Twenty years ago
Jan. 28th, 2006 06:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kitsap_charlesI remember.
I remember reading science fiction from the age of seven, with the tacit assumption that outer space was Man's for the taking. I remember Sputnik and Explorer. I remember staying up until two in the morning so I could watch the Echo satellite speed overhead. I remember Telstar.
I remember everyone in my grade school clustered around a small black and white TV, watching people— Americans!— make those first perilous steps off this dirtball. I remember wishing I, too, could be an astronaut some day… and all the while knowing my poor eyesight would forever keep me Earthbound.
I remember Laika and Ham. I remember Gagarin and Shepard, Titov and Tereshkova and Glenn, Vostok and Mercury, Voskhod and Gemini, Soyuz and Apollo. I remember one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
I remember Gus and Edward and Roger. I remember Vladimir Komarov, Georgi Dobrovolski, Viktor Patsayev, and Vladislav Volkov.
But all that time, from early childhood on, I remember believing that men might die on the way, but Man would go to the stars.
Twenty years ago today, that dream ended.
I was working at IBM's Santa Teresa (CA) laboratory, and as was my wont I had the radio on as background while I crafted exquisite testcases for the DB2 mainframe database system. I'd not even been aware that a shuttle flight was scheduled; space flight had become so routine, so ordinary, that stations didn't cut away to cover the launches. C'mon, they were sending a teacher into space, how dangerous could it be?
But the station newscaster broke in to say there was a problem.
There were televisions on every floor, cabled in to the mainframe status monitoring system. But they could pick up local stations as well, and I twisted the knob frantically.
Every station was showing the same video clip, the same horrifying image of disaster.
Not much work got done that day. I remember sitting in the cafeteria, and some stranger sat down at my table. He said he didn't much feel like eating alone, and neither did I. I didn't get his name, couldn't recognize him if you paid me money, but that day we needed not to be alone.
It was twenty years ago today. We kept going back to space, but our hearts weren't really in it. Columbia was another nail in the coffin, and between the national apathy and the budget cuts needed to pay for tax cuts for the ultra-wealty, I don't see our government doing much at all.
Maybe, though, the private efforts will come to fruition. We've already seen a privately funded craft reach the arbitrary boundary of space, and they're working on the next steps.
I won't go to the stars, or the planets, or the Moon, or even to LEO. But maybe my kids, or their kids, can.
Per ardua ad astra!
I remember reading science fiction from the age of seven, with the tacit assumption that outer space was Man's for the taking. I remember Sputnik and Explorer. I remember staying up until two in the morning so I could watch the Echo satellite speed overhead. I remember Telstar.
I remember everyone in my grade school clustered around a small black and white TV, watching people— Americans!— make those first perilous steps off this dirtball. I remember wishing I, too, could be an astronaut some day… and all the while knowing my poor eyesight would forever keep me Earthbound.
I remember Laika and Ham. I remember Gagarin and Shepard, Titov and Tereshkova and Glenn, Vostok and Mercury, Voskhod and Gemini, Soyuz and Apollo. I remember one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
I remember Gus and Edward and Roger. I remember Vladimir Komarov, Georgi Dobrovolski, Viktor Patsayev, and Vladislav Volkov.
But all that time, from early childhood on, I remember believing that men might die on the way, but Man would go to the stars.
Twenty years ago today, that dream ended.
I was working at IBM's Santa Teresa (CA) laboratory, and as was my wont I had the radio on as background while I crafted exquisite testcases for the DB2 mainframe database system. I'd not even been aware that a shuttle flight was scheduled; space flight had become so routine, so ordinary, that stations didn't cut away to cover the launches. C'mon, they were sending a teacher into space, how dangerous could it be?
But the station newscaster broke in to say there was a problem.
There were televisions on every floor, cabled in to the mainframe status monitoring system. But they could pick up local stations as well, and I twisted the knob frantically.
Every station was showing the same video clip, the same horrifying image of disaster.
Not much work got done that day. I remember sitting in the cafeteria, and some stranger sat down at my table. He said he didn't much feel like eating alone, and neither did I. I didn't get his name, couldn't recognize him if you paid me money, but that day we needed not to be alone.
It was twenty years ago today. We kept going back to space, but our hearts weren't really in it. Columbia was another nail in the coffin, and between the national apathy and the budget cuts needed to pay for tax cuts for the ultra-wealty, I don't see our government doing much at all.
Maybe, though, the private efforts will come to fruition. We've already seen a privately funded craft reach the arbitrary boundary of space, and they're working on the next steps.
I won't go to the stars, or the planets, or the Moon, or even to LEO. But maybe my kids, or their kids, can.
Per ardua ad astra!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-29 04:45 am (UTC)If ever I make orbit,
then I'll be a wanted fan
-- Niven and Pournelle
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-29 12:08 pm (UTC)As an aside, I'm a former Watson man myself.
Tell you a secret
Date: 2006-01-29 02:50 pm (UTC)As the reality of how primitive our so called technology society hit me in later years I still have this small hope that I will if not by human means, that perhaps one day I might make contact with other civilizations and still travel the stars :)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-30 02:30 am (UTC)I remember in junior high, when I had to get glasses, and I knew I could never be an astronaut.
I remember in high school, senior year, when my friends and I made plans for a reunion on New Year's Eve, 2000/2001, at the mid-range hotel on the Moon - figuring that yes, there'd be one by then, but probably only one.
I remember the cuts in the space program, and finally, the decision by NASA to go with the inefficient, over-complex, unsafe, already-outdated Space Shuttle design, rather than a safer and more efficient program that would have required a greater expenditure up front.
That's when I knew we'd be lucky to be back to the Moon in my lifetime, let alone Mars and beyond.