that by the dawn of the 21st century, a regular “shuttle” service would exist between Earth and the moon. Well, that prophecy never came to pass. Indeed, during these past four decades, scrimping on infrastructure has left even our familiar air service in a shambles; the Department of Transportation finds that more than a quarter of flights are delayed or canceled.

Meanwhile, other countries – Russia, China, Japan – are looking spaceward, eyeing the moon and Mars. What do they know that we don’t?

Yet, the problem for America is even more immediate: Complacency and indolence about our national priorities have infected our military, too, such that we can no longer decisively win our wars, even against low-tech foes. Back in the ’40s, the military-industrial complex built an atomic bomb, from scratch, in less than four years. Not bad.

By contrast, six years into the Afghan war and 4 1/2 years into the Iraq war, the basics of cost-effective military occupation have eluded us.

This week The Washington Post has presented a sobering look at the Pentagon’s dithering response to the threat to our troops from “improvised explosive devices.” In the bitter quip of former Gen. John Abizaid, “We asked for the Manhattan Project, and we got the Peoria Project.”

The world is at least as dangerous in 2007 as it was in 1957. And yet, the best response today would be the same as it was then: honest political leadership that articulates the problem and then is willing to do what it takes – and spend what it takes – to find the solution.