Four Left

There are only four left...

The next shuttle launch, of Discovery, is scheduled for no earlier than 05 April.  I SO want to go, but don't know how I'll swing it.

Sigh.

For All Mankind

Forty years ago, mankind as represented by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon.

And nothing has been the same.

Human history is traditionally divided into BC and AD (or BCE/CE), yet it could just as legitimately be divided into BA/AA - Before Apollo and After Apollo. Before Apollo, we were a culture that had never journeyed beyond our home. And After Apollo, we were a mankind that could look up at the moon at night and know that there were twelve sets of footprints up there.

This is the main thrust of history as it's taught to us. Yet, as time passes, does this truth continue?

The story of Apollo contains not only one of mankind's greatest triumphs, landing and walking on the Moon, but also an enormous and growing tragedy - our failure to return. And this failure can be traced to the time immediately following the historical first steps and the beginning seeds of the television generation.

Apollo 11 was covered by the three networks at the time with constant and unceasing coverage. All moon, all the time. And even though Armstrong's first steps were taking place at a late time in the evening, Americans (and easily the whole world) were glued to their tv. Every possible moment was watched and absorbed like a sponge that could not be filled.

Until, it was over. President Kennedy's goal had been achieved, and the country's attention span turned. Not unsurprisingly, there was a letdown... a feeling of "been there, done that". And while Apollo 13 restored some drama, it was due to not going to the Moon.

In fact, by Apollo 13, the budget cuts had already begun, Apollo 20 had already been canceled, and Apollo 18 and 19 would soon be axed as well.

Americans were losing interest, and with that loss, NASA lost funding.

NASA refocused on the Space Shuttle and Americans turned their attention elsewhere. And with two notable exceptions, NASA has further cemented spaceflight as "routine". Their success at effectively turning the shuttle into something like an airline (all sorts of 'regular' people got to fly) became a downfall as the lustre of Apollo became a distant memory.

Now, the Shuttle is facing imminent retirement after nearly three decades of service. In orbit, there's a Space Station which is finally nearing completion, nearly twenty-five years after being first proposed. And while built with a large amount of American effort and American funding, soon there will be no American spacecraft to reach it.

America is working towards a new space system, called Constellation. Yet, it too is in doubt. Will NASA and the nation commit to its continued funding? Will we decide to stay in Low Earth Orbit, where our Shuttles have endlessly circled for thirty years? Will we embark to return to the Moon? Or will we commit to strike out for eventual journeys to Mars?

The answer to these questions will say as much about our budget priorities as it will say about us - as a nation and as a people.

"We came out of the cave, and we looked over the hill, and we saw fire. And we crossed the ocean, and we pioneered the West, and we took to the sky. The history of man is hung on a timeline of exploration, and this is what's next... We're meant to be explorers." - Aaron Sorkin, 2000

President Kennedy also famously summed it up in his speech at Rice University. A year after setting America on course for the Moon, when the country's sum total of space travel experience was fifteen minutes and not even the first orbit of the Earth, he reminded us why we must embark on this journey. These words are as true now as they were then (start around :

"We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too." - President Kennedy, 1962

Too often these days, we shy away from risk. Whenever things are hard and difficult, we often retreat to that which is more comfortable and sheltered. But reward is not without risk, and risk is out there. We need to explore. We need to embrace the risk... and conquer it. Nothing easy makes us stronger, as facing challenges does. And even failing makes us better.

Space travel, like aviation and many things before it, has its lessons written in the blood of those who've gone before. Fear of shedding the blood should not prevent us from writing the next chapter.

Let us end the tragedy of Project Apollo and restore the legacy of human exploration. It's time to leave home, again. The benefits are not for us alone, but for those around the world, and for those who come after us... in short, for all Mankind.

Godspeed!

Forty-six years ago today...

The United States launched Lieutenant Colonel John Glenn into orbit. His mission decidedly charted America's future exploration into space. We had previously dipped our toes into the water through the missions of Alan Shepherd and Gus Grissom. But, these were suborbital "lobs", enabling us to get a feel for this new arena.

And we've been exploring (sometimes fitfully, yes) ever since.

Some Perspective...

ANTARES IS THE 15TH BRIGHTEST STAR IN THE SKY.
IT IS MORE THAN 1000 LIGHT YEARS AWAY.

THIS IS A HUBBLE TELESCOPE ULTRA DEEP FIELD INFRARED VIEW OF COUNTLESS
'ENTIRE' GALAXIES BILLIONS OF LIGHT-YEARS AWAY.

BELOW IS A CLOSE UP OF ONE OF THE DARKEST REGIONS OF THE PHOTO ABOVE.

She Flies!

Shuttle Atlantis is well on her way to the Space Station. What a beautiful launch. It is continually amazing the capabilities that we have, and the bravery of those who are willing to strap into the forward tip of a giant bomb and make a ride that the vast majority sense as routine, or worse, unnecessary.

But the beauty and grandeur of the adventure and exploration of the unknown is not abated.

Lest We Forget...

There are any number of ways to write memorials, and I can certainly take the time reminisce about where I was and how I remember hearing about the Challenger exploding... twenty-two years ago.

However, I am blessed to have a friend... she's been a good friend for well over a year now. And, of note to me... she was the voice of NASA that morning.

So, I'm going to link to her memory of that day.

Lest we forget... progress is never without a price. And the lessons of safety are always written in blood.

Ad Astra per Aspera

On 27 January 1967, America lost its first astronauts in a spacecraft. In a test. There was supposed to be no risk - there wasn't even fuel in the rocket!

And yet, in less than fifteen seconds, a violent fire snuffed out some of America's brave explorers - Gus Grissom, Ed White (first American spacewalker), and Roger Chaffee.



I think it's important that we remember a quote from Gus Grissom, "If we die, we want people to accept it. We are in a risky business and we hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life."

Have We Lost Our Imagination?

When was the last time we had an endeavor that captured our attention?

Truthfully, less than a month ago. The New England Patriots (a professional football team in the NFL, for those not familiar) had the first undefeated season in NFL history.

Ok, it wasn't the first. It was the second. The first being the 1972 Miami Dolphins (who coincidentally came very close to having an unvictorious season this year). The Patriots were notable because this was the first sixteen game undefeated season. The 1972 Dolphins having not played sixteen games in their regular season, but fourteen. Of course, there were also two playoff games, and the Super Bowl... giving them seventeen winning games. Which, as you can see, is different than the sixteen games... or something like that.

Anywho, it was a big deal. The game was broadcast on three different networks. This was to ensure that everyone in America would have the opportunity to witness history being made.

So... before that?

Olympics?

World Cup?

America's Cup?

Presidential Elections? Nah, those sadly define apathy.

Surely there's been something...



Anyone?


Perhaps it's our quest to cure Cancer. AIDS? World Hunger? (Nope, those concerts quickly came and went in the eighties.)

Would you believe that what seems to capture our attention these days isn't success? It's failure.

Britney Spears is losing her mind, career, kids... tune in now to watch the latest. Baseball's steroid scandal. The failing of our schools. The salivating of the continuous death count of the Iraq Theater. Murders. Abductions. Virginia Tech. Even the fallacy (yes, I wrote fallacy) of Global
Warming predicates itself upon the humans failure by destroying the world, environment, children's self-esteem, and ________ insert your own item there.

What do we have to enlighten and motivate our youth?

What can we do to excite them?

Where can we find Hope for their future?

Something... um... dare I dream... positive?


In the 1960s, there was the Space Race. Space has now become a mundanity that excites few. And who can blame them? The Space Shuttle, which we are risk averse to launch after two losses over a seventeen year period, has the perception of being no more than a high-tech pick-up truck. We have the International Space Station, where a continuous human presence has been maintained for over seven years, is quickly becoming an irrelavancy to be checked off of the checklist than to be exalted. We'd once dreamed of it having seven (or more) scientists living and working aboard it using many different laboratories. It's reduced to three with fewer labs, and having taken forever to complete. It's final assembly will be the satisfaction of just finally finishing the race, not by trying to win it.

Our space program is quickly stalling out... the Shuttle is already doomed to no more flights after 2010, whether the replacement program - Constellation - is ready or not. And that continues to be scaled back, redesigned, and set up for failure much in the way the Shuttle was prior to its launch in 1981 (yes, folks, twenty-SIX years ago).

This nation... we need to find a focus. A Positive focus.

Yes, personally, I would like it to be a space focus. A new, fruitful expedition of meaningfulness.

However, we need something. Something that will light the fire of the mind of our next generations.

What do you suggest?

And just a thought, but what do our leaders suggest? Or, our potential future leaders?

Don't know? Let's ask them. And not take a shrug, or a nice form letter, as an answer.

There is more to LIFE than just marking time and waiting for the next event to come to us. It's to be savored, and to be created - We can do it. If we want to, that is.

It's time to lead us to our future, it's waiting for us.

More Than Just Rocks

One thing I've often heard about the Apollo Moon Expeditions is "Well, all they did was bring back a bunch of rocks."

I'm going to avoid going into that discussion about "just rocks".

I would like to share one of the more memorable moments, though.

It proved, after hundreds of years, in a way that could not be done on Earth, that Galileo was right - that his foresight and knowledge were on target.

Dave Scott from Apollo 15:

Bringing History to Life

It is true. One of my absolute passions is flying. And one of the pinnacles of that has been mankind's journey into the vastness of space.

Star Trek's immortal mantra had it right: "Space, the Final Frontier..."

In the 1960's, our technology, our abilities... our imagination made "giant leaps" forward - accelerating our knowledge, our understanding... of both ourselves, our home, and our universe.

We are rapidly approaching that time being a half a century ago. Already, we've passed the fifty year mark for the launch of Sputnik, the first object to orbit the Earth.

And with the passage of Time, the nuances of history begin to fade to dust. The STORY gets shorter and shorter until it will finally be just a paragraph (or Less!) in a history book.

But it's the STORY that makes the adventure so compelling. It's the STORY that makes the experience, the why we did what we did... and why we must continue.

I am voraciously aborbing as many texts that tell the nuances of the story. Whether it's Andrew Chaikin's A Man On the Moon, Gene Kranz's Failure is Not An Option, Jim Lovell's, Lost Moon, and innumerable more..., the story is compelling.

And I am happy for Tom Hanks. He saw that the story needed to be told. And he backed a project that stepped away from the headlines, and told the story... the texture that makes it interesting. That which makes the story compelling. As we would have once gathered around the campfire, mesmerized by tales of might and wonder... so are we compelled to gather again.

I encourage you to seek out and find (alright, I'd buy it - as you should have a copy) of "From the Earth to the Moon" (available at Amazon.com, and other fine retailers).

This twelve part miniseries from HBO is of impeccable quality, and attention to detail; it seeks to tell The Story.

To give you a taste, here is the opening sequence.

You'll note the music from an earlier post... It's stirring, and moving... and my Heart quivers whenever I hear it.

(If you're a space buff, see how many of the images you can identify.)

An Amazing Motivational Speech

In 1962, at a speech at Rice University, President John F. Kennedy gave a speech which is a stunning example of motivation, and oratory.

I get goosebumps every time I hear it.

(At the end of the clip...)

There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

Merry Christmas

Thirty-nine years ago...

Mankind ventured for the first time away from the safety of our home planet (not counting UFO abductions for lack of boarding passes).

For the first time, three men were alone in the Universe, as they circled the far side of the Moon - on one side of the Moon, billions of humanity and everything we knew in our day to day existence and on the other side of the Moon, the three Apollo 8 astronauts and eternity.

1968 had not been a pleasant year for the United States, nor for the planet in general.

USS Pueblo

The Tet Offensive

My Lai

Yuri Gagarin is killed

MLK, Jr. is killed

USS Scorpion sinks

RFK, Jr. is killed

The Prague Spring

The Democrat National Convention

It was against that backdrop, that NASA audaciously set out for the Moon. Having restarted the Apollo flights (after The Fire the previous year) in October, NASA found itself not ready to continue its planned schedule. Instead of waiting until the schedule was ready to be engaged, NASA went for a Hail Mary and went for the Moon.

Riding the massive Saturn V booster for the first time, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders, did something no one else had done previously, leaving the Earth's orbit, its gravitational field, and traversing the deepness of the void of space between two worlds, the Earth and the Moon.

There they saw sights that no human eyes had previously seen - the far side of the Moon, the desolation of the Moon from only sixty-nine miles away, and also... the first view of Mother Earth, in her entirety, from so far away...




The crew of Apollo 8 spent just ten orbits around the Moon, before they returned home. As they were orbiting, it was Christmas Eve back on Earth. And as the world watched and listened, near the end of their lunar television broadcast, the following words were read by the crew. It captured the spirit of Christmas, of Peace, and of Hope... cast amongst the splendor, isolation, and wonder of that precious blue marble and the desolation of the first world visited by humans.

I am choked up when I hear and see this... what a Christmas present to the world.

Memorial Week (NASA)

This is the time of year when it's a time for memorials at NASA.

27 January is the anniversary of the Apollo/Saturn 204 fire tragedy. This was the first time that the program had lost astronauts in their vehicle. There they were, in the spacecraft, wearing spacesuits, and no one saw it coming. Forty years ago...

28 January is the anniversary of the Challenger accident. This was caught on TV and burned into our consciousness as a nation. Spaceflight was becoming routine... what could go wrong? Twenty-one years ago...

01 February is the anniversary of the Columbia loss. They were on their way home, and we all thought there was nothing that could go wrong. Four years ago...

Throughout history, the future is discovered by those bold enough to venture into the unknown. And sadly, throughout history, many of our lessons on how to venture safely are written in the blood of those who've gone before us.

And the most amazing thing about us is this: Everyone can see the blood spilled before; everyone can see the danger of the unknown (or sometimes the not knowing of the danger); And we STILL find people to venture into the unknown and to make the unknown known.

Which perhaps is the best Honor paid to those who've taught us where the dangers are... learning the lesson and moving forward.

Apollo/Saturn 204 ("Apollo 1")
Virgil "Gus" Grissom
Edward White, II
Roger Chaffee

STS-51L Challenger
Frances "Dick" Scobee
Michael J. Smith
Judith Resnick
Ellison Onizuka
Ronald E. McNair
Gregory Jarvis
Christa McAuliffe

STS-107 Columbia
Rick D. Husband
Willie McCool
Michael Anderson
Kalpana Chawla
David Brown
Laurel Clark
Ilan Ramon

Cool Picture of the Space Shuttle

Came across this and it's just a beautiful picture... very inspiring...

Follow-up to Shuttle Launch

Referring to my earlier post...

I'd like to recommend two DVD's to all of you out there.

The first is From the Earth to the Moon. This is a documentary produced by Tom Hanks about our epic journey towards the moon. The interesting thing is that it shows so many different facets of the story. Even those who've never shown the least interest in our space history have been enraptured by this DVD collection.

It's well worth the investment (for you penny pinchers out there, you get more video time per dollar than most movies.) So, go to Amazon and pick up your copy today. Sit down with the family and learn about all that it took to get mankind from the Earth to the Moon.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000A0GYD2/ref=reg_hu-wl_item-added/002-0372989-5399259?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance

Now, this next movie is truly special. One of the benefits of space travel is being able to see our universe from a unique and different perspective. For All Mankind is a film composed Entirely of footage filmed by the astronauts themselves. It's edited together, with commentary, and is spectacular.
This is a gem that is little known but is a MUST see.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0780022319/qid=1122404768/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-0372989-5399259?v=glance&s=dvd

Want to know more? Drop a line and I'll chat your fingers to the bone about this...

She Flies...

The shuttle launched today. And, through the miracles of modern technology, I followed along from Afghanistan. If you can picture it, I took m easy chair outside the barracks, brought a Coke, and my laptop and satellite radio receiver. Focused in on the satellite, tuned in Fox News, and listened. Can't really watch the video over the web as the speed is too slow, but listened.

Now, backstory... I love space launches. I am a HUGE fan, advocate, and believer in the exploration of space. I vividly remember my first launch, 11 November 1982, for STS-5. This was the first operational shuttle launch, and my father drove all night to Florida to let me watch. What an amazing sight to see Columbia (RIP) thunder to the sky. And of course, I knew every step of the flight, what was going on. I was hooked.

I have attended both Space Camp and Space Academy. Even commanded a shuttle "mission", winning best mission award.

I will never forget where I was or what I was doing when Challenger died. (Yes, to me, the craft come alive for the launches, and like their crews, die when lost.) My parents will probably tell you how that night I watched the videotape over and over, in super slow motion, trying (and succeeding) to see what had gone wrong. Even with such basic technology, I could make out the leak of flame that was a blowtorch to the fuel tank.

Once I got old enough, I began making pilgrimages to the Cape. Every time there was a launch, I'd go. I jiggled work schedules, whatever it took. Sometimes, the shuttle didn't go. NEVER a problem. Safety first, as far as I am concerned.

I had such joy in sharing the experience with whomever I could convince to make the journey. I introduced my mother and step-father to the thrill, and even better, by doing so as close as possible.

And now, here I am... far away from the Cape. And Discovery's first launch date was not convenient for me to watch. But today... perfect. I just made it back from work to listen.

It saddens me how it seemed that the media was almost hoping for something to go wrong. As if there was no way that we could overcome the difficulties, the odds of something going wrong, and succeeding. A lack of faith... worse, a loss of the dream.

There is such a fantastic dream in sending people into space. Over thirty five years ago, man walked on the moon. We haven't been back. Besides of the incredible arrogance that the "Been there... so what" attitude that we seem to have about the Moon, we have seemed to lost not only the dream of exploring, but the desire.

We must continue to return to space. There WILL be more tragedies. Thousands died developing air travel (not yet perfected, I might point out.) More crossing the oceans. Exploring the West. Connecting Europe and Asia for the spice trade.

It's not easy...

It's not supposed to be. If it were, it'd already be done. If it were, the world would not have held it's collective breath for Freedom 7, Apollo 11, Columbia, and now... Discovery.

Thank you to the crew of Discovery, for being brave enough to climb aboard an immense bomb and say, "Send me."

Shuttle Launch Today...

1551 EDT, 1951Z, 2151 CET...

Watch the Space Shuttle return to flight, resuming humankind's (can't say "mankind" anymore) journeys from Earth.

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html