When I was a
little kid, I wanted to be an astronaut. That is not a terribly unique thing. A
lot of kids my age wanted to be astronauts. The Space Race was in its infancy.
The president had declared we would get a man to the moon by the end of the
1960’s (a target which sent the experts into a mad scramble to figure out how
they were going to do that).
America went
Astronaut crazy and it was reflected in our popular culture. I Dream
of Jeannie was one of the most popular shows of its time. I watched it not
because it had a beautiful genie that could do magic, but because the two main
non-magical characters were astronauts (okay, maybe part of it was because of
the beautiful genie). Another TV show It’s
About Time features two astronauts who go through a time warp and get stuck
in the stone age. Even Gilligan’s Island
had episodes featuring astronauts and cosmonauts.
I was into
model building when I was a kid so of course I had models of Mercury, Gemini,
and Apollo rockets. Did every kid my age have those models, no, but I did
because I was going to be an astronaut!
I remember
that I could recite all of the astronaut’s names. Hey, some kids could tell you
every player on the Yankees; nerdy kids like me could name all the astronauts.
I remember that my favorite was Gus Grissom. I can’t tell you even now why he
was my favorite. Maybe I just liked the name. I remember being devastated when
Gus Grissom died along with Ed White and Roger Chaffee in the Apollo 1 fire. It
was one of those moments in childhood when you realize that not everything is
always going to work out for the best, that there is such a thing as tragedy.
By 1968
Apollo was back up and running. When Apollo 8 sent back a picture of Earth
rising over the moon it was a seminal moment in our collective consciousness. It
was Christmas Eve 1968. For a moment we all saw ourselves on a fragile globe
without borders. If only the moment had lasted . . . .
Then in 1969
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon (lest we forget the contribution
of Michael Collins who maintained the Command Module while they were down
there) and the whole world went wild with celebration. It was not just a USA
thing. Humanity had reached another world. It was something everyone from every
country could celebrate. But then after a couple of more missions to the moon,
America lost interest. We had beat the Russians so everyone was like “been
there, done that.” Funding got cut, and that was that. NASA concentrated on
Robotic missions, and Skylab and the development of the Space Shuttle. These
were less costly endeavors than going to the moon. I really can’t speak for
children of the 1970’s, 80’s, or 90’s, but I doubt if many of them followed the
astronaut corps like we did in the 60’s. Lots of shuttle missions went up with a
whole new batch of astronauts. Some of those missions did some interesting and
important things, but it lacked the pizazz of going to the moon. I would like
to see us explore Mars and other places, but at this point I think it all needs
to be done internationally. It is just too expensive for any one country to do
on its own.
The picture
above is of Judy Resnik and another astronaut that I don’t recognize. I wanted
to show a picture of a female astronaut because women have traditionally been underrepresented
in the space program (as they have everywhere else). Judy Resnik was the second
American woman in space (after Sally Ride), and later died in the Challenger
disaster. Which just goes to show you, when you look at the Challenger disaster,
the Columbia disaster, the Apollo 1 disaster, whether you are male or female it
takes a hell of a lot of guts to go into space. I am not sure that is something
my six year-old self fully appreciated.
(My novel Star Liner,
is now available as an ebook through Copypastapublishing.com, or the other
usual online sources. For those who like to turn physical pages, the paperback
will be out soon).
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