Play One on TV

Today is the 2oth anniversary of the loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger. From President Ronald Reagan’s speech, given just hours after the unfolding of the disaster:

Nineteen years ago, almost to the day, we lost three astronauts in a terrible accident on the ground. But we’ve never lost an astronaut in flight; we’ve never had a tragedy like this. And perhaps we’ve forgotten the courage it took for the crew of the shuttle; but they, the Challenger Seven, were aware of the dangers, but overcame them and did their jobs brilliantly. We mourn seven heroes: Michael Smith, Dick Scobee, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe. We mourn their loss as a nation together.

We’ve grown used to wonders in this century. It’s hard to dazzle us. But for 25 years the United States space program has been doing just that. We’ve grown used to the idea of space, and perhaps we forget that we’ve only just begun. We’re still pioneers. They, the members of the Challenger crew, were pioneers.

I was 21 years old when the Challenger was destroyed in a ball of flame and superheated liquid oxygen, taking with the the lives of seven astronauts, the dreams of a nation, and the hopes of a people who desperately wanted to walk among the stars.

I was driving home from a college class, listening to the local pop station on the radio. The DJ suddenly stopped the music and announced that the Space Shuttle had just exploded. You know how everyone remembers where they were when the big news came down? Where were you when Kennedy was shot? When the Murrah Building exploded? When the planes crashed into the World Trade Center? It’s odd how such trivial data will stick in your head, yet try as I might, I will never forget that I was at the corner of Memorial and Pennsylvania when I heard him say that the Challenger had gone down.

I had grown up with an American space program that was in its prime. Even though my earliest memories of space were of the Apollo 13 rescue mission, I was convinced that danger and death were exceptions rather than rules to the art of flying American spacecraft. Our ships always went up and always returned home, and we always got there first. Space was the final frontier, and we were ready for a land run. Like Reagan had said, I had become accustomed to the wonder of spaceflight.

I still remember the overly-optimistic estimates of the early 1970’s that we would have “fleets of Space Shuttles, launching every week.” The truth was slightly less impressive, but even when the hard reality of the 1980’s hit, we still had a space shuttle program that was launching at an impressive pace. At the time of the Challenger loss, we were putting shuttles up almost once every month. Space Station “Freedom” was only a paper drawing, but it somehow seemed to be just around the corner — we just needed to get a few pesky shuttle flights out of the way.

Pride goeth before a fall, and what a fall it was. The disaster almost completely destroyed our national will to remain in space. The naysayers were out in force, asking why we were spending money on “Buck Rogers projects” when there were real problem to solve here on Earth. Schoolteacher and astronaut Christa McAuliffe’s image became a morbid poster girl for those that pushed for an end to manned flight — it was too dangerous, too reckless, and too much risk for too little gain.

Fortunately, our nation tends to respond to adversity with determination. Knock us down and we spring back swinging (although we may stop for the occasional bandage). After some hand-wringing, finger-pointing, and even some good old-fashioned problem fixing, we were back in space. A little wiser and a little more wary, but still reaching for those stars.

And yet the question remains — why do we have this urge to push our luck? Even after the loss of the Columbia and yet another fine crew of seven astronauts in 2003, why do we continue to defy the odds and the laws of gravity? Beyond the value of being able to say, “We were there!” what will we get out of all this money, time, and effort?

Truth be told, none of us really know. We can speculate and dream, of course. Early 20th-century pulp magazines depicted scantily-clad Martian babes in silhouette against an alien horizon. Although we no longer expect anyone, babe or not, to traipse across the Martian landscape in a one-piece, we still feel there’s something out there that will be worth the effort. The drive is almost instinctive; think of it as a “grass is always greener” proverb after a couple of runs through Carl Sagan’s brain.

And if nothing else, our experiences of the last 100 years have shown that our planet’s resources won’t last forever. They won’t give out tomorrow, next year, or even in the next few centuries. But give out they will, and when that happens, we had better know how to read a map to Barnard’s Star. We need to start learning now, while we still have the luxury of time.

It’s far too early to make a detailed contigency plan for colonizing another world. However, the first man who shoved a hollow log beyond the reef line couldn’t possibly imagine he was paving the way for the Queen Elizabeth II. Likewise, all of our massive boosters, space stations, and shuttle launches are a mere toe-dip in the ocean of stars when compared to the voyages that will be made by our descendants. Why should we go now? Because our children’s children’s children are asking us to.

When tragedy strikes, it is entirely human to stop short and reassess. More times than not, we reassess in a panic mode — we bolt and run, tail tucked and ears flat, desperate to get as far away as possible. We suffered terrible blows when we lost Challenger and Columbia; the urge to quit was so strong and so sensible. And yet we have gone back up, again and again, in newer and more improved versions of the flying brick.

You see, that’s the thing about dreams — they’re not very sensible. They’re not at all practical. And they can change the world.

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, January 28, 1986. (The quotation is from “High Flight” by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.)