From time to time, Esquire Magazine prints something that is deeper than fashion, pop culture or under dressed ladies. Chris Jones captures the importance of manned space flight and why America shouldn’t scrap the program.
One night last fall, as the nation’s economy rapidly unspooled, America did something big that we barely notice anymore but that no one else can match. We can’t stop now, can we?
The sky was clear. The weather was perfect. A few stars twinkled through the glow. Three miles away, over the Florida creeks and swamps, Endeavour was bathed in white light from all angles, and with a spray of beams pointed nearly vertical, like paths for it to follow. Then the moon came over the horizon to the left of the shuttle, low and yellow at first, rising slowly and fully until it acted as a spotlight and as a dream, seen the way sailors in storms see the lighthouse. Nobody in the bleachers talked about the price of gas, or the crisis on Wall Street, or war, or politics, or race, or impossibility. Everybody talked about how far we might go. Everybody watched the giant countdown clock and the little TVs that had been set up on tables. Everybody watched Don Pettit being strapped into his seat, and they talked about his magic powers and his six-year-old’s heart, about how he had never stopped believing in the things we used to believe in.
Never mind that we could learn so much more about the universe, and explore farther into space for the same money if we scrapped manned spaceflight.
While the shuttle launches provide drama and excitement, the earth-observing satellites I depend on to do my job are underfunded.
My family attended a nighttime shuttle launch in 2000. It was incredible. I took video of it. It’s pretty lousy home video, but I still pull it out and show it to the kids from time to time.
A few weeks ago, I popped in the movie Apollo 13 to watch while I was wrapping Christmas gifts. I don’t know how you can watch the take-off scene without a sense of awe (and almost reverence).
I have friends involved in the space program. They will tell you that there are many things that can be accomplished in space only with a human present. You don’t know how many times the people at the JPL have wished that they had somebody on Mars just to do this or that little tweak to enable the rovers.
Manned space flight is still a very grand thing.