Lofty Ambitions Blog

Last Chance to See (Part 18) July 22, 2011

I’m a scientist and I know what constitutes proof. But the reason I call myself by my childhood name is to remind myself that a scientist must also absolutely be like a child. If he sees a thing, he must say that he sees it, whether it was what he thought he was going to see or not. See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise you will only see what you are expecting. ~ Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Yesterday, we made the claim that the day was about shuttle not about the shuttle. By that we mean that, as the critiques of the space shuttle program itself fly back and forth in the media, it’s important to remember that shuttle represents a concept and also a lot of actual people. We’ve written before that science writing interests us because it’s about the people and their ideas and quirks as well as about the scientific findings, processes, or technology.

Atlantis (NASA)

Yesterday, workers at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) said goodbye to the shuttle program and to the orbiters, including Atlantis, which was towed to the Orbiter Processing Facility where it will be prepared for its museum home down the road. All the mechanical pieces of the shuttle program are now, in effect, artifacts.

Today, 1500 KSC employees say goodbye to shuttle as a way of life, as a way of seeing the world, and as a paycheck. Other workers, less necessary to complete the missions safely, were let go already. Still others are able to continue working at KSC, perhaps transitioning to jobs that support commercial space launches there. KSC is now the center overseeing the Commercial Crew Development Program, the very direct descendent of the shuttle program, and KSC is also hopeful for heavy-lift vehicles and programs that will ultimately take us beyond low-earth orbit.

This week, as we noted, also marked the anniversary of the first human step onto the lunar surface. On the evening of July 20, 1969, (at least for the United States) as Michael Collins orbited the Moon alone, Neil Armstrong, then Buzz Aldrin, climbed down the ladder of the Eagle and took those small steps that seemed a giant leap.

Astronaut Michael Collins

Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins were all born in 1930 and flew for the armed services (Armstrong the Navy, Aldrin and Collins the Air Force). That was the best year to be born if you were going to be an Apollo astronaut. In fact, if you were born before 1923 or after 1936 or if you are a woman or a person of color, you were not on the crew of an Apollo mission. Only one of the Apollo astronauts, Harrison Schmidt, the last man to set foot on the Moon (though Gene Cernan was the last to leave the Moon), was a civilian, a geologist with a Ph.D. from Harvard University.

When the media recounts the many space shuttle firsts, often the technological advances get attention: first space shuttle mission (STS-1), first man-rated, reusable solid rocket boosters, first mission of a reusable science laboratory in space (Spacelab), first untethered spacewalk, first satellite retrieval, and so on. But many of the firsts we know best and that NASA lists under each mission’s contributions involve the astronauts. The space shuttle program opened space travel to more kinds of people, women as well as men and those with varied racial, ethnic, and national backgrounds as well as varied experiential backgrounds.

That didn’t start right away. After all, the STS-1 crew consisted of a veteran of Apollo born, of course, in 1930 and a Navy captain born in 1937.  By STS-5 in November 1982, though, the crew included a mission specialist, and the program was overtly thinking more broadly about who was best suited to do what in this long-term endeavor. The number of crew expanded from two in the earlier flights to four, which would later often become seven.

Astronaut Sally Ride

On June 18, 1983, Sally Ride became the first American woman in space. She was born in California (a pretty good place for astronauts to grow up) in 1951 and earned her Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University. She joined NASA in 1978, after responding to their ad for astronauts in a new program. Though two Soviet women beat her to space, she will always be the first American woman astronaut in space, paving the way for many more in the shuttle program.

On the very next mission, STS-8, Guion Bluford became the first African-American to fly in space. He earned his Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology and flew on four shuttle missions.

In August 1984, on STS-41D (when NASA was using an unnecessarily complicated mission-numbering system), the first payload specialist flew on the shuttle. The program opened its flights to non-government personnel, people tied to the mission’s payload, in this case a McDonnell Douglas employee who accompanied into space the company’s continuous flow eletrophoresis equipment (he and the company share the patent). Ultimately, Charles Walker was a payload specialist on three missions. A Canadian payload specialist followed on his heels.

And there’s much more.

Astronaut Wubbo Ockles

First Oceanographer in space (1984)

First Congressional observer in space (1985)

First Dutch in space (1985)

First Mexican in space (1985)

First Hispanic in space (1986)

First African-American to command a mission (1989)

First Belgian in space (1992)

First Italian in space (1992)

First African-American woman in space (1992); also on STS-47, the first Japanese astronaut flown by the United States and the first married couple to fly in space

And so on.

Astronaut John Glenn

Some may quibble with this widening of what it means to be an astronaut. Why send a Utah senator to space? Did Bill Nelson get a seat on the shuttle merely because the Space Coast was in his district and perhaps he knew he’d run for Senate at the next opportunity? Wasn’t sending John Glenn back to space at an age when most of us hope to be sitting in the Barcalounger in the living room, tussling the hair of a grandchild and yelling at the dog to stop barking, a carnivalesque publicity stunt? Specific choices may be worth critiquing. But looking at the whole of these firsts—the kinds of people these firsts represent—makes some important statements about larger concepts, about shuttle.

While all sorts of constraints are put on individual lives and we are each born into different circumstances, we are no longer as constrained by gender, race, or nationality as we once were, not all that long ago.

The most important qualifier for astronauts is education, as you have the best shot at the job if you have a Ph.D. in science or engineering. If manned spaceflight is to continue, maybe that means NASA has yet to broaden its qualifications enough so that more educational backgrounds are valued, or maybe the United States needs to make graduate education, especially in fields of science and technology, more accessible and feasible for individuals. In the meantime, as the joke goes, learn Russian because the shuttle program and the International Space Station have redefined space travel as a global undertaking.

Astronaut Mae Jemison on final launch day (photo by Lofty Ambitions)

The space shuttle program, though technically a government operation, became in practice a joint venture with the private sector. An argument can be made that this collaboration diluted the goals of space exploration and forced compromises. But, like it or not, this mutual effort set the stage for the commercial space ventures that are underway now and for whatever future awaits us. In fact, a recent CNN poll reported that half of respondents think ending the shuttle program was a bad decision, and three-quarters want another manned space program to be developed, but more than half want the private sector to handle such a manned spaceflight effort.

Space exploration is no longer about beating someone else to it. We may be nostalgic for that 1960s bravado, and we may fear that we have become risk averse to such an extent that we may already have limited our possibilities for the future as a nation and as a world. Yet, with this shift comes the possibility that space exploration is about the world in a larger sense, a shared global effort, a story about who we are and who we want to be on this planet as well as beyond it. Commander Chris Ferguson, sitting in the shuttle’s crew compartment upon landing yesterday, said, “The space shuttle has changed the way we view the world, and it’s changed the way we view the universe.”

Ferguson thanked each orbiter by name, acknowledging the thirty-year history of the shuttle program. He also noted that, out of the day’s mixed emotions, should come the certainty that America will not stop exploring. Today, NASA named as Mars Day, announcing the destination for its new Mars rover, Curiosity (see our posts on curiosity HERE and HERE and a guest blog Anna wrote for someone else HERE). Next time, perhaps to Mars, why not send a poet? Or two lofty bloggers (who happen to have those handy Ph.D.s)?

Last Chance to See (Part 17) July 21, 2011

They even have a different vocabulary. When you spend much time on islands with naturalists, you will tend to hear two words in particular an awful lot: endemic and exotic. Three, if you count disaster.

An endemic species of plant or animal is one that is native to an island or region and is found nowhere else at all. An exotic species is one that has been introduced from abroad, and a disaster is usually what results when this occurs.

~Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine, Last Chance to See

Earlier today, Atlantis landed, thereby ending the last-ever space shuttle mission. What are we thinking? And by that, we mean both “what is America thinking?” and also “what are our thoughts on this historic event?”

One of the things we’ve noticed about the way those closest to the space shuttle program refer to this moment, or this accumulation of moments that mark the program’s end, is that they use shuttle as a conceptual noun. For the media, or when the media discusses the situation, people use phrasing like “the end of the space shuttle program” or “the end of an era.” That’s what you’d expect. But if you go back and read our most recent guest blogger’s post, you’ll notice that Omar Izquierdo uses the phrase “end of shuttle.” No article. Instead, shuttle is used like liberty, an idea more than a physical object. That’s typical idiom among those who’ve worked on shuttle. Shuttle is the way they live and think about life, as well as the orbiter-become-artifact.

During the past few weeks, the seemingly sudden realization that the space shuttle program is in its denouement has engendered an explosion of interest around the world, as represented by our calls from the BBC for content, the foreign nationals in the post-launch and post-landing news conferences, and the thousands of tweets on the subject over several hours last night. The last two weeks has seen an array of reporting on the shuttle program by journalists and bloggers well beyond the space-geek crowd. Indeed, public conversations have bubbled up about all things related to the entirety of the American space program. The Lofty duo follows a wide range of space-related media resources, and in addition to their own work on the shuttle program, we have provided several links to stories in those media channels that don’t make covering the shuttle program part of their regular fare. If you Googled “shuttle Atlantis landing” this morning and limited your search to “News,” up popped thousands of pieces just from the last couple of days.

A number of these stories, both those in the space-oriented venues and in the mainstream, have taken on the task of critiquing the shuttle program, and by extension human space travel, in order to arrive at some authoritative statement: either A or B. One assertion is that the shuttle program, though flawed and failing to line up to its mid-1970’s marketing claims of safety, reliability, frequency, and cheapness, was an amazing machine that did an exemplary job under the circumstances, which included constantly shifting priorities during development and lack of adequate funding. The other assertion is that the shuttle program was a disastrous boondoggle. Worse than that, people died, it consumed ridiculous amounts of resources, and it fell demonstrably short on wide swaths of its performance goals. Comment threads are especially likely to include back-and-forth between these two types of critiques.

Oddly, reports from both sides of this  argument’s coin often contain the same list of facts and accomplishments. Both sides often point to Hubble Telescope repairs and building the International Space Station (ISS). When the critiques use the ISS as a supporting example, the ISS is described either as a shining example of collaboration between former enemies and an important contribution to science or as a low-earth-orbiting white elephant, a showpiece forever draining away funds from earthbound science.

Cost, of course, is part of these critiques as well. The total cost of the space shuttle program over the decades comes in somewhere around $200B in 2010 dollars. Supporters and detractors each wield that very same number with relative ease in a coup de grace for their argument. It’s even more shocking that both sides are absolutely correct. Either that’s pretty darn cheap, given the accomplishments of the program, including spin-off technologies now improving the lives of Americans here on Earth, or that’s an exorbitant amount of money that could be better spent elsewhere, especially given the current economy.

Today, these critiques seem off the mark. Today—the day after the anniversary of humankind’s first step onto the lunar surface (July 20 on the East Coast, July 21 UTC) and the day the last shuttle mission ended—strikes us as about the people, not about the machine. Margaret Lazarus Dean, another recent guest blogger and space-geek, bought a last-minute airline ticket for a 24-hour visit to Kennedy Space Center for this morning’s landing. She, with the media and VIPs, was at KSC Runway 15 for the touchdown. She saw the chutes deploy and the wheels come to a stop. But she didn’t get choked up then. Neither did Anna, as she watched those moments on NASA-TV. Sure, Anna felt some pain in her chest, something already trying to form itself into nostalgia. But the unfolding process of de-orbit burn, roll reversals, and the final turn to the runway is dramatic, even on a computer screen. Seeing a landing is exciting.

Margaret stuck around for several hours after the landing, and KSC had events planned well into the afternoon. After a long nap, Anna watched the replays on NASA-TV, especially captivated by the news briefings, first with the STS-135 crew (see our post on the crew HERE) and then with the NASA administrators and managers, including Mike Moses and Mike Leinbach with whom we’ve seen several news briefings in person this past year. The thrill of the landing itself, with the night-goggled approach, had become a memory quickly, but seeing the people, imagining the hubbub of the day, made us sad to not be there.

Margaret wrote in her email message, “The surrounding events were more awesome than the landing.” Those surrounding events, of course, were about the people and about celebrating their hard work, perhaps even their belief in what they were doing over the years, even those whose jobs end tomorrow. No matter what a person thinks about the program and the machines, the critiques should pause to take into account that thousands of real people are involved too. The Lofty duo saw hordes of these people, both the STS-135 crew and regular employees there every day, when Atlantis was towed—rollover—from the Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF) to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) on the way to its last mission.

Margaret Lazarus Dean, along with some others there for today’s events, wrote that she did get choked up, but it was hours after landing. As the last fully functioning orbiter was towed from the landing strip to the OPF 2, which Discovery had only recently vacated, KSC employees—those most intimately connected with the program and with the orbiters—walked with Atlantis, in Margaret’s words, “as slow as a funeral procession.”

Today is about shuttle, not about the shuttle.

Photo by Bill Ingalls, NASA