Quite Prescient

This was brought to my attention this morning. It's a commentary from Jim Slade, with ABC when he wrote it exactly 18 years ago, 12 August 1991. It's strong enough to speak on it's own.

Jim Slade Commentary, ABC radio August 12, 1991

Kennedy Space Center, August 12: This is a special place. It is so special that people will come here someday to see where an evolutionary change in human history began.

Our ABC broadcast facilities sit on a mound about a half mile to the right of the big hangers and control rooms where the shuttles are groomed and then fired into orbit. It is easy to forget now that this is the same place where Neil Armstrong and the others stepped off for the moon.

The launch pads themselves are about 3 and a half miles out there toward the ocean. You can see them clearly across the acres of tropical scrub and swamp. Birds tumble, squawking, out of those bushes whenever a rocket bellows. But the rockets only sing once in a while compared to the birds and so far, the birds have always come back.

It's a busy place. This is Monday. Yesterday, space shuttle Atlantis dropped out of the sky here and was led back to the barn, still warm and sweating. This morning, a big tractor carried Discovery out to the same launch pad Atlantis used ten days ago. They hope to launch Discovery in mid September with a huge satellite in its hold that will study how the ozone layer is being depleted and what we humans have to do with it. That is important public business, the kind the shuttles ought to be doing.

As soon it's ready, Atlantis will be re-serviced and used to launch a missile-warning satellite sometime in November. That's important too.

Nobody has to tell the people here that their work is important, though. If you didn't have the spirit to work in this place, you would hate it. It takes a lot of pride to stand up to the pressure, some of, not very fair.

There is a cynical tendency to jeer whenever a big, visible program doesn't work right. Impatience, leavened with the idea that lots of money ought to mean perfection, leads us down that road. The fact of the matter is that non-destructive delays here are a sign of perfection. When a high speed computer stops the clock because it sees trouble in a tiny little gizmo buried among thousands of other tiny little gizmos, I find that nothing short of a miracle. The bottom line here is that no shuttle flies unless everything works at the time of liftoff. Something might break on the way "up the hill," but at that most crucial moment the spacecraft is a hundred percent or it doesn't go. Given the millions of parts and miles of wire in a shuttle, that's saying more than any other engineering or science program has even been able to say.

If you want to know what's wrong with NASA, you will have to dig back in your history book ten to fifteen years ago when neither the White House nor the Congress could decide if the space program was fish, fowl, or tinker toy. Funding was inadequate to the job and shortcuts were were taken that are showing up only today in projects like the Hubble Space Telescope. More importantly, though, the space agency was getting no direction. No political leader had the interest or the courage to say "this is what we ought we ought to do with the things we have learned," and, as a result, NASA drifted into one enterprise after another, trying to do all there was to do at once. Some great things happened, like Voyager's journey to Neptune by way of the other planets. Some terrible things happened too, like Challenger.

And i don't think things are much better now, although there has been one commission after another making a study of what the US should be doing in space in the next fifty years. Usually, they say the same thing: go back to the moon and on to Mars. And so far, there has been a lot of political talk about it. But if you look closely, what you still see is drift.

You want to go to space? The people here can do it. Somebody has to say go, but nobody wants to be the one.

When those people visit this place in the future, I wonder if that's what they'll remember.

Happy Birthday, Neil Armstrong

Happy birthday, Mr. Armstrong. I hope it is a grand one and that you have many, many more. Thank you for all your service to our country. Thank you for sharing yourself with us during NASA’s 50th anniversary and Apollo 11’s 40th anniversary.

If I were to meet you, I’d want only to shake your hand and to thank you. So many only seek to get from you. I’d like to be able to give, little as I would have to give.

I see why you crave privacy. People are astounding in their desire to “own” someone who is a public figure, as if they have a right. However, thank you for working with James Hansen on the excellent book, “First Man”. You wanted to be known for something more than being first on the moon. The book is a wonderful presentation of all you are. And still, as much as you don’t wish to be looked so highly to, the book gives so many reasons. Apart from Apollo 11, you are still a true American hero and a man of strong character. I’m glad to know the person you are and all your achievements.

Thank you, Mr. Armstrong.

Who Put the I in ISS?

The crew of STS-127 did a grand job. So did all the support personnel on the ground. And don't forget the ISS crew. There's so much to say, but for the moment I'll leave the profound things and just 'wow' over the fact that there were 13 people in orbit on the same vehicle for the first time. And let's not forget the diverse coverage of countries included in that baker's dozen. That is profound enough on its own.

I have become, recently, a fan of old time radio programs. The big box that people listened to for entertainment before television became ubiquitous. (Sidebar, but interesting: a coworker returned a few weeks ago from a mission trip to Eleuthera. His team worked to repair a tiny shack damaged by hurricane winds in 2008. Yeah, the man had been waiting that long for help. However, to the point. Jon said the man had no bathroom in the house and no outhouse, but he did have cable TV!)

These radio programs are interesting to me for reasons other than only entertainment. They are social commentaries as well, and I am a student of society. Of course my favorite programs would be the science fiction episodes. And the overwhelming majority of them (remember the time frame) paint a very pessimistic picture of humanity's future. Many of them present a world destroyed by nuclear war or under heavy threat of it breaking loose any moment. I'd say 80+% of them present such a future, a hopeless one. That's the most interesting part to me.

Fast forward over half a century. Talks are going on to reduce nuclear arms further. And 13 people from seven nations lived and worked together in the same station for just less than two weeks. Was it perfect harmony? I doubt it. Did everyone drop all their prejudices? I doubt that too. After all, we are imperfect humans. And imperfect humans can destroy each other. However, imperfect humans can agree to disagree, bury differences for a time, and work together to a common goal. And that is one of the important lessons of the International Space Station.

Yes, there is the United Nations, which has worked hard to bring nations together and bring peace to the world. Give it the credit it is due, but also see reality. Again, imperfect humans.

Rise above the demographic boundaries where the earth looks borderless...and the atmosphere seems so thin and fragile. No presidents or ambassadors or councils to debate issues.

Space is the great equalizer. It sees no color or nation or politics. Everyone has the same need, to survive. Thirteen people worked to survive and to explore and to build.

There are great opponents of the ISS, for many reasons. There are those that say it serves no practical purpose, and some say no scientific purpose.

I say they are all quite incorrect.

International Space Station, the real UN.