Throughout our history as a species with a decided penchant for poking our noses into the unknown, there’s been one ironclad rule.
Nothing’s free.
Want to turn fire into a tool? Someone’s going to get burned.
Want to know what’s over the horizon? Someone will get lost and never be heard from again.
Want to cross the Atlantic in a ship or an airplane? Best ignore the wreckage of the earlier efforts and remember not to breathe easy until you have firm ground underfoot again.
Want to explore space? There will be accidents.
Two and a half years ago, we lost the space shuttle Columbia. On Wednesday, we’re scheduled to go back into space. The space shuttle Discovery is poised to carry seven astronauts to the international space station. Shortly thereafter, someone will inevitably ask why we need a space program at all.
Such questions are not unique. They’ve been asked throughout history whenever something relatively new and not altogether “bug free” has been attempted.
A couple of thousand years ago, the conversation probably went something like this: “Look how bad Urk burned himself. I’m telling you, I like my meat raw and my cave cold. We never should’ve started playing with fire and, mark my words, that wheel’s gonna be nothing but trouble.”
Anyway, the engineers found out what happened to the Columbia. Just after launch, a piece of insulation broke away from the fuel tank and damaged the leading edge of the Columbia’s left wing. This damage went undetected.
At the end of the mission, the “retros” were fired and the Columbia began re-entering the atmosphere. That’s when things start getting hot. Thousands of degrees hot. And because of the damage, all of that heat had a direct path into places it was never supposed to go.
On the flight deck, the astronauts began noticing that the spacecraft was becoming difficult to control. Attitude jets began firing automatically in an attempt to keep the craft properly aligned so as to reenter the atmosphere as something other than a meteor.
The astronauts knew things were going south. The “pucker factor” probably ratcheted up to about 12 on a 10 scale but, even in the face of a situation they probably knew was irretrievable, they kept working the problem, fighting to hold everything together.
Nothing’s free.
If we go into space, accidents will happen. It’s inevitable because spacecraft are mechanical devices and mechanical devices fail. Sooner or later. Somehow or other. The best we can hope for is that the failure isn’t catastrophic and that no one is killed or injured when it happens.
That’s what we hope.
What we know is that space is an unforgiving environment. We’re messing around with speeds and motions that are truly impressive. We’re playing in an arena where something as simple as a piece of foam hitting a wing can unleash the furies of physics at the worst possible moment.
Nothing’s free.
If we want to go back into space, it’s going to take courage. As a race, we still have it in spades although there are times when it may seem otherwise. That’s because, nowadays, there are more than a few among us who can’t spill a cup of coffee without: (1) forming a support group; (2) calling in a gaggle of grief counselors; and (3) wanting to appear on Oprah to whine about it all.
The way we conquer space is to mourn those we’ve lost, pray for their souls and get back to work. In short, we put the best we have in charge and tell them not only to fix whatever went wrong, but also to make things safer and better.
Once we have the mechanical side of the equation taken care of, we go looking for the men and women who are always wondering what’s around the next bend or over the next hill – the ones with the courage to go into the dark places for us all. We find the risk takers, the curious, the questioners and, then, we ask them if they’d like to go into space. After we ask, we get the hell out of the way before they trample us to get to the sign up list.
The launch date for the Discovery is Wednesday.
We’re going back into space.
As we should.
To be faithful to those who have brought us to where we stand today.
Godspeed, Discovery.
Larry Simoneaux lives in Edmonds. Comments can be sent to larrysim@att.net.
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