Streaking Through the Skies
In the corner of my parents’ living room, there is a rattan chest of drawers filled video cassettes, balanced on top of other video cassettes. I don’t know what the collective noun for these cassettes is but presumably something dull like ‘a collection’ will work. If a ‘collection’ can span both VHS and Betamax and is allowed to encompass recordings of Inspector Gadget from TV in Zimbabwe, at least one episode of the Muppets featuring the Rapunzeled-haired Crystal Gayle and many if not more movies with badly printed titles like “Soperman IV”, then these drawers are a collection.
In one of the more-dusty-less-opened drawers, there is a recorded 12 minute presentation I did for an assignment at school on the development of the Russian and American space programs. At least, such that they were in the early nineties. My research consisted of a bunch of books we had around the house, and a quite excellent documentary detailing the space race. From recollection, I am animated and smiling, whilst desperately trying to get all of the information out of my head. In the right order. Index cards feature prominently.
I can’t pin down when my interest in space started, but I sure as hell seem enthusiastic in the video, and I was 12 then. My dad had been a recreational pilot, so I had always been interested in aircraft and a series of flight simulators on my computer only heightened that interest. I suspect a combination of his fascination, the many sci-fi books scattered around our house, along with some movies and TV shows all helped build my passion for it. I’m looking at you Star Wars, Star Trek and Flight of the Navigator. And you, watched-into-oblivion Space Balls. And also you Space Camp, you deliciously awful teen drama. Incidentally, if you haven’t seen Space Camp (the Movie): ace. Not “It’s ace, that movie. You should watch it”, more “Ace - you’re a lucky person, and you should strive to keep it that way. Don’t tempt fate by watching this film.” Even when I was nine, I knew that it was full of hilarious technical inaccuracies and implausible happenings. Which I found all the more frustrating because the actual Space Camp, which takes place in rural Huntsville, Alabama is wonderously compelling.
I was crazy fortunate to be able to attend the real Space Camp (well actually, Space Academy, which is for older kids) when I was 13. It was thrilling and terrifying in equal measure. I remember a talk by one of Wernher von Braun’s team that had been brought over from Germany after WWII to help NASA build rockets. I also remember tasting astronaut ice-cream (spoiler: it tastes like marshmallows), going to visit one of the testing centers for microgravity work (a huge water tank with a working robotic arm for prepping the mission specialists), and walking around a mission control setup in excitement. The movie “Apollo 13” had just come out, so the fact that we ran simulated missions as a team, from mission control to the not yet built International Space Station (ISS), was pretty much the best thing ever.
“Capcom this is Flight, we have passed holding and you are set for launch”
“Received Flight, beginning countdown checklist”
Huge right? And quite apart from getting a feeling of how complicated the Shuttle programme was, and how dangerous everything seemed to be (landing a shuttle in the shuttle simulator didn’t succesfully happen the whole week we were there), what was great was how united we all were. Kids from all over the world and from different social backgrounds, all excited by the promise of space and the excitement in pushing back the frontiers of what is known.
With that in mind, last Friday at 15:45 BST, I set up to watch a NASA live stream. The Shuttle Atlantis sat on the launchpad, and you could hear some of the radio traffic shifting back and forth between the shuttle commander (Capcom) and the flight director. The potential forecast was for thunderstorms, which, because of my elite Space Academy training, I knew could cause a problem not only for takeoff, but also if they need to abort the mission post launch in an ‘Abort Once Around’ procedure, where the shuttle orbits the Earth once and then lands again. As is usual in this case, the launch team begins the start procedure, and continuously monitor the situation. At T -9:00, an evaluation is made as to whether it’s likely the mission will be aborted or not, although they can actually abort really late into the launch procedure itself if required. On Friday, the timer started at -9:00 as expected.
At 16:29 BST, the Space Shuttle orbiter Atlantis took off for its final mission - and the final lift-off of any of the reusable shuttle fleet which first saw service when Columbia lifted off the pad back in 1981. And that makes me sad. We still have the International Space Station, awesome proof that different nations can work together for a common, expensive good, and we still have the incredibly reliable Soyuz. But Soyuz has been launching cosmonauts into space since 1967, and has been bringing people to space stations since Salut 1 in 1973. The Shuttle program designed and built in the 1970s, with the dream of cheaper spacefight through reusable spacecraft and even resuable booster rockets. Environmental economy tied to fiscal economy - but the current US government, like the one before it, found the costs prohibitively high. The program ends after 135 missions, including two of incredible tragedy, but it was a program of huge success - let’s not forget velcro, or indeed the Hubble Space Telescope, neither of which would have happened but for the Shuttle program.
The final words of the launch from those concerned with the mission are clearly US centric, and I imagine the feeling is stronger in the US than it is say in Britain, where I’m from. But I am still envious of the child that I was, able to dream about getting on a shuttle and launch to the stars, and of the further development of space for universal benefit. There is plenty of hope for space programs everywhere, although the current economic climate is making new development tricky. It would be great if the Russians invest more in a Space Camp program for young kids from all over the world, and even better if the Chinese become as universal and welcoming to other nations as the US and Russia have become.
But for now, I think on the incredible engineering, dedication and heart that went into the STS missions.
From the Commander Chris Ferguson of STS-135, just prior to launch on Friday morning:
“We’re not ending the journey today…we’re completing a chapter of a journey that will never end.”
Well said sir.
