25 Years

Time passes so quickly. Along the way, we find milestones. We divide up time into segments and attach significance to those segments.

For some reason, someone at some point decided that every 25 years, every quarter of a century, would be a significant time-frame for reflection on an event.

25 years doesn’t really seem that long, but it is. And it’s also very quick.

300 months….. 9125 days…. 5,475,000 hours….. 328,500,000 minutes.... 19,710,000,000 seconds.

One day, you’re a sixth-grader, out of school on a snowy teacher workday. The next, you’re a 36-year-old dad-to-be, working as a public relations director at a college.

One day, it’s Jan. 28, 1986. The next, it’s Jan. 28, 2011.

Today is 25 years to the day since the flight of Challenger mission STS 51-L. It has been 25 years since it exploded shortly after launch and its crew – Dick Scobee, Greg Jarvis, Michael Smith, Judith Resnick, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, and Christa McAuliffe – ascended from the Earth into heaven. 

It has been 25 years since those heroes became angels.

It was one of those significant days in history that will be indeliably etched into the minds of a generation - as  the days of the Apollo 11 moon landing, assassination of John F. Kennedy, or the attack on Pearl Harbor were for generations before and Sept 11, 2001 was for another generation.

It really doesn’t seem that long ago. I still remember all the feelings associated with watching it unfold on TV and all the feelings afterwards. The hurt, the confusion… and then later on came the anger as we all learned about the circumstances of the launch and all the political maneuvering behind the scenes.

Is it bad that society as a whole tends to only reflect on significant events like this on their 25th, 50th , 75th, or 100th anniversary? Some may say no. Their argument may include reasons like “Why drag it back up every year?”  or "There's no benefit in talking about it anymore..." Unfortunately, we’re starting to hear that on Sept. 11th.

Is it bad that we don’t reflect significantly on those events more often than 25-year increments? Some people may say yes. Their argument may include reasons like “We constantly need to reflect on our history and what we are learning from it each year…” or “What happened then is still impacting us today….” Or “Those feelings just naturally come up at that time every year.”

I’ve blogged about my passion and interest in spaceflight and space exploration before. I’ve blogged about the impact of the loss of the Challenger crew on my life before. I’m not going to rehash all that right now; if you want you can go back and read it here

Ronald Reagan gave a very profound, inspirational, and impactful speech the night of the Challenger explosion. In it, he said, “Nothing ends here. Our hopes and our journey continue.”

Despite the current state of our space program, our economy, and our general public disinterest in exploring new frontiers, I hope that statement from President Reagan is indicative of greater things to come.

My daughter will be 24 on the 50th anniversary of the Challenger explosion. Many of her generation may only ever read about it in textbooks or on Wikipedia; or hear it talked about on grainy archival news footage.

But I will tell her about how it affected me. I will tell her about the importance of heroes, dreams, and ambition. Hopefully she will find it as inspirational as I do.

 “Challenger wasn’t the final chapter in space exploration; just a transitional chapter in this great book. The book will continue with new exciting chapters of exciting adventures, discoveries and achievements ….  It’s time for the next 25 years to unfold. Let us boldly look to the future,” June Scobee, wife of Challenger astronaut Dick Scobee, said this morning at a memorial at Kennedy Space Center.

So let’s see what the next 25-year chapter will bring.

It's Time To Go Back

Image courtesy of FoxNews.com

It was put into motion 48 years ago.

“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish” – President John F. Kennedy, May 25, 1961, address to joint session of Congress

Then, 40 years ago, mankind set foot on a celestial body that we had admired in awe, fascination, wonder, and sometimes even fear, since the day that God put our ancestors on this planet.

We committed ourselves to a goal. And we achieved it.

It must have been a wonderous feeling to watch – as the Saturn V rocket launched forward from its launchpad on plume of 7.6 million pounds of thrust; as our astronauts, Neil, Buzz and Michael, soared through the vastness of space toward the moon; as the Eagle descended and then landed; and as Neil put his boot down on the surface of the moon.

He stumbled a little verbally as he searched for the words he wanted to say.

But he said the phrase that we all know: “That's one small step for a man – one giant leap for mankind.”

Awesome.

We had put a man (actually two men that time - 10 more would follow in their footsteps) on the moon.

And guess what…. There’s an AMERICAN flag on the moon. WE did it. It was our boys who were up there. The United States of America achieved that goal.

Granted, it wasn’t all for the nature of satisfying our curiosity. It wasn’t all just to inspire people. There was a Cold War going on. We were in a space race with the Soviet Union. It was a constant game of one-upsmanship and power plays.

Kennedy himself was known to have only set that goal of the moon and of NASA’s rapid rise in the 60s for the purpose of having the edge in the Cold War.

Even still, it’s amazing to think of. In less than 100 years, mostly since the turn of the 20th century, man had pioneered the telephone, radio, car, airplane, television – and space travel. And we put a man on the moon.

I would say that landing a man on the moon was probably mankind’s greatest technological achievement in modern history, if not all of history. It was definitely the most inspiring achievement to the most amount of people at probably any time in history.

But it’s been 40 years. And we haven’t been back in almost 37.

I can honestly say that I don’t think there have been any achievements of any kind anywhere near that magnitude, let alone that inspiring, in the last 40 years. We need to be inspired. We need to have something that we all collectively want to achieve.

It was a moment in which the WORLD came together in fascination. One which still captures the imagination.

We can all say we want world peace. That isn’t likely to happen soon. That would be the best achievement we could ever reach for. But more realistically, we can all reach for the moon. It’s out there. We've been there before. We know it’s not made of cheese. And we know that no cow can jump over it without a rocket system engineered for that specific purpose, with sound life support and environmental controls and an adequate supply of grass for it to chew on.

Man did it though – and we will do it again. We need something to recapture that fascination and imagination.

But by the time we make it back, given no delays on the proposed timeline, it will be 2020 and it will be 48 years since man last set foot on the moon. That’s too long of a time.

Space exploration is something that we can’t hold back on. It’s in our nature to be wonder – to explore – to see what’s out there past our newest frontier. We’re never going to be satisfied to sit here on this rock we call Earth and not explore the heavens.

God made it all for us. He made a race of explorers. He gave us a curious nature. And he provided us with the tools to satisfy that curiosity and to send ourselves out on new adventures.

I think we owe it to the men and women that built NASA, that built our space program, and pushed this nation and mankind to that new frontier to go back to the moon.

But we’ve been spinning our wheels. We’ve lost 17 fine, brave souls in the process, 14 of those in a program that should have long since paved the way for something even more amazing.

We owe it to them to go back. They would have wanted it. We owe it to them to go even further.

On Sept. 12, 1962, President Kennedy, in an address give at Rice University on the space effort, declared “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

We chose to go to the moon. And we did. Now let’s get back on track and go back to the moon - go to Mars, go further out, and “boldly go where no man has gone before.”

Stay tuned for Part 2: You Call This Support?

23 Years

It's not something I think about every day myself. But every year on January 28th, I do. I guess you can't expect the 23rd anniversary would be a headline. Maybe in two years -- on the 25th -- it will be.

I would have liked to have seen some recognition of it today though. I checked today on the web sites of MSNBC, CNN, FoxNews, and several other key news agencies. Nobody had even a mention of it.

But after 23 years, people forget. People have moved on. You go up to a teenager today and mention it, and many may not even know what you're talking about.

I was in sixth grade at the time. We were out of school that day. I can't remember whether there was snow on the ground outside, but I remember it was cold. I think it may have been a teacher workday for us. We were over at one of my mom's friends' houses. If I recall correctly, said friend had a daughter my sister's age and the two girls were playing around the house. Dad was at work.

The first teacher in space was supposed to go into space that day. We weren't watching the launch of the Challenger on STS-51L -- it was on the TV in another room.

I just remember suddenly hearing voices of confusion talking on the TV.... "obviously a major malfunction" (that ended up being the understatement of the century) and I ran to the TV.

All I saw were white plumes going off in separate directions. 'That's weird, the SRBs don't separate like that - it was too early for them to even release,' I thought.

There was a big multicolored cloud of orange, red and white in the center of it all. They were saying things on the TV that I really didn't pay attention to at the time. My eyes were transfixed. I couldn't believe it.

They went on saying that they are looking at the situation, but we all knew what had just happened.

Scobee. Smith. Resnik. Onizuka. Jarvis. McAuliffe. McNair. All are names that are burned into my mind.

The loss of the Challenger crew devastated families. It destroyed careers. Some NASA administrators walked away in shame. Some engineers and administrators at Morton Thiokol walked away in disgust.

It broke the hearts of millions, myself included. But it never dashed my belief in space exploration.

Since a young age, I have always been fascinated in anything that could fly and/or go into space, and the concept of exploration itself. But despite the loss of the Challenger and its crew, my faith and belief in the mission of our space program remained strong -- in fact, it has gotten stronger over the years. As has my admiration for the men and women that put those spacesuits on and go out there among the silence of space - to float. To watch. To look ... at all the awesomeness.

Two years later we crowded around a TV in our school library on a September day to watch the Discovery launch on STS-26 as the space shuttle program returned to flight. We were all overjoyed when we heard the words "Discovery has cleared the tower."

Then I waited to watch what happened when they said the words that still make me flinch - "Go at throttle up."

We watched as it burned a trail of white smoke across the sky and soared into outer space. We were screaming cheers. Everyone was clapping. It was an awesome sight.

Seventeen years after Challenger we went through another tragedy -- the loss of another shuttle and its crew of seven.

I'm going to save my political beliefs on space exploration and the losses of the Challenger, Columbia, and the Apollo I and their crews - and my portion of the blame game - for another time.

January 28, 1986 is a day I will always remember. Whether the newspaper, news websites, or whomever, include even a small headline or not about its anniversary, I will always remember.

I sometimes find myself turning away from the TV when they show clips of the STS-51L launch. I know what happens next once those words "Go at throttle up" are spoken.

But I'll continue to look up to the heavens, thinking about how far we've come in space exploration and the things we have yet to achieve - wondering what's out there - and admiring those heroes who are daring to explore that frontier for us and are blazing trails across history.

"The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved good-bye and 'slipped the surly bonds of earth' to 'touch the face of God'." - Ronald Reagan, Jan. 28, 1986

Following the Water

I'm a big space nerd. I always have been. I think the idea of space exploration is fascinating.

Today was a big day for NASA. I can only imagine how tense but exciting it was today at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

The Phoenix Mars Lander touched down on the Martian north pole today. It was the first time in 32 years that we've had what is called a successful "soft landing," a descent controlled by thrusters, on Mars. The few probes that have landed on Mars since the Vikings of the 1970s have landed using airbags.

The next probe to be sent to Mars will be the 2,000 pound Mars Science Lab, a third generation rover set to be launched next year, which will also utilize a soft landing system.

But the big deal about this mission is that it will be analyzing soil and ice samples for traces of organic compounds - traces of the life. It may also tell us if Mars was ever warm enough to have flowing water on its surface.

This is a key part to NASA's Mars strategy dubbed "Follow the Water."

We've learned some amazing things from Phoenix's predecessors to Mars.

The rovers Spirt and Opportunity, which have been on planet since 2004, have provided us new information about the Martian terrain. The Mars Pathfinder and its rover Sojourner provided analysis of Martian soil and weather during it operation from 1997 to 1998.

The Mars Odyssey has been in orbit over the planet since 2002, searching for signs of past or present water and volcanic activity on Mars. The Mars Reconaissance Orbiter has been mapping the planet for the last two years, along with the European Space Agency's Mars Express Orbiter which has been there since 2004. The Mars Global Surveyor recently spent nine years in orbit studying Mars and its moon Phobos.

I know this may sound really geeky, but this stuff really excites me.

I wholeheartedly believe that the operation of NASA is very justifiable. Granted there are probably areas within the agency and its programs, as with every governmental agency, that need to be streamlined and/or eliminated and/or monitored more closely.

As time goes on, we'll more than likely see private industry become more and more of a player in space exploration - and someday they will probably take over as the primary platform. But for the time being, NASA has a very critical role in keeping the spirit of exploration alive and development of space technology moving forward.

The agency has accomplished some really exciting stuff in the last 20 years -- even with their faster, cheaper, better attitude. Just consider some of this:

• As of March of this year, the Voyager I probe (launched in 1977) was 9.82 billion miles from Earth and the farthest manmade object from Earth
• The Galileo, launched in 1989, spent 14 years studying Jupiter, conducted man's first asteroid flyby, discovered the first asteroid moon, and launched the first probe into Jupiter's atmosphere
• The Ulysses Probe has been studying the sun for the past 14 years and has flown through the tails of two comets in the process.
• In 2001, the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous - Shoemaker probe was the first manmade probe to land on an asteroid.
• The Cassini probe was the first probe to orbit Saturn in 2004. The Huygens probe which separated from Cassini in 2005 was the first to land on another moon (in an ocean of liquid methane, nonetheless)
• In 2005, the Deep Impact probe was the first manmade object to impact a comet's nucleus and study its interior
• In 2004, the Genesis probe returned samples of solar wind particles back to Earth. Then in 2006, the Stardust probe returned cosmic dust from a comet back to Earth
• The New Horizons probe launched in 2006 will be providing the first close-up images of Pluto, sometime in 2015.
• The Dawn probe launched last fall will study the two largest members of the asteroid belt - the asteroid Vesta and dwarf planet Ceres
• The Kepler Space Observatory to be launched next year will join the ESA's COROT telescope in looking for Earth-sized planets outside our solar system

From the launch of Sputnik to the landing of Phoenix on Mars, space exploration has provided countless benefits and allowed mankind to solve many mysteries of our solar system that were centuries old. No one can tell me that space exploration is not justified. Anyone who believes so is a moron. But there are a lot more mysteries that we will solve in the future.

There will also come a day when humanity will exhaust all of its existing resources on Earth and will be forced to look elsewhere to sustain our race. The steps we take today are important for that reason.

The steps we take today are providing and will continue to provide new technological breakthroughs to benefit all of mankind -- and advances in countless fields of science, from medicine to agriculture.

Mainly though, we're a race of explorers. We always have been. We can't sit still. We want to learn how to better oursleves. We have to know what's out there. Whether or not we ever come in contact with another race of sentient beings is beside the point --- we're going to learn more about ourselves, our creation, our solar system, and our universe in the process.

During the course of its history, NASA has lost 17 of its own either in flight or in launchpad exercises. Let's make sure that they didn't die in vain -- that their spirit of exploration lives on -- and we keep following the water.