I know it’s 1970s technology that was outdated before it ever flew. I know it’s holding us back from other space initiatives that would get us back to the Moon and on to Mars and Europa and Alpha Centauri and beyond. But I’ve got a big warm bundle of heart cockles reserved for the space shuttle anyway.
I watched the first launch with eager, geeky glee as a nerdy 11-year-old. I watched the disaster of Challenger with a broken heart -- I remember precisely where I was and what I was doing, exactly how our parents say they remember the Kennedy assassination. (It was a school holiday -- I was a junior in high school -- and I was about to sit down and watch a Marx Brothers movie, which is why I had the TV on, and I figured, What the hell, I’ll watch the launch first. I also remember being shocked that my regular babysitting gig for that evening was still on -- people were continuing to go about their business like nothing had happened? I couldn’t comprehend it: I was glued to the TV, because there was speculation that someone might have survived the fall from sky-high -- oh, how absurdly optimistic we get in the face of obvious tragedy -- and I was glued to the TV. How could people go to work like it was a regular day?)
I remember the very date I was offered my first real grownup job -- at a magazine in New York... because it was the same day the shuttle returned to service: September 29, 1988. Discovery blasted off successfully, and so did my soon-to-be-grand publishing career.
I remember two years ago, when Columbia disintegrated over Texas, and how terribly afraid I was -- considering the state of the world today, and how reason and logic seem increasingly to hold no sway in the world -- that the fact that an Israeli astronaut was onboard would be appropriated by someone with a political agenda to rationalize doing something horrible. I’m still stunned that that hasn’t happened.
I feel sometimes that there’s a whole big ocean universe out there and we’re farting around splashing our feet in the surf, which is of course precisely what the shuttle was designed to do -- not go too far away. But when I think about how used to the idea we’ve gotten of people being up in orbit, and when I think about how many amazing images of our planet we’ve gotten -- because what else is there to do floating around in low-earth orbit -- I wonder if maybe it’s not such a bad thing that we’re taking things slowly.
Year ago, I ran into someone I went to high school with, who was now working in a drugstore near where my parents still live. The person ahead of me at the checkout counter was paying with one of those custom credit cards that let you personalize the image on them, and this one had a space-shuttle launch on it. I made some comment about how cool that was, and the former acquaintance behind the register said, "Oh, yeah, you were always into that science-fiction stuff." And I thought: Science fiction? This is science fact. This is happening now.
But not today. Discovery’s not going anywhere for at least a few days. But she’ll launch eventually. Holy crap, she was the very shuttle who got us back dipping our toes in the water 17 years ago, in 1988, after Challenger. Gotta get your feet wet before you swim, right?
