Posted on 04/25/2006 7:46:30 AM PDT by Natty Bumppo@frontier.net
Failure Is Not An Option
My Two Cents on Taking Up Space
By David J. Aland 14 April 2006
We visited the Kennedy Space Center this week, a bittersweet reunion for me. I have long been a fan of the Space Program, too young to appreciate the Mercury flights, but fully tuned to the Gemini and Apollo programs. Every mission fed a growing spark of enthusiasm, and fed my hope that some day I might also walk upon the Moon. My school years were measured as much by missions as by other milestones. I clearly recall the tense days of ’68 still ending with the triumph of Apollo VIII, and how summer ’69 was superheated by Neil Armstrong’s one great leap. All I wanted was to get through college while there were still enough missions left for me.
But then there came the decade of drought. While the space program coasted, I made it through the Naval Academy, but missed the cut for flight school, never to be a pilot. I spent nearly three decades in uniform, however, often on the fringe of the Space Program, but never part of it. I almost never missed a launch, and watched shuttles lift from a hundred miles away when I had an office on the Florida coast. I listened to the ’81 flight of Columbia from half the world away, and grimly set sail in ’86 to recover debris from Challenger. There was the joyful day in ’95 when one of my Academy classmates flew Columbia into space, and that hideous day in ’03 when the first of all the shuttles ended her last mission in fiery disaster.
I was born close to when the Space Program began, grew up as it matured, and I now find myself in middle age, still hoping to take that walk on the Moon. I certainly don’t feel past my prime, so I have to wonder why the space program looks so over-the-hill to me these days. I thought a visit to the Space Center would fill in the blanks. In times past, visiting would fill me with hope and wonder, for it was a gritty place where it was easy to imagine the best engineers and pilots in the world were congregating to cook up something else amazing.
But nowadays, a visit to the Cape might as well be to Disneyworld -- the grit of genius has been replaced by the gloss of a theme park, and the very right stuff of inspiration has given way to marketing. As music is piped into the tourist areas, the launch pads and buildings seem like little more than oversized props. The epicenter of American ingenuity has become a slightly corny tourist trap. While the Space Center will always be sacred to me for what has already been achieved there, it’s no longer the same. When I stood in the garden of rockets this time, that spark was just not there.
It shouldn’t surprise me, then, that so few people have any kind of interest in the Space Program anymore. I hear people say America should “spend less money in space, and more at home”, as though they didn’t know that all the money was spent here – on jobs, technology, and innovations we take for granted, but may have never seen without a space program. Others ask the practical purpose of exploration. I’m sure Queen Isabella asked Cristobal Columbo the same questions, but the real reason for exploration and discovery is more than tawdry financial rationalizations we use.
In the past few years, we have all come to recognize that this planet may be too small and too fragile to contain all the dreams, desires, and curiosity of the creatures it has spawned. We are both a hungry and a questing species, wired by DNA, Creator, or both to seek beyond our limits, to go a little bit farther. We cannot avoid but to take those needs and yearnings starward, and the stars are a frontier that has beckoned to us for half a century. We once sent men to the moon, and even brought home a wounded spacecraft from farther away than anyone had ever ventured – when did we lose that kind of spark and imagination?
Maybe we haven’t. Last year, a handful of engineers sent a home-made spacecraft up not once, but twice in less than two weeks. They reminded me a lot of a bunch of folks who used to work in Florida a few years back, and, for the first time in a long time, I felt that spark again. It’s the kind of feeling every American should experience, that deep knowledge that almost anything is possible. It’s the kind of feeling that we seem to be missing a lot, these days.
I’m not interested in taking up space, I want to go there, and I wish more of us felt the same way. This is more than just a technological luxury – it may well be one of the keys to the survival of the human race. It may actually be the next step in our evolution. All things considered, failure is clearly not an option.
I was born right when the Space Program was taking off too...I still have the dream.
I think this deserves a Generation X/Reagan Ping!
My earliest memories include sitting around with the whole family and watching hours of coverage of the moon landings.
Cool! I have vague memories of watching on television - I *do* have lots of memories of going to the Johnson Space Center and getting to just wander around the campus...now its been set apart as accesible only through the Space Center built by Disney, but the whole thing is going through some renevations to make it more visitor friendly.
I just watched Apollo 13 for the umpteenth time, although I still prefer the real documentary of those anxious days.
Gene Krantz is one of my personal heroes. That flight alone was brought out the best in everyone and in my mind was even more amazing than walking on the moon. To quote Gene 'with all due respect, i think this will be our finest hour." Can't even write about it without tears in my eyes.
I, too grew up watching those early launches, including Friendship 7, huddled around a TV in the school. Splashdowns were always a family viewing event :-).
I wanted to be an astronaut, settled for working for an aerospace contractor and sadly, much of the old fire of ingenuity retired some time ago. Like another poster remarked, China is interested in space. Maybe we'll rekindle our interest when the enemy is at the doorstep.
Unfortunately, until NASA gets rid of the bureaucratasclerosis is had contracted and again becomes the lean. mean engineering organization it was in the 1960's, nothing much will ever be accomplished. The symbiotic relationship between current NASA and the two aerospace companies will ensure that nothing new gets done.
Personally, I would like to see them quit being such an impediment to private enterprise. To paraphrase the Chicoms, "Let a thousand flowers bloom!" Allow unfettered competitive private outfits launch and use the most effective of the bunch for launch services.
Krantz is one gentleman I would love to meet someday.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.