February 2, 2003
Not good. Columbia disintegrated upon reentry. Blew-apart while doing Mach 8. God, what an unwelcome piece of news that is. Tie for dealiest space disaster in world history. Israeli national hero dead.
I have always considered space exploration to be one of the most noble adventures that human beings have ever embarked-upon. I have always had a great deal of respect for NASA, and this disaster doesn't diminish my respect for that organization. Astronauts (and cosmonauts) take-on really big risks for doing a job larger than themselves. Exploring space is difficult, expensive, mind-blowingly complex and dangerous work.
I remember when the Challenger blew-up in 1986. Seven people died, it was the biggest space disaster in world history. The shuttle fleet was grounded for several years while the launch systems underwent huge-scale revamping. The organization's timetable was setback by years. Thusly, the Hubble telescope's mirror got warped from been sitting in storage while the shuttle fleet was grounded. The shuttle program got back on track, but the Hubble became a huge-scale embarrassment. People started making really grating jokes about the ineptitude of NASA.
Probably one of the most irritating situations I've been in was in 1999, after a pair of Mars probes got lost within several months of each other. I had to listen to my armchair 'expert' of a brother-in-law making jokes about how inept NASA is. Ha ha. Can't they do anything right?
I mean, my God, can't one appreciate how fucking difficult and dangerous space exploration is?! It's literally rocket science, ya dope! Volatile fuels, extreme temperatures, extreme pressures, high speeds, solar radiation, metal fatigue, millions of moving parts. Think for a second, please!
One of my best friends, his uncle worked at NASA for a while. He did software for the Galileo mission. Utterly brilliant man. He was on the team which programmed computer instructions for one of the sensors. Launched in 1989, Galileo ran into some serious technical snags and unforeseen difficulties. Its main antenna wouldn't unfold. Its data recorder repeatedly malfunctioned. Jupiter puts-out a massive magnetic belt and the craft got blasted with more radiation than it was designed to withstand. Despite all of this, it became the little spaceship that could. It took photos of comet Shoemaker-Levy smacking into Jupiter. It took the clearest-ever measurements of Ganymede, Callisto, Io. Most recent discovery: in November 2002 it recorded data on the gravimetrics of the moon Amalthea. Biggest discovery of all: some years back, it found evidence of an ice-covered ocean on Europa. Give me one instance in the last four-hundred years of somebody discovering a new ocean! The mission will continue until September 2003, when it is scheduled to crash into the gas giant.
Galileo has to have been one of the most successful planetary science programs ever undertaken. And NASA has done some simply amazing stuff. And there is more amazing stuff in the pipeline: the Cassini mission en route to Saturn appears to be totally on track for 2006. The 2001 Mars Odyssey mission is in progress and another batch of Mars probes are scheduled. The program marches-on.
Yeah, the shuttle fleet is probably going to be grounded for a few years. Science facility upgrades on the space station will get held-up for a long time. There are plenty of things that will get put-off. Important zero-gravity biological, physics, medical, environmental and chemistry experiments will be put-off. Thousands of tiny, incremental advances and a couple of huge breakthroughs will no doubt be delayed.
The engineers at NASA are real perfectionists. Before anything gets launched, they computer-simulate and test the hell out of everything. They don't launch any piece of equipment before it gets stress-tested to the edge of destruction. They are an inventive, clever, brilliant bunch who have to manage extraordinarily complex missions while their politically-appointed bosses keep trying to cut budgets and cut corners and shift the agency's focus.
They have done many incredible feats. Many miracles, large and small. The Russian space program did some pretty incredible things in its heyday, but it has been gutted. The European Space Agency has engaged in some pretty aggressive missions, but not nearly as many. In terms of the size its investments and infrastructure and orbiting armadas, NASA is second to none.
I have always seen space exploration as really one of the pinnacles of human achievement that oftentimes transcends national divisions. It truly moves humanity up a notch on the evolutionary scale. It's noble work. It's the full-scale mobilization of human ingenuity. And it's risk-taking, dangerous work.
Going into space takes more than the right stuff... it also takes some serious balls. You gotta have balls of steel. Yuri Gargarin had the right kind of fighting spirit for the job. Just before Vostok 1 took-off in 1962, the rocket began to rumble-off the pad and he shouted: 'poekhali!' (let's go!) He didn't know if he was gonna die, but he was gonna grit his teeth and do it anyway. Some years later, he died in a plane crash.
Honor your dead, correct your mistakes, upgrade your equipment, improve your safety, and keep-on pushing-out the frontiers. With every setback, you just have to knuckle-down and redouble your efforts. When you're thrown from the horse, you just gotta get back-up and ride.
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