Tag Gemini 4

Houston, you are “go” to stop whining

Pat Ryan 2 Comments

Yes, it was disappointing that NASA decided not to retire a space shuttle to Houston.  But a “snub?”  That’s the default formulation here at home, the assumption that the intention behind yesterday’s announcement was “to treat [us] with contempt or neglect so as to humiliate or repress.”  Is no one ready to consider that, perhaps, the other places made better offers?  Even Houston’s Leading Information Source surprised with an un-hometown-ish editorial today: Houston, don’t take it for granted that we’re Space City; we have to work harder and smarter.

What, you say politics played a role in this decision, and a Congressional investigation is called for?  Why, I am shocked—shocked—to think that politics is involved in any way in the operations of an agency of the federal government.

NASA’s denial that politics influenced the decision is…probably a bit disingenuous.  I can believe that the bureaucrat who oversaw the collection and review of the applications did not have a political axe to grind when she made her recommendations; I can also believe that political considerations were taken into account farther up the food chain.  If you saw NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden making the announcement at the Kennedy Space Center yesterday, it was clear he was not happy about the words that were coming out of his mouth.

And sure, I can understand how, in the category of “close historical ties” to NASA, the New York City museum on board the USS Intrepid—which recovered the crews from one (1) Mercury mission and one (1) Gemini mission—clearly wins out over the facility at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, which has trained every American astronaut who ever flew and has controlled every American manned spaceflight since Gemini 4.  No contest.

Sorry, guys, but anything beyond “oh golly isn’t that disappointing” is just being a sore loser.

April 12

Pat Ryan 1 Comment

1633, Galileo convicted of heresy; 1777, Henry Clay born; 1861, America’s Civil War began; 1878, Boss Tweed died; 1947, David Letterman born; 1954, Bill Haley and the Comets recorded “Rock Around the Clock”; 1961, Douglas MacArthur declined an invitation to become baseball commissioner.  Oh yeah, and a man flew in space.

For the first time.  Ever. Gagarin

I’ve never felt the significance of that.  I understand the significance, but I can’t feel just how earthshaking that must have been to anyone who was more than, let’s say, 20, at the time: people old enough to have an understanding of how things are, who lived in a world where people didn’t leave the planet except in flights of fancy.

Fifty years ago I was four years old, the oldest of three kids living in Birmingham, Alabama.   I knew nothing about Yuri Gagarin or the Soviet Union, or the Redstone Arsenal just 50 miles away in Huntsville, where Wernher von Braun and his team were developing the heavy lift rocket that would make the moon landing possible.  (You had three TV stations to choose from (not counting educational television), if you were lucky, telephones had dials and many lived in booths, cars as well as fish had fins, the prestigious post-season college basketball tournament was the NIT, and there were only 16 big league baseball teams.)

Today I’m 50 years older; I live outside of Houston, and I work in the American space program, for the public affairs office at the Johnson Space Center.  Today I interviewed the astronaut who will command the last flight of the space shuttle, which is planned for this summer.   Just a regular work day.

If I can’t imagine the amazement that people felt 50 years ago, can I imagine what the world would be like if we had never left the planet, even for brief periods?  Would we have had any incentive to create semiconductors (and then faster semiconductors), to miniaturize computers, to put geostationary satellites in orbit?  Would we still have put a powerful telescope in orbit that would revolutionize astronomy, or have figured out a way to fix it once it got there?  Would Gene Roddenberry and George Lucas still have been inspired to create other worlds that in some ways have come true in ours?  Would the Colt .45s still be in the National League?

1965, first National League game at the Astrodome (Phillies 2, Astros 0; oh well).  Less than two months later Houston became the Mission Control Center for U.S. manned spaceflight on Gemini 4, the flight that featured the first American spacewalk.  Then we went to the moon—for that, I was old enough to feel the amazement.  Then we stopped going to the moon, or anywhere else in space.

1981, first space shuttle flight.  It was amazing to watch that launch—it was so much different than other rockets we’d seen—and I remember being very skeptical about that thing making a soft landing when it came down.  Then it started pulling off missions that the Mercury 7 only ever dreamed about: retrieving and repairing satellites, supporting all kinds of advanced and (to the layman) esoteric science research, staying in space for weeks at a time—weeks, I tell you!  Then docking to a Russian space station, then building one of our very own in a successful partnership with most of the Western world.  Now that’s amazing!

2011: the 50th anniversary of Gagarin’s flight, the 30th anniversary of the first shuttle mission, and NASA announces where Enterprise, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour will spend their retirement.

April 12, 2061: Boy, I wish I knew…