Moon Landings

Nonsense from the Fringe

I got an email a week or so back from a guy claiming that he had proof (proof! mind you!) that all Moon missions, including the latest Chinese mission, were faked and filmed on Hollywood sets. How the hell do you even take something like that seriously?  First, Hollywood would have half-dressed women (one of the few nits I picked about “Gravity” by the way) prancing around on the lunar surface, and square-jawed heroes achieving unbelievable feats simply by bending some tin with their bare hands.

No, it’s not Hollywood that got us to the Moon (and yes, to my friends in Hollywood, I’m not totally dissing your work, I know what you have to do to get a project greenlighted and I love you anyway).  It was actual human ingenuity that got us to space (and still gets us there). Smart people doing smart things. Dreaming of doing lunar missions in English and Russian and Chinese and Hindi. And, actually doing them.

I know that’s a hard fact to accept in a world where conservatives claim to be compassionate while people starve, financial “geniuses” figure out it’s okay to swindle investors and not get punished, some politicians tear down the government they swore an oath to protect and defend, and science education is regularly gutted in favor of religious indoctrination.

But, the truth is, science and the PEOPLE who DO science achieved great things. They’re still doing it. They’re part of a great and grand leap forward that has given us a great many useful things, even life-saving things. A couple of years ago I had a neck disk blow out. It hurt like hell. And it was life-threatening. The surgery to fix it was amazing. It used space-based technologies to save my life, as well as my ability to walk and use my right hand. Now tell ME that human ingenuity that got us to space didn’t invent that. Go ahead. Try me. I will call mule muffins on that nonsense (as Sherman T. Potter used to say).

Any crackpot who wants to feed me that line of nonsense is invited to NOT use medical technology, the internet, the Web, a smartphone, and a host of other things made possible for our modern life by NASA-inspired achievements to bloviate their “facts” and “theories”.  In fact, I invite such crackpots to stop using the internet and Web altogether. Otherwise, they’re tacitly accepting technology that they otherwise inconsistently ascribe to a Hollywood back lot. Pure nonsense.

We went to the Moon. I’ve met the men who did it. We have sent and are sending missions to Mars, the outer planets, the inner planets, and so on. We have a space station orbiting up there. Not on a back lot somewhere, but UP THERE.  I’ve met the scientists who did all this. I’ve met the men and women who have worked in space. I studied the science that made their work possible. I KNOW how they did it.  I even did some of that science for a while. It wasn’t oogie-boogie crackpot weirdness. It was science, pure and simple.  It’s also something anyone can learn, provided they take off the alien-colored shades and free their minds of seven impossible things before breakfast.

Sorry crackpots. I know reality bites. But, it’s also very refreshing, once you get used to it.

Challenger’s Last Flight

How it Changed Us

The breakup of 51L. January 28, 1986.

I was at JPL on the morning of January 28, 1986. We were about to attend a press conference on the fabulous Voyager 2 mission’s findings at the planet Uranus. But, before that, we all (scientists and press) gathered to watch the launch of Challenger, mission 51L. We were in an auditorium with a big video projection showing us the launch pad and the countdown.

You all know the story. 70 seconds into the launch, at the words “Go for throttle up”, Challenger exploded, killing 7 astronauts and changing the way we viewed our space program forever.  It also changed the way we viewed shuttle launches. For years, I didn’t start to breathe again until after 70 seconds passed in each launch.

The picture to the left is one that was branded onto our brains. It was unbelievable.  In the auditorium, I stood transfixed, not believing what I saw. Next to me, one of the senior scientists on the Voyager mission broke down in tears. Another one fell to the floor, emotionally unable to even stand up. There was a muffled silence for a long time. People looking at the screen, then each other.  Finally, we started talking to each other about what we just saw. And then, the phones started ringing

Yes, we were at a press office. We had a hundred or so science writer there, and somehow, people got our phone numbers and started calling. Before most of us could pick up our phones, one of the press office people at JPL took the stage and recommended that the best thing we could tell the hordes of people calling US was “No comment”.

And, it was good advice. My phone rang constantly. Two calls were from my editors, but the rest were from reporters around the world, asking ME what I could tell them about the mishap.  I was nearly 3,000 miles away. I saw what they saw. I had no inside information. Hell, I had no way of even expressing words about it for a short time. It was just too sudden, too horrible.

Our whole country, in fact, around the world, people were shocked by this event. It was big. It was relentless. It scared the hell out of people. It also marked a turning point in many people’s feelings about space exploration. NASA was profoundly changed. Those of us who have followed space and astronomy for many years had the story of a lifetime, a difficult one to tell. It happened to people in a science we spent our lives following.

I remember getting a call from a guy at a newspaper in Illinois, who somehow got my number and wanted to know if I had any inside information about whether the CIA was involved. It was outlandish, but perfectly understandable to think something like that. Because, the alternative was to think that NASA made a mistake. Which, as it turned out later, was the truth.

Whenever I think of that day and the days afterward when we were all questioning what happened, I am reminded of something astronaut Gus Grissom said about the dangers of space exploration. “If we die we want people to accept it. We are in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us, it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life.”

Gus Grissom died in a launch pad accident in 1967, along with Ed White and Roger Chaffee. I think that if Gus had been there on Challenger’s last day, he would have said the same thing. And I think that the Challenger 7 would have been in agreement. They would not have changed their position and outlook on space exploration.

The world has changed a lot in those days. WE have changed. Sometimes I think we have become too afraid to embrace what spaceflight offers us. Something has to change because moving forward and upward is part of the spirit that has moved humans around this planet for millennia. The legacy of the Challenger 7, the Columbia crew, the Apollo 3 and others who died in space exploration tragedies for Russia (the Soviet Union) shouldn’t be wasted. We need to be looking up. And helping others to do the same.

That’s what will help the lost astronauts and cosmonauts rest in peace. And help propel humanity forward.