I am a child of the Space Age. I remember Sputnik and the furor that resulted from it. I remember President John F. Kennedy’s speech in which he said, “we choose to go to the moon.” I remember Explorer, Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, the lunar landings, and the successes and failures of the Space Shuttle. I have never witnessed a Space Shuttle launch or landing except on television, but I dream of seeing one in person. Senator John Glenn is one of my heroes. Christa McAuliffe, who was to be the first teacher in space, is another. Seeing the steady, bright, white light of the ISS slowly and majestically arcing across the sky at dusk was a thrill for me. It appeared over the western horizon just on time, as predicted, and was large enough and bright enough and slow enough for me to see it despite my nearsightedness. I was in awe as it moved to the northeast. I thought again of the many accomplishments of space exploration, of the many discoveries and benefits we have enjoyed so far, and of the potential for the future in questions still unanswered, and new discoveries waiting to be made. Today, we struggle to interest people in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, and we fear falling behind the rest of the world in these areas of study and knowledge. Seeing the ISS makes me wish I had studied science and math a little harder, for my heart is in space. My heart is also in education, and its promise for the future.
ISS Impressions
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April 27, 2009 at 1:15 pm |
Well, my father’s enthusiasm for space certainly rubbed off on me in a big way. I grew up wanting to be either a space scientist like Carl Sagan, or an astronaut like Neil Armstrong. Somehow, I ended up in music, mostly compostion, but I’ve written several pieces inspired by space exploration and science in general.
To me the International Space Station represents some important lessons about cooperative ventures. The original plan, rolled out in the 1980s, was for a US-led space station with several junior partners involved, all of them from the ranks of our Cold War allies. This program limped along and was never funded.
In the 1990s, though, NASA realized that the Russians, who had been operating space stations more or less continuously for over twenty years, had the expertise and experience we needed to make the project work–Russian spacesuits, for example, are generally considered to be the best out there. A few American astronauts on the last Russian space station set endurance records in the mid- and late-90s as we developed the International Space Station and gained the experience. The European, Japanese and Canadian space agencies have all had a hand in developing and constructing the ISS as well.
The ISS isn’t the giant doughnut with artificial gravity from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001, but it does share an important feature–international cooperation. At a time when we are entering a new space race spurred on by China, all the while watching worldwide threats begin to develop, it’s important to learn to cooperate, isn’t it?