The day the thrill of space died for my generation
If you were born in the early 1960s, as President Barack Obama was, then you were 7 or 8 years old when Apollo 11 landed on the moon’s surface on July 20, 1969. The buildup to that seminal event would have been tremendous, and it would have been one of the first major historical events of which you were aware. And, in the years that followed, the general feeling surrounding America’s space program would have been one of immense pride — a great race against the Soviets that we had won.
But if you were born in the late 1970s, as I was, then you were 7 or 8 years old when the space shuttle Challenger exploded in the Florida sky on Jan. 28, 1986 — 25 years ago today.
It was one of the first major historical events that people my age experienced, and we all experienced it in one way or another because the buildup to it was great. Everyone in my first-grade classroom — throughout the entire school, and in every school across America, I dare say — knew the name Christa McAuliffe. In line to be the first teacher to reach space, McAuliffe had been the object of space-themed lessons for days, if not weeks, leading up to the launch date. Looking back, I suspect her space mission was seen as a way to inject the thrill of the space race, and all its technological wonder, in a generation that had grown up with shuttle launches as an assumed fact of life.
Then came the explosion.
If you’re my age, there’s a good chance you watched it live on television — followed by a frantic scramble by your teacher, the teacher next door, every teacher in the building, to get that sight out of your eyes, for the principal to come over the intercom and try to make some calming sense of what had just happened.
And, rather than getting the space bug, most of us instead watched the denouement of America’s space program. The crash of the Columbia — when you were in your early 20s, if you’re around my age — was like a final blow.
There may yet be great endeavors in space for Americans to work toward, to witness, to celebrate. I come here today not to bury NASA, but to explain why the constant references to moon shots, to “Sputnik moments,” by baby boomers don’t necessarily motivate Americans my age.
The combination of being born after space travel was an assumed fact and watching this point of national pride crumble into nigh-irrelevance has rendered these allusions practically meaningless to us.
Then throw in the “big things,” as Obama called them in his State of the Union address Tuesday, to which they’re supposed to inspire us. As the Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henninger wrote after Obama’s speech, “High-speed rail and solar shingles? If that’s the president’s idea of meeting our Sputnik moment, then Houston, we have a problem.”
If the space race was the kind of “big thing” — read: “big national-greatness-liberalism thing” — that proved what government could do, what does the post-Challenger space program prove about “big things”?
Sure, it’s not that simple. But know this: If you want to prod my generation to take up a national project these days, find a new final frontier.
– By Kyle Wingfield
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65 comments Add your comment
No More Progressives!
January 28th, 2011
3:57 pm
I suppose that all the anti-American, progressive types on Kyle’s site were stoned when Explorer roamed on the Martian surface and sent back live video. Busy getting ready for the big peace rally, I’m thinking.
Designed in America, built in America and run by Americans.
markie mark
January 28th, 2011
4:03 pm
For most of you to young to remember, when we first landed on the moon, I was about 5 or 6. Gulf Gasoline sponsored a contest where we could go to the local gas station, and get a big cardboard sheet (about 2 x 3 but seemed much bigger to a child) and fold it into a Lunar Module. If you folded it right (think Oragami) it ended up being a really nice facsimile of the module. There were local contests, then regional/state, then national. Every kid in the nation was folding lunar modules. That is what I remember most from those times, so yes, as a generation we will enthralled by the idea of a man on the moon.
As an adult, I was a wine salesman in a liquor store on Hey 92 west of 575. As I walked into the store, the Challenger liftoff was taking place and blew up before my eyes. I stood there transfixed for almost two hours. I will never forget that. I don’t know if we have the money in this day and age, but I hope we do not stop space exploration. Why? Most of our great achievements have come from pure science as opposed to applied science. This is one area of endeavour in my lifetime where I felt we could explore both.
markie mark
January 28th, 2011
4:05 pm
that was Hwy 92, among other typos….lol
non sequitur
January 28th, 2011
4:09 pm
I think you fail to appreciate the lessons from Challenger & Columbia, and Apollo 1 previous, that courage and sacrifice are necessary to achieve greatness. Human error led to deaths in the space program. Astronauts know this risk, and yet there are still people driven and passionate enough to explore space.
What drives you in writing a dig at a state of the union address as a remembrance of the anniversary of a national tragedy?
Dusty
January 28th, 2011
4:54 pm
Markie Mark,
That was interesting about going to the Gulf gas station and getting a piece of cardboard you could fold into a Lunar Module. That sounds like fun for children.. Wonder, if by chance, someone has one of those carboard sheets or a folded one tucked away somewhere?? I’d love to see one for nostalgia. Maybe they will have one on Antiques Road Show sometime if it is old enough to show…
markie mark
January 28th, 2011
5:48 pm
Yes dusty, it was neat….I think they probably were too fragile to keep…they were actually painted like the module, too, so that when folded correctly it looked like an actual model. My brother and I alone must have tried folding 100 of those things….we would ride our bikes (it was a small south ga town (Wadley, GA) and grab 4 or 5 a day….they musta made thousands of those things…
markie mark
January 28th, 2011
5:50 pm
HEY DUSTY…..just googled “cardboard lunar module” and got TONS of hits….it even had some sheets for auction!
markie mark
January 28th, 2011
5:51 pm
now thats how long its been…just saw one on the web – I had forgotten they had “punch out” components that went together, too…thought it was all folded….
Chris Matthews
January 28th, 2011
6:43 pm
Obama is the worst President in American History! When Obama was a Muslim child..I doubt as a Muslim child that Obama cared about what was happening in America1 A few years later he was exploring the world of drugs!
Dusty
January 28th, 2011
6:55 pm
Markie Mark,
I’ll have to check that out. I may end up with a Lunar Module myself. Thanks for the information.
BravesFan79
January 28th, 2011
7:22 pm
Great article Kyle… and your right.
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Paul Spudis
February 1st, 2011
8:07 am
There was always going to come a time when the new generation takes space for granted, hence, no “thrill.”
But “thrills” are not why we explore. We explore to broaden our experience and knowledge base, which permits us to solve complex problems, either current or future ones.
Even if cislunar (i.e., Earth-Moon space) is not a “frontier,” it IS a sphere of operations, just like for example, the Pacific Ocean. All of our space assets — scientific, economic, and national strategic — reside within this volume of space. We go to the Moon to allow robotic machines and humans routine access to those assets.
David Sims
February 3rd, 2011
12:14 pm
My current Yahoo Answers nickname is “Dump the Liberals into Jupiter.”
I agree in part with jconservative, who wrote: “By the time of the Challenger explosion it was clear to anyone who looked that the Universe had been closed to man. Closed to man by his decision to have a 2nd TV and two cars. And the only way he could pay for the extra TV and car was to raid the Treasury in the form of tax cuts.”
That’s why space has been closed to Americans. It isn’t why space has been, or soon will be, closed to man. The reason for why no country, now or henceforth, will ever be able to colonize or industrialize space is the global depletion of fossil fuels. You can think of fossil fuels as the key that unlocks the sky. Even though rocket fuel is made of chemicals other than petrochemicals, the energy used to make rocket fuel comes from the burning of petrochemicals to make electricity. And likewise for rocket bodies and internal metal and electronic components.
Nature passed to humankind the energy football in its one-and-only allowable play, and it looks as though we will fail to score. And with our failure falls the Long Future for the Life of Earth. With the colonization and industrialization of the solar system as a first step, humans might eventually, with the resources of the planets and the asteroid belt at our disposal, have dared interstellar flight. But the task of our time, which was simply getting ourselves established away from Earth, was never done. Will not be done. And that breaks the chain to the Long Future irrevocably.
What is the Long Future? It’s the survival of humanity for as long as the stars shine, maybe 100 trillion years. Without the prospect of interstellar flight, we are limited to the resources of one solar system whose star will fail in about five billion years. Without even the colonization and industrialization of other planets, we are limited to the resources of one planet, Earth, whose habitability will fail in about one billion years—provided that we don’t do somewhat that triggers the end sooner than that.
Our lust for luxury, wealth, and political power has shortened the Life of Earth’s run through this universe by a factor of 100,000. We’ve thrown away 99.999% of the future we might have had. From now on, when you read science fiction, you ought not think of these other planets as worlds that might someday be, but instead of worlds that might someday have been.
David Sims
February 3rd, 2011
1:40 pm
Minimum cost of leaving Low Earth Orbit on an interplanetary flight.
Δv = √(GM₀/r)[√(2)−1]
GM₀ = 3.986e14 m³ sec⁻²
r = R₀ + 100000 meters = 6478000 meters
Δv = 3249.2 m/s
Minimum cost of leaving the moon’s surface on an interplanetary flight.
Δv = √(2GM₁/r) + √(GM₀/d)[√(2)−1]
GM₁ = 4.903e12 m³ sec⁻²
R₁ = 1737100 meters
d = 384400000 meters
Δv = 2797.7 m/s
Launching from the moon uses less fuel than launching from LEO, other things being equal.