It earned less than three minutes of the 24-hour sound bite cycles on the major networks. I had to look it up on the local station – a slower news day, I suppose – to watch the full journey from ignition to orbit.
The occasion? NASA’s final space shuttle launch on July 8, 2011, an event that deserved attention on a global scale. It marked the end of an era, clipping the wings of a program with the most important goal in human history: exploring the whole rest of the universe wrapped around the little mudball we call home.
Maybe I exaggerate the importance of spaceflight.
Maybe I oughtta get my head out of the stratosphere and gaze at the world beneath. There’s a drought, y’know. There’s a war, there’s an election! Here’s where the action’s at, kid – why do you keep looking up at the stars?
I’m stuck between the science fiction of Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein, where spacecraft and starships flit through galaxies with ease, and living on a world where people can barely operate their GPS, much less appreciate the globally-positioned satellites coordinating their crawl over the surface of Earth.
Don’t think I’m burning out my fuse up here alone, now. Despite the dearth of media airtime, NASA’s work remains popular with the American public. Over 94 percent of Americans told polling and research agency YouGov they felt NASA should keep flying.
An overwhelming show of support, but words don’t ignite engines. The government-funded space program has had to make do with a tiny share of the federal budget, peaking at about 4 percent during its heyday during the Apollo lunar missions and currently sitting around half a percent.
In a March 2012 testimonial in front of the U.S. Senate Science Committee, Neil deGrasse Tyson, an enthusiastic astrophysicist known for his ability to simplify interstellar topics while still conveying their full gravity, said, “Right now, NASA’s annual budget is half a penny on your tax dollar. For twice that—a penny on a dollar—we can transform the country from a sullen, dispirited nation, weary of economic struggle, to one where it has reclaimed its 20th century birthright to dream of tomorrow.”
Tyson’s words, while noble, have yet to create that revenue stream for NASA. Since the July 21, 2011 return of Space Shuttle Atlantis, NASA has paid the Russian Federal Space Agency (RKA) for crew and cargo rides to the International Space Station (ISS) Russian-built, Russian-launched Soyuz spacecraft.
The Cold War might have ended, but good old-fashioned American capitalism is still the answer to Soviet space dominance.
After a 4-year, $1.55 billion competition to develop new vessels designed for human crews, three private companies arose: Boeing, everybody’s favorite airplane; SpaceX, an innovative company already making non-crewed cargo deliveries to the ISS; and Sierra Nevada – alas, no relation to the Chico-based brewing company.
I tuned into NASA’s own television broadcast on Sept. 16 – no more three-minute news briefs, thankyouverymuch – to see who would win the contract.
I expected little: with $6.8 billion on the horizon, I could only imagine the contract going to the lowest bidder, the corporate profit-mindedness, the lack of passion for such an important project. I forgot that nobody gets into space unless they care enough.
“I’m giddy,” said NASA administrator Charles Bolden.
Bolden, a former astronaut, was clearly reining in his excitement as he spoke about NASA’s new goals now that Boeing’s CST-100 and SpaceX’s Dragon capsules can focus on the orbit work.
Missions not just to the moon, but to Mars. To asteroids. Setting up deep space observatories. Human-crewed missions, flown farther and faster and longer than any person has been in our entire history.
“If you don’t feel good… because for the first time in more than 40 years, this nation is going to launch a vehicle designed to carry humans beyond low-earth orbit,” Bolden said.
One of the last living fiction writers of the same era and caliber of Asimov and Clarke, Harlan Ellison, wrote an essay about the atmosphere at NASA as the Voyager 1 spacecraft passed Saturn in 1980.
His essay holds a precursor sentiment to Bolden’s and mine: if there’s anyone who glances out at the mysteries of the universe without any wonderment, who ignores the work of NASA and the growing global spacefaring community, who watches the shuttle for just three minutes…
They ain’t anyone worth knowing.
