I grew up on a steady diet of science fiction, influenced by writers imagining technology advanced enough to defy the laws of physics. In these books, people visit other planets and solar systems simply by punching coordinates into a computer. The writers created universes where humanity views space travel as a fact of life, no more outlandish than driving a car in the real world.

Beyond science fiction stories, outer space remains out of reach for most of civilization. So on Jan. 28, when Iran announced the successful launch and recovery of a rhesus monkey 72 miles into space, I reacted a bit differently than most folks.

I got excited.

Of the billions of people living on the planet Earth, mere handfuls have had the chance to see it from orbit. If this launch worked, Iran has moved one step closer to joining the United States, Russia and China as a spacefaring entity. Just three nations in all of history have achieved manned spaceflight and if another reaches that goal in my lifetime I will be ecstatic, regardless of its political relations.

Should we worry about Iran’s ballistic capabilities? Rockets powerful enough to launch monkeys into space could easily carry weapons to Iran’s enemies. Iran’s developing nuclear program could as easily produce nuclear warheads as it could nuclear power.

Well, of course we should be worried. Iran and the United States rarely speak on good terms, let alone trust each other with powerful weapons. But the mistrust and anger doesn’t stem from the technology. People fashion scientific discoveries into weapons as well as tools. Science by itself can only discover new functional technology or confirm an idea doesn’t work.

I have reservations about Iran’s nuclear program. I don’t trust Iran with that power and I’m concerned about the objectives behind its space program. But attempts to deny Iran or any other country those developments will not succeed. They will reach those goals eventually.

Instead of preventing our enemies from obtaining space flight, nuclear capabilities or any other advanced technology, we need to work on developing our relationships with them so we can collaborate in developing those technologies together. The huge ideological divide between the United States and Iran grew over years and it won’t mend any time soon.

The gap widened further by 140 characters or less on Feb. 4 with a tweet from Senator John McCain. After Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad expressed his readiness “to be the first Iranian to sacrifice myself for our country’s scientists,” as the first Iranian-born, Iranian-launched astronaut, McCain sent out a tweet suggesting Ahmadinejad was in fact the “monkey” launched.

Wrong genus and species, Senator McCain. Instead of showcasing your ineptitude identifying primates, perhaps you should work harder at not insulting the ones you do work with – Homo sapiens. Here’s an example: Iran, congratulations on launching your rhesus monkey, and I hope the world can see Macaca mulatta followed up by a human being someday soon.

To the monkey: Congrats on coming home in one piece. Maybe once humankind gets its act together, we’ll take off and leave this planet to the apes.