Flight

I should have posted this over the weekend but was busy with other, Christmas related things (including two parties!).

December 17th, 2005 marked the 102nd anniversary of the first manned, powered, sustained flight by a heavier-than-air craft by the Wright brothers. Consider: a mere 66 years later we left the first human foot prints on the moon, and we now have a number of space craft that have not only left the Earth, but have left the entire solar system never to return.

I grew up with the space program, some of the earliest toys I recall were astronauts, rockets, lunar rovers, I even had a card-game called "Space Race". I see a direct correlation between the Wright brothers and the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs. At first planes were used mainly by two groups, the rich and famous and the government. Right now only the governments and a few wealthy individuals have gone into space, but perhaps in a few years (maybe even within my lifetime) we'll see space flight the same way we currently see airplane flight. Recently a private company launched a reuseable craft into suborbital flight. They proved it was reuseable by launching it twice within a preset timeframe. If that's not an exciting concept for a space-age kid I don't know what is.

I remember once being asked what one thing I'd do, what one dream I'd fulfill, if I could do it right now and money were no object. I said I'd ride the space shuttle. To truly understand what this means to me, I hate, and I mean PASSIONATELY hate to fly. I hate amusement park rides, my wife could tell you how Runaway Train at Great Adventure was a white-knuckle experience for me. Just watching a shuttle launch, as the bird rolls over on its back, is enough to make parts of my anatomy pucker. Still, I'd go if I could. If they ever decide that they need an overweight, middle-aged guy as part of the crew I'll be first on line. I'd go as cargo if I had to.

Why? Let me relate a story. Once, while I was commuting by bus, the bus I was in went over an overpass, and on the roadway beneath was a rental truck that was a little to high to make it under the overpass. The top of the truck was peeled back like a sardine can. As I went by at 60 or so mph I could see all the stuff in the truck. Now, I've loaded rental trucks, boxes, furniture, mattresses, etc. This gave me a new perspective on the inside of a truck, a view you don't normally get. I imagine the astronauts in the International Space Station or on the shuttle get that perspective. You don't see a storm from the ground, looking up and only seeing the leading edge of it, you see the whole storm from the top. Imagine seeing the shadow cast by the Rocky Mountains as the sun rises. Imagine looking the other way and seeing stars, more stars than you ever imagined. So I'd clamp my hands firmly on my stomach and keep swallowing whatever I ate for the last two days. I'd hand out earplugs to my fellow crew members so they wouldn't hear me screaming. I'd probably have sore hands for days from clutching whatever there is to clutch. But I'd go, and when I got back I'd be glad I went, I'd count it as the experience of a lifetime.

102 years ago people said that if man were meant to fly he'd have wings. I'd reply that man has wings, wings he made himself. It's what we've always done, we didn't have claws and fangs to hunt with or to protect us from predators so we made them. We didn't have wings, we didn't have the ability to breathe in a vacuum or under water. I believe that someday we'll walk on other planets in this solar system (in fact in the 60's and 70's you couldn't have convinced me that we wouldn't have colonized Mars by now!). That's also what we do, we knew there was nothing on top of Mt Everest, we knew there was nothing really special about the North or South Poles, but that didn't stop people from going there. There may be no good reason to go back to the moon, or to Mars or to one of the moons of Jupiter, but we'll go. We're driven by the same impluse that made a distant ancestor cross to the other side of the river just to see what's there.

Next clear night go outside and look at the moon, reflect that there are footprints, flags, and some decomposing junk up there and that we put it there. Consider that the same spirit that drove those space pioneers drove the Wrights to fly at Kitty Hawk. Try to imagine our world without the technologies that started with that first flight. Now try to imagine our world in a hundred years without the benefits of the technology borne of the space program. Like they say, shoot for the moon, even if you miss you land among the stars.