Flight feeds our passion for discovery
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Seven people are set to climb Wednesday into an aging, balky, complex spaceship, sit atop millions of pounds of fuel with their backs toward the ground and their eyes toward the sky, and blast off on what amounts to a 12-day test flight.
Why do they do this? Why do we support a human spaceflight program that puts lives at risk and costs billions of dollars? What is it about this urge to explore that cannot be suppressed?
It is more than coincidence that the word Discovery is stenciled on the side of the shuttle scheduled for blastoff from the Kennedy Space Center at 12:51 PDT today.
Overcoming an embarrassing incident Tuesday evening that required the replacement of newly damaged tile on Discovery, mission managers said the craft and crew of the first flight since the Columbia accident of February 2003 are ready to renew the adventure.
“I would hope that our country does not lose the motivation and desire to explore,” said Eileen Collins, Discovery’s commander. “I believe countries remain strong because we reach out, we learn more by exploring. We take risks.”
And listen to Mike Griffin, NASA’s new administrator, speaking from the heart Tuesday about the need to “explore, develop, understand and discover the solar system – to extend the places where humans can live.”
He also spoke about the true cost of this exploration.
“Every space launch we do is a tribute to all of those who went before,” Griffin said. “The safety lessons we have divined and have learned and now know have been written in other people’s blood.”
Also listen to Carlton Blake, part of the multitude here at the Space Coast that will watch the launch and tap into the thrill of exploration, defined the mission as “travel for the purpose of discovery.”
“When we reached to the moon, America felt proud, and the world felt proud with her,” said Blake, who was born in Jamaica but now lives near the space center. The world “applauded what humanity had achieved.”
That enthusiasm persists, according to a new survey. A Gallup Poll released this week found that 77 percent of Americans support a plan proposed by President Bush that would carry humans back to the moon and then to Mars.
Additional evidence of deep interest in the subject: More than 200,000 spectators are expected to line riverbanks, parks and beaches around the Kennedy Space Center today. More than 2,650 reporters and photographers are credentialed for the event.
Sure, big aerospace companies love the contracts, and politicians love handing over tax funds that sustain jobs for voters and contributors, but it is clear that something else is at work here – despite the manifold risks of space travel.
Said retired astronaut Story Musgrave, 71, who flew six shuttle missions: “People are fantastically excited about space. You just have to feed them. You have to give them something. Once you give them something, you just fuel that basic enthusiasm that is there.”
That is a veiled reference to what many proponents of space flight view as decades of failed leadership from the White House and Congress.
Once capable of reaching the moon, the U.S. space program now struggles merely to get the shuttle – a glorified space truck – into low Earth orbit and to support the International Space Station.
“The space station was a huge strategic error on every front,” Musgrave said. “It was the wrong thing to do. It doesn’t give people anything. We’re just there, you know. We’re just hanging out.”
It all started to go bad, ironically, during the heyday of the program – the Cold War race to the moon with the Russians, he said.
“Space was a playing field, a competitive playing field,” Musgrave said. “The idea is, `When you’ve won the ball game, let’s all go home. We never were allowed to develop a long-term vision of, `Why space?
“We didn’t do space for the real reason. … Space is for the sake of space, nothing else.”