I noted with interest the reaction of people in general about the Atlantis Shuttle launch today. There was a sense of disbelief, even disappointment in the launch. The Last. Finished. The End of an Era. To tell the truth I didn't give it much thought, nor cared. I knew it was coming, but it didn't seem to matter. We live in an age where Seniors in the next 10 years may loose there medical and retirement benefits, the economy is anemic to say the least, gas prices are still very high. Soldiers are still in Iraq. Just one more end to our greatness. Or to be cynical, the end of more bloated, wasteful government spending on useless programs.
During the 90's I really questioned the need for NASA. The space race as I grew up knowing it was to " beat the Russians " . Can't let the commies put a missile on the moon, so my grandfather would say to me. There was a sense of National purpose to all this. The cold war was on and it had to be fought for freedom.It's strange though, I was not always so critical of the program. In fact as a boy I did want to be an astronaut. I learned the Constellations, took a great interest in science, physics, chemistry these were things that if I did not learn in school, I found the information myself in the Library. I don't know when that changed, and I don't know why that changed, I just know that at some point it become just another shuttle launch, or just another satellite put into orbit, yet for the most part, the history of NASA and all the combined missions are a timeline of my life for the most part.
I was born on the 21st of February in 1962, as a child growing up my mother always made a remark that had I been born a few hours earlier I would have been born on the same day that John Glenn orbited the Earth. She often talked about that as I was growing up. I can remember riding in the back seat of my fathers car listening to the radio,both my sister and I, when Neil Armstrong was setting foot on the moon. I was still pretty young, but I remember the excitement of the grownups of this happening, you just KNEW something big was going on. My next memories are of the launch of Skylab, and the local news talking about how you could see the spaceship passing over Detroit, and that night I went out in the backyard and saw the lights and a faint trail of the jets at the rear of the craft for only a moment. It was so exciting to be a kid and look up and see this craft right over your house. I was standing there with my sister yelling " see it ....... see it..... !
After that my next real memory was when the Shuttle Challenger had exploded. I had just gotten out of the Navy, I was laying on my Aunt's living room floor watching TV. Everyone had gone for the day, every one was at work, and I knew the launch was going to take place so I flipped the channel ( in those days you had to do it by hand ) and the ship took off and then .....B O O M !. It was surreal, my eyes told me everything that was going on, but my brain refused to accept the reality. The ship had exploded, it was gone. Surely everyone on board was killed, and then a few seconds later you could hear the tower; it appears there has been a malfunction........ya think ? was all my brain could say to no one in particular. I sat there in total disbelief of what I had seen, but knew it was as real as the carpet underneath me.
Really the next thought I have of NASA would be of the Colombia, it was a Saturday morning, just another mission. It was gray and cold, and that was all that was on the radio all morning long, and you just knew once again that all those aboard were lost, it had occurred to me that morning that it had been a long time since I had cared about a shuttle launch, and really the only reason I knew about it was because my father was watching it on television, otherwise I would have read about it on the Internet. There is the major change in all of our lives. We now had access to the world, and there were 500 channels on the television rather than 3, this gave us more opportunity to explore other things, to open our eyes to what WE wanted to see, rather than what the networks wanted to push into our living rooms. Don't want to watch the President's speech, no problem...... what's on HBO ?
Quite frankly until this morning I have not thought about NASA, or the Shuttle as I said, I do think much of the program is a waste of money. I do think we pour billions into a program that does not give back in return that what it is perceived to give. Maybe though there is a hidden hypocrisy within all of us. Or let me take all the blame here. I don't want the shuttle program to end. I don't want NASA to end. I want the glory of what NASA does stand for, I want the glory of what this country can be when she sets her mind to it. I do love when " we the people " roll up our sleeves and do the impossible, when we "Americans" do what no one else can do. I want An American to be the first. That is what NASA always stood for, and what America has stood for.Let me go out on a limb. I have no right to do this, but I want to speak for a generation of Americans. Do not End the NASA program. Let us pledge to endeavour forward and make NASA what it was meant to be. The problem is, as it is for much of our country, there is no direction. There seems to be no purpose. Existing for it's own sake NASA has come to embody much of the American malaise. You can have the best engineers, the finest pilots, the most sophisticated computers known to man, but if ya got no where to go, then what is the point of being here. what is the point of fueling a rocket just to round and round the globe. Been there and done that.
Somewhere in each and every one of us that grew up with the Apollo, Skylab, and now the Shuttle programs we have seen the very best that our country can offer. Now let's get that spirit back, put it to work and to use a paraphrase from another series of movies : to boldly go where no man has gone.........
that is what should be next, that is the direction we all need to be going, that my friends, can be the enduring legacy of our generation.
Next stop . Mars.
for further reading on this please follow these links:
http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/135_splash/index.html
http://history.nasa.gov/sts51l.html
http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/glenn-j.html
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