{"id":536,"date":"2005-07-30T13:36:00","date_gmt":"2005-07-30T13:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/2005\/07\/30\/536\/"},"modified":"2005-07-30T13:36:00","modified_gmt":"2005-07-30T13:36:00","slug":"536","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=536","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

SPACE VOYEURISM: I decided to tune in and listen to the Space Shuttle launch last Tuesday (via the NASA web site). I was hoping for a replay of the old drama that accompanied the space program launches back in the 1960s. I wasn\u2019t disappointed. As the count approached five minutes, there was hushed silence broken by staticy techno-talk. There was the final polling of the controllers (\u201cRange Safety is go\u201d, \u201cHouston Flight is go\u201d, \u201cGuidance is go for launch\u201d, etc.), then the final countdown, then \u201cengine start\u201d, \u201clift off\u201d, \u201cDiscovery has cleared the tower\u201d, \u201cDiscovery is at an altitude of 25 nautical miles, downrange 27 nautical miles, flight path nominal\u201d, \u201c30 seconds to booster separation\u201d, etc. It brought back memories of the old Mercury, Gemini and Apollo moon flights from my youth.<\/p>\n

A few days after that I read a quote from some guy who works for an aerospace contractor, to the effect that they\u2019ve got to eliminate the drama of getting into orbit. That shook my neurons up a bit. Yes, by now you would have hoped that manned spaceflight wouldn\u2019t be such a risky venture. I just read something else to the effect that riding the Space Shuttle is a good bit more risky than being on a bomber mission over Germany during the height of World War 2<\/a>. But after the Columbia disaster (same as after the Challenger disaster), we the public came to realize that the Shuttle is still a crude experimental vehicle. (Actually, so did NASA; most people there were locked into a fit of wishful thinking, to the effect that the Shuttle was a safe and cost-efficient way of getting people and stuff into earth orbit. They’re scratching their heads about that now.)<\/p>\n

And so the voyeurism was back this past week. There again was the great spectacle of brave Americans strapped into a huge bomb with a hole in the bottom, poised upright along the sunny Florida coastline. If all went well, they\u2019d be shot up into the sky and come home in a few days or weeks. But there was a pretty decent chance that sooner or later the bomb would go off the wrong way and kill everyone on board (as finally happened with the Challenger). Or they\u2019d get up there and not make it back (as with Columbia, almost with Apollo 13). Great entertainment, right up there with the old Roman gladiator shows. It sure made the career of CBS newscaster Walter Cronkite. <\/p>\n

Back in the 60s, there at least was a sense of purpose to the space program and all the risks and expense it entailed. We wanted to explore the moon and show the Russians that we were better than they were. What is our sense of purpose today with the Shuttle? Basically, to finish the Space Station. And what is that up there for? It\u2019s in the wrong place to repair the important satellites we have up in orbit; ditto for building, lauching and recovering missions to and from the planets and beyond. It\u2019s a pretty good microgravity lab, but if that were so valuable and necessary, then why isn\u2019t private business helping to pay for it? <\/p>\n

I hope that the US will continue its efforts to explore space using both robots and people. However, we need to admit that the Shuttle and the Space Station are a dead end. Space exploration is a new neighborhood, and when you\u2019re driving around in a new neighborhood you sometimes go up the wrong street. You cruise along for a while, until that funny feeling down in your gut makes you stop. NASA has had a funny feeling for a while now, but they keep on driving (and keep on burning up taxpayer money). <\/p>\n

More on the Space Shuttle next time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SPACE VOYEURISM: I decided to tune in and listen to the Space Shuttle launch last Tuesday (via the NASA web site). I was hoping for a replay of the old drama that accompanied the space program launches back in the 1960s. I wasn\u2019t disappointed. As the count approached five minutes, there was hushed silence broken […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}