My young son talks of space. He wants to go to Mars when he is grown...and he speaks of the journey not as a dream, but an expectation.

I think we will sit tonight and read Icarus Montgolfier Wright together.

My thoughts are with the "watcher of the runners and jumpers."

[This message has been edited by paul (edited 02-01-2003).]

That's a good idea of a story to read. I was going to read Rocket Man, but think I'll read both of them today.

One of the astronauts, Rick Husband, had decided when he was a kid, to become an astronaut. It might be fun to pull down biographies of the 7 astronauts and reading through those with your son. The ABC news site had short biographies of the seven with pictures.

Wow. Isn't it comforting to have Bradbury's works to turn to at times like this.

"...while our art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all."

--Ray Bradbury, from Zen in the Art of Writing.

[This message has been edited by WritingReptile (edited 02-02-2003).]

"Kaleidoscope" also offers a wonderful image of terror transformed into beauty especially appropriate at this time.

In my mind these days is the Ray Bradbury poem "Abandon in Place", about visiting abandoned pads at Cape Canaveral. From the 3rd stanza:


"How soon will all of Earth mob round, come here once more
To stop the night,
Put doubt away for good with rocket light?"


The crowds have come today to give time to grief. I imagine there are some there and everywhere who now wait in anticipation for a plan of action, for doubt to be put away:


"O soon, O let that day be soon
When midnight blossoms with grand ships
As bright and high as noon."


The final lines of the poem call on both living and dead to give their all to accomplish this. The full literalness of this "Ode to Joy" was impressed upon me when on Saturday I heard that seven had given their all:

"Old ghosts of rocketmen, arise.
Fling up your ships, your souls, your flesh, your blood,
Your blinding dreams
To fill, refill, and fill again
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow's
Promised and re-promised
Skies."


The poem "Abandon in Place" is in _The Haunted Computer and the Android Pope_
or collected in _Complete Poems of Ray Bradbury_ (1982).

Maybe I'm not following things closely enough but, tragic as this occurrence has been, I don't really hear anyone calling for the end of the space program. If nothing else, what I'm hearing is that it's really too bad that such a loss of life has had to occur with such a timid program of endlessly orbiting the earth.

(Bradbury's poem quoted above is quite lovely, and one of his few I actually quite admire, and, of course, Kaleidescope is certainly appropriate, in a way. I just don't agree that this tragedy is somehow a signal of the end of space exploration as depicted in Ray's poem.)

Pete

Well, Time magazine (Feb 10,2003) has a full two-page article in it arguing that the Shuttle program MUST end. Title: "The Space Shuttle Must be Stopped: It's costly, outmoded, impractical and, as we've learned again, deadly." I've heard some speakers (radio call-in mostly, so you have to take it with a grain of salt) say it's a waste of money, and we could better spend our money elsewhere. These positions seem uninformed to me, but they are floating around out there.

But, I got the impression this poem (posted above) was posted as more of a memorial to the astronauts than a dirge on the end of the space program. I had not read the poem before and liked it.

The benefits of the space program, are, in my opinion, immeasurable. The costs are so high that we definitely need to be sure we are spending money where it is most useful; but I see the combination of the Space Shuttle, the various probes, the Hubble Telescope and the International Space Station as a very powerful use of funds at this point in time.

The loss of life is very sad; but why argue that we must therefore stop the space program -- when we kill upwards of 50,000 persons PER YEAR in our cars without calling for an end to cars?



[This message has been edited by Mr. Dark (edited 02-04-2003).]

Mr. Dark,

As always, you make several very good points. However, the essay you mention in Time, as I remember, called for the end of the Shuttle program not only for the reasons you mentioned but because it was too timid in its reach. I did a quick review of USA Today today and find the point of view to be similar: Don't end the space exploration program. Perhaps you're right about the intent of the posting of the poem but I'm simply reading it was Bradbury wrote it: a lament (or "dirge," in your better words) to the end of exploration.

My point? None I guess. Just an observation.

Pete

Observation noted. Your point? Seems like you're saying the space program itself is probably not in danger, but people are beginning to wonder how valuable the Shuttle program is. Legitimate question. Personally I like the theory of the Shuttle. I think it's time to modernize and re-design it for efficiency and safety. But I confess that I like the program (as long as it's combined with other programs to take us in new directions).

I see the space station as getting us what we need to know to get back to the moon. Then I see a moon colony to get us what we need to know for unmanned trips to and from Mars. After that, I would love to see manned trips to Mars. I personally see a Shuttle-type vehicle as fitting the bill for that. With its very large payload and re-use capacities, I think it provides a pretty ideal model of getting us around in space without having to re-invent the wheel all the time.

I would also like to see more probes to the interior planets as well as the larger, ringed ones. Maybe we could shoot for moon landings on the large planets -- even if just unmanned probes.

One can dream, right?


[This message has been edited by Mr. Dark (edited 02-04-2003).]

From Bush's speech at the Houston Space Center today:

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"Our whole nation was blessed to have such men and women serving in our space program," Bush said.

"This cause of exploration and discovery is not an option we choose; it is a desire written in the human heart," the president said. "We find the best among us, send them forth into unmapped darkness, and pray they will return. They go in peace for all mankind, and all mankind is in their debt."

"Yet, some explorers do not return. And the loss settles unfairly on a few," he said.

Mr. Dark,

A couple of good posts. I'd caught some of the words to the President's speech and I thought they were dead on: "The loss settles unfairly on the few." That about says it all, doesn't it.

As for you other dreams of space, I kind of liked Arthur C. Clarke's proposal in The Fountains of Paradise: a space elevator. Oh, sure, it's likel impropable but the idea is what's behind the entire Shuttle mission. Going to and from space in a re-usable vehicle. I just wonder if it isn't time to take the next step in some way. But that's where the future is, isn't it? Some kind of Shuttle-like vehicle? No, I hold with those who say we should be dreaming bigger than we are. Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead and all that. Tragic as this loss is, it won't be the last if we're to accomplish great things. We have much to thank these astronauts for but we can show how grateful we are by boldly continuing forward.

Pete

Good points. Why not dream big, huh?

For me, "dreaming big" is the Star Trek Teletransporter ("Beam me home . .." What's that thing called?). I would like one for earth. Wouldn't it be great to get one of these posts that Bradbury's giving a speech or reading or book-signing in Santa Monica, and we could just "pop" over there instantaneously?!? I would love that! When I was a kid, my fantasy was to be invisible (obviously, so I could watch girls change!), but as I age and my vision is less discerning, I want to be able to instantaneously transport myself places.

As for space progress, I'm no astronomer nor astronaut, but here's my sequence:

1) In parallel.
-- Increased size and modernized fleet of space shuttles. These would transport to multiple space stations.
-- Some space stations would be for long-term residents to examine the effects of long-term weightlessness on development, musculature, bone structure and the immune system. These would be colonies. Whole families up there with schools, etc. We could study the effects of long-term isolation and weightlessness on social structures and psychological issues. How do children develop? How do relationships fare? Sex, pregnancy, exercise, physical development. If we're ever going to colonize, we need to know this stuff. Other space stations would be for purely scientific developments.
-- We would continue projects like the Hubble. Maybe put one in orbit around Mars to get another set of eyes out there.
-- Develop more sophisticated and durable probes and have a few go to each planet in the solar system to accumulate, analyze and transmit data here for evaluation.

2) Set up exploratory outposts on the moon, where scientists and doctors would stay for six months or more. Once that is stable, we move families there -- again, to develop the capability of real colonization. The further we go, the more we need to think in terms of social units -- not just individual scientists. The times required will be too long.

3) Manned travel to/around Mars with safe return. Mapping, safer travel covering the massive distances involved, better communications, etc.

4) The establishment of scientific outposts on Mars. Then the establishment of colonies on Mars.

Beyond this, I don't really know. Remember, I'm not a scientist. This seems pretty ambitious to me, and prepares us for real space travel and occupancy.

Is this visionary enough for a U.S./Earth space program?

Perhaps what worries me is the talk, which has already begun, of taking humans out of the equation. To shift to unmanned flights does indeed take away the risk, yet it also takes away who we are. We are the ones who cannot rest until we see what lies at the top of the mountain, and what the world looks like from up there....or what really does lie beyond the horizon of the sea.
My son wants to go to Mars, not look at pictures from a "soft-lander." We already have those. He wants to see the shades of color and light, and perhaps compare them to Bradbury's descriptions.
There is a website titled Aviation Quotes. Go there and read what men and women have said about viewing the Earth from space. They talk about how fragile the blue planet looks, and how all men must realize that they are truly one family adrift on this delicate vessel. They talk about spirituality...not pixels and contrast.

From Yahoo!news, Feb 5, 2003.

The Orbital Space Plane is already being developed as replacement for Shuttles. (This shows how much I know!)

Brief excerpt (for non-profit, educational purposes) of article below:

"SHUTTLE REPLICAS UNLIKELY

The shuttle, deemed extremely reliable despite the Columbia disaster on Saturday and the Challenger explosion in 1986, which also killed seven astronauts, uses decades-old technology and has been out of production since the Endeavour was built in 1987.

Rather than scrambling to resurrect that program, costing billions, most experts advocate staying focused on the space plane, which would ship crews and supplies to the space station and pave the way for a full-scale shuttle successor.

"I don't think you could build a new shuttle if you wanted to. All the production facilities were shut down and I'm not sure the tooling is still there," said John Logsdon at the Space Policy Institute of George Washington University.

Still in the design phase, the space plane would be launched on expendable rockets -- later replaced with advanced, reusable launch vehicles near the middle of the next decade.

"The orbital space plane would be much wiser (than a new shuttle) and the question is whether you could advance that timetable. It certainly would not be inexpensive," said Robert Walker, a former U.S. representative who chaired a presidential commission on the future of the U.S. aerospace industry.

Official cost estimates are not expected until 2004, but analysts say building a new, two-stage shuttle replacement could cost $30 billion or more."


[This message has been edited by Mr. Dark (edited 02-05-2003).]

Did anyone here know the space station is sometimes visible from earth? I didn't till today in a conversation at the library. In my area it's supposed to be visible around 7:37 last night and 6:02 tonight. It appears like a star, only moving. I'll be out looking!