There are currents that run through our lives that help define who we are and give our lives meaning. They serve as signposts that mark important events in our lives or amplify our memories. Often these currents have substance and are very real for us. Sometimes these currents are amorphous and exist more as feelings.
Sky King, Fury, Captain Kangaroo, Ghoulardi (cool it with the boom booms)
The civil rights movements in the 1960s and early 1970s and the Vietnam War
The assassination of so many important civil rights and political leaders in the 1960s
The cold war – the red plague and duck and cover
The growth of America’s suburbs and the beginnings of the fast food industry
Motown and The Beatles
Trading Rocky Colavito to the Detroit Tigers
The NASA space program
I quite literally grew up with the space program. I vividly remember being marched into an assembly at Millikin Elementary School. We were going to watch Alan Shepard, the first American astronaut to go into space. The entire school sat in chairs facing a small black and white television set, perched up on a table so it could be seen by everyone. The rocket was launched. He went up. He came down in the Atlantic Ocean. It was riveting.
I have such significant memories from every launch. Each of the Mercury launches were major events that captured the attention of everyone around the world. John Glenn’s orbiting the earth. The tragic fire and loss of lives during the Apollo program. The orbiting of the moon and seeing the first photographs of an earth rise.
I was with a group of friends when the astronauts landed on the moon. We had recently graduated from high school. After we watched the landing and listened to Walter Cronkite’s enthusiastic play by play of the event, I remember going outside with my friends to look up at the moon. It was such an amazing feeling to look up at that beautiful bright object in the sky and to think that human beings were traipsing around on its surface.
I was watching the launch of the Challenger on a Saturday morning and remember the horror and sadness I felt when it exploded. Judith Resnik died in that explosion. I remember the pride I felt about her accomplishments and her contributions to the space program. She was a Jewish woman from Ohio. Her parents were from Ukraine, like my grandparents.
I also remember my sadness when learning that we were going to end the space shuttle program and rely on Russia to get our astronauts to the space station. Sort of like depending on China to provide critical supply chain items for everything we depend on in our society from medicine to electronic equipment. We can be so utterly confused.
Today marked another amazing and important milestone in our space program. The first manned space flight performed by a private company in collaboration with and subsidized by our government. I’ve been around long enough that my anxiety about the launch was greater than my excitement. I was so totally relieved when the capsule made it into orbit outside of the earth’s atmosphere. A great day for SpaceX and a great day for the United States of America. And not a bad day to leave the planet earth for a few months. Our planet is currently a hot mess.
The Siegel Rare Neuroimmune Association holds our largest fundraiser every year near Cocoa Beach, Florida. One of our board members has a beautiful daughter who got transverse myelitis when she was a young teen. He and his family work so hard to put on a dinner and auction. It is always a spectacular event. Last year, they held the fundraiser at the Kennedy Space Center.
All the guests got on buses and were taken out to the center located across from the Apollo launch pad. Before entering the room, we sat in a balcony above the control center and watched a simulated launch of the Apollo 8 mission. It was wonderful. It brought back so many personal memories. Of course, I cried. I can cry during a beer commercial.
The dinner and auction were held in a room with a Saturn 5 rocket hanging from the ceiling.
Nancy attended the event with me. We also spent a weekend at Cocoa Beach. It is a beautiful place.
I love our space program. I recognize the concerns raised about the cost of the program and all the unmet needs we have here on earth. We can’t do it all, but I believe we have the resources to care for our planet and its inhabitants, and still explore space. Figure out a way to audit the pentagon’s spending, smaller tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations and we can be landing humans on Mars in no time.
The contributions to understanding our place in the universe and all of what is developed in the way of science and technology justify the costs of the space program. Today was a good day for America – extra-terrestrially speaking.
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