Everybody, I suspect, has this list – even if it’s just in your head. Doable things that you would really, really like to do some day.
Somewhere on my list — along with taking a hot-air balloon ride/check; attending a game at Yankee Stadium/check; visiting the Catacombs/check; bussing the Blarney Stone/check; and meeting Timothy Leary/indeed, check — was seeing a space launch.
Until last Tuesday it had been too long deferred and unchecked.
As a journalist, I was never on the NASA beat. Science-oriented, Renaissance reporters like the Tampa Tribune’s Kurt Loft have that detail. As a citizen, I kept finding it logistically inconvenient. A launch was more likely to be scrubbed than to occur. As a Floridian, I took it for granted.
But last Tuesday made up for it.
The scene: the otherwise nondescript banks of the Banana River, near Port Canaveral, about 10 miles south of Kennedy Space Center launch pads. Perhaps a thousand people, mainly couples and families, had parked two- and three-deep along State Road 528.
The ad hoc hub was an RV with a big American flag and a large antenna representing the Launch Information Service & Amateur TV Systems, part of the Florida Division of Emergency Management. Its speakers were chronicling count-down information. It was also there just in case. Just in case something went wrong with the space shuttle Discovery that sits atop a half million gallons of rocket fuel and belches 7 million pounds of thrust. LISATS helped defray expenses by selling – for a donation – Space Shuttle Discovery Launch Witness certificates with names computer-printed. Of course, I got one.
Ninety minutes before scheduled launch, the atmosphere, although rife with anticipation, was casual and friendly. Refreshingly so. The air was occasionally punctuated with heavily-accented German, French and Spanish. Some of the English speakers were British, Australian and Welsh. Out-of-town license plates – from Oklahoma and Texas to Massachusetts and Pennsylvania – were almost as numerous as those from Florida. For some reason, North “First in Flight” Carolina plates seemed especially plentiful.
Folding chairs, blankets, binoculars and video and still cameras were much in evidence. People sat on roofs and hoods. But no music, no grills, no adult beverages and no boorish behavior. Tailgating NASA-style. Folks ready to revel with a cause.
That’s what makes it special. This is Team America accomplishing something important by flawlessly sending up the 23rd shuttle mission to the International Space Station. It’s a respite, however brief, from everything else. From the geo-politics and tragic jingoism that is Iraq. From the partisanship and pandering that is our political system. From the world of natural disasters and celebrity meltdowns.
It’s seeing “Mission Accomplished” without the cynical spin.
Say what you want about domestic priorities and the relative merits of travel beyond earth’s orbit, the moment you see that orange sphere separate itself from terra firma is an uplifting, patriotic rush. At that second, man realizing his potential to transcend his own limits is no mere abstraction. No more than earthly applications of space-travel technology and weightless experimentation.
We overuse and insult the meaning of “hero.” But these Discovery astronauts — six Americans and the Italian representing the European Space Agency — redefine it. Memories of Challenger and Columbia , especially the former, are ever-present and unspoken as eyes squint to follow the diminishing, booster-less dot and breaths are collectively held as the contrails slowly diffuse.
Godspeed, Discovery .