{"id":327,"date":"2015-10-25T00:54:07","date_gmt":"2015-10-25T00:54:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=327"},"modified":"2015-10-25T00:54:07","modified_gmt":"2015-10-25T00:54:07","slug":"ftv-leaving-orbit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=327","title":{"rendered":"FTV: Leaving Orbit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 I will give you fair warning – this installment of FTV will not be about music. \u00a0It is about a book, and I will further warn you that it is not a book about music, musicians, or MTV. \u00a0This isn\u2019t a book review, either. \u00a0\u00a0It is more of a commentary on the topic of Margaret Lazarus Dean\u2019s book <\/span>Leaving Orbit: \u00a0Notes from the Last Days of American Spaceflight. \u00a0<\/span><\/i>Every generation can lay claim to something unique be it a fad or a technological breakthrough. \u00a0We even go so far as to label our generations with \u00a0handles that the history books will record as touchstones to make it easier for us to reference each period. \u00a0Mine label is pretty simple. \u00a0I am a product of The Space Age and that is why Lazarus\u2019s book caught my eye roaming the aisles at Bookworld. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Margaret Lazarus Dean has impeccable credentials as an author. \u00a0She is an associate professor of English at the University of Tennessee and resides in Knoxville. \u00a0She was born in 1972, \u00a0the same year that the Apollo moon landing program was ending. \u00a0She got hooked on the idea of space exploration at the age of seven while visiting the Smithsonian\u2019s Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. \u00a0I enjoyed her descriptions of the Air and Space Museum because I was lucky enough to visit there in the early 1990s. \u00a0Both the museum and a lifelong interest in space exploration are our common connection, but our paths diverge from that common point. \u00a0She is a writer, having previously penned a space themed novel (<\/span>The Time It Takes to Fall <\/span><\/i>which she commonly refers to as \u2018my Challenger book\u2019 as in the Space Shuttle Challenger). \u00a0I like to write, but I am not a writer. \u00a0On the other hand, I am kind of a space exploration dinosaur because I got to see the whole program evolve from Sputnik to the end of the Shuttle era to the exploration of Pluto (which, by the way, still gets planetary status in my universe). \u00a0Dean is very knowledgeable about manned space exploration, but readily admits that there are aspects of the early space program that she can only speculate about as she wasn\u2019t there to see it as it unfolded. \u00a0As she says in her book, \u201cThere is always someone out there who knows more.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0After <\/span>The Time It Takes to Fall<\/span><\/i> was published, she began an internet friendship with a NASA worker named Omar who, like his father, worked on the Space Shuttle program at Cape Canaveral. \u00a0When he contacted her after reading her first book, Dean worried that his insider view of the program would result in a long list of inaccuracies he had found. \u00a0Just the opposite occurred and her friendship with Omar gave her access to segments of the Cape Canaveral spaceport that would not have been available to her as a writer. \u00a0Omar\u2019s unique job as a NASA insider was also invaluable to Dean as she tried to find a balancing point between the end of the Space Shuttle program and its overall place in the storied history (and future) of NASA.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Dean wanted to gauge the current generation\u2019s understanding of the space program so she prompted \u00a0her university students with some simple questions about the topic. \u00a0She was astonished at some of the answers. \u00a0\u201cHow much of the Federal budget goes to NASA?\u201d \u00a0\u00a0Her student\u2019s guesses were on par with a multi-year national study that showed on the average, Americans believe 20 percent of the federal budget goes to NASA. \u00a0\u00a0A significant number of people believe that it consumes 50 percent! \u00a0\u00a0According to Bill Nye, the president of the Planetary Society, NASA\u2019s budget peaked during the Apollo moon landing program at 4.5 percent but today has shrunk to a mere .4 \u00a0percentage of the Federal budget. \u00a0Dean pointed out that NASA\u2019s budget was less than the cost needed to provide air conditioning for troops in Iraq. \u00a0\u00a0The bank bailout of 2008 cost more than the entire fifty-year NASA budget.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0She proceeded to ask them basic questions about the space program and clearly, the generations who grew up with only the Space Shuttle in their space program were not aware of the earlier, so called Heroic Era of spaceflight. \u00a0In fact, they tended to lump them together and jumble the parts up in a mish-mash of facts traded between the two eras. \u00a0Here are some examples of their basic space program knowledge: \u00a0\u00a0John Glenn walked on the Moon in 1965 (reality: \u00a0he made the first American orbital flight and became the oldest human to fly in space aboard the shuttle, but he never went to the moon). \u00a0Women and the space shuttle have been to the Moon (reality: \u00a0\u00a0no and no). \u00a0The shuttle can travel up to 40 million miles away from the Earth (reality: \u00a0250 miles, the height of the International Space Station, is about as far as it can go) and 400 people have walked on the Moon, most recently in 2001 (reality: \u00a0only 12 men have walked on the Moon, the last in 1972). \u00a0\u00a0Is it unusual for a generation to be so out of touch with a major historical era like the Space Age? \u00a0I remember how many things I got wrong about World War II before my history lessons took root. \u00a0My generation approached the study of WWII like it was ancient history even though it ended a mere 8 years before I was born. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0By the time Dean arrived in Florida for the final Shuttle Launch, she had devoured Norman Mailer\u2019s accounts of the Apollo 11 moon launch that took place three years before she was even born. \u00a0She finally decided to apply for press credentials for the final Shuttle launch which put her in the same viewing area that all the correspondents had used since the Apollo 4 launch. \u00a0Dean\u2019s sense of history about the space program was heightened we she was able to get closer to the actual launch site for each of the last three flights. \u00a0Her own opinions and emotions blended with accounts given by those who witnessed the launch of the first moon landing are what make this a remarkable history of the entire space program, not just the end of the Shuttle era.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Her central questions throughout <\/span>Leaving Orbit <\/span><\/i>are: \u00a0\u201cWhat does the end of the Space Shuttle era mean? \u00a0What does it mean that we went to space for fifty years and then decided not to go anymore?\u201d Almost everyone she asked these questions responded with some variation of, \u201cThose are good questions.\u201d \u00a0What Dean discovered in the end weren\u2019t really \u00a0well defined answers to her key questions. The answers she received ended up spawning more questions. \u00a0When the Apollo era ended, the Shuttle program was already in development. \u00a0When the Shuttle era was over, privatization of space travel was in the works but NASA itself had no way to get astronauts to the International Space Station. \u00a0Buying rides into space aboard Russian rockets just isn\u2019t the same as having an active rocket program capable of launching humans into space! \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0What comes next? \u00a0Dean did not think she would be able to embrace the civilian rocket programs as she had the NASA efforts. \u00a0Humans are meant to explore and for the first time in fifty years, we have turned over the reigns of space exploration to private companies. \u00a0Manned exploration is expensive and perhaps the only way to see it continue is through federal funding. \u00a0In today\u2019s dollars, the entire shuttle program cost $200 billion, twice as much as the Apollo program. \u00a0A manned mission program to Mars will cost twice as much as the shuttle program, but private companies will be wary of an expensive mission like this if there are no profits to be made. \u00a0Time will tell what the future of manned space exploration will be. \u00a0Incidentally, the war in Iraq has already cost five times the projected cost of a manned Mars program. \u00a0Dean hopes the private space companies succeed, but also hopes we can reignite the national enthusiasm that will be needed to fully fund NASA\u2019s future programs.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I highly recommend Lazarus\u2019s book even if you are not a science or space buff. \u00a0A second page turner I would recommend is<\/span> An <\/span><\/i>Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth <\/span><\/i>by Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield. \u00a0If a Canadian can set his sights on becoming an astronaut at a time when his own country had no space program of its own and end up commanding the International Space Station, then perhaps we can aspire to do more with our program than live on past glories.<\/span>