This weekend American cities were wracked with riots. Legitimate protests over the death of George Floyd spilled into confrontations with authority and vandalism. While the fires raged in Minneapolis and other towns, other Americans achieved a new first – private industry sent Americans into space.
Americans in Space
The American manned space program didn’t start off well. The Russian program launched their first satellite, Sputnik, in 1957. The United States tried to catch up, launching Explorer I three months later. Russia moved ahead following up with the first man in space and in orbit, Yuri Gagarin in April of 1961. Meanwhile the American rocket, Vanguard, had lots of problems.
Alan Shepard was selected to be the first American Astronaut in space. After the Vanguard rocket failed, he rode a tested but smaller military rocket, the Redstone, on a sub-orbital flight lasting a little over fifteen minutes in May of 1961. The second American, Gus Grissom, launched in July, but still was using the Redstone’s sub-orbital power. Both Shepard and Grissom’s flights were successful, though Grissom’s capsule unfortunately flooded and sunk after he was rescued.
Meanwhile the Russians launched a second man into orbit, Ghreman Titov. He did seventeen orbits of the earth before returning safely. It wasn’t until the following February, on a different, more powerful Atlas rocket, that the United States launched John Glenn into space, and orbit. While his flight had difficulties and was cut short, he did manage to orbit the earth three times before returning.
Only the insiders at NASA knew the risks that Glenn faced with the untested Atlas. Scott Carpenter, Glenn’s astronaut backup, was “cap-com”; capsule communicator for Glenn’s mission. He was the voice that Glenn, and America, heard communicating throughout the mission.
As Glenn’s rocket left the Launchpad at Cape Canaveral, Carpenter intoned the phrase: “Godspeed John Glenn”. It became the watchword for the original Mercury Astronauts and NASA, as well as for John Glenn himself.
Moon and Shuttle
The race with Russia went on, and several Astronauts on both sides were sacrificed. But seven years later, in the turmoil filled year of 1968, it was three Americans who first orbited the Moon in Apollo 8. On Christmas Eve Astronauts Borman, Lovell and Anders read the first Book of Genesis to the people of earth, as we watched the Earth itself rise above the lunar landscape. Seven months later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed Apollo 11 on the surface, the first of six successful moon explorations.
After Apollo, the US space program turned its focus to a more mundane but important project: building a reusable vehicle to work in space. The Space Shuttle program began in 1981 with five shuttle vehicles, and continued for over thirty years. Shuttles were launched and returned 133 times. There were two catastrophic failures, with the loss of the Challenger and Columbia vehicles and their crews.
The last Shuttle launch was in July of 2011. Since then, almost nine years, the United States has been shut out of space, hitching rides to the International Space Station on Russian rockets and capsules.
Free Enterprise
In 2011, the United States Government contracted out the space program. NASA still oversees civilian space flight, but instead of purchasing the rockets, capsules and equipment and using them, they now contract with companies to carry NASA personnel and equipment into space. Two companies, Elon Musk’s (Tesla) SpaceX and traditional aeronautics giant Boeing, built competing products. NASA awards contracts to each, allowing them access to the Kennedy Space Center testing, assembly and launch facilities.
SpaceX won the first race, to get a human payload-ready space vehicle in place. Like Musk’s Tesla cars, the SpaceX rocket, is designed to look sleek and modern. Even the names are cool: the Falcon Rocket, and the Dragon space vehicle. The Falcon even returns to earth, landing gently just offshore of the Cape on a drone piloted barge named “Of Course I Still Love You” for re-use for future missions.
Space – Dude
Spacesuits have changed since the silver metallic of the Mercury days and the bright white Michelin suits of Apollo. Even the orange “test flight” suits of the Shuttle days are gone. The two astronauts launched by the SpaceX team are wearing something closer to Star Wars Storm Trooper with a cooler helmet. Except for the boots, which look like a cross between Doc Marten and Wellington.
And the grizzled Astronauts and engineers who spoke for NASA are now young “millennial something’s “ in casual SpaceX sportswear. The launch was cool, and so are the folks talking about it. It’s the California laidback style, “…of course it all works, Dude.”
But after nine years, two Americans are back in space in their own “ride”. They are headed to the International Space Station, but they’ll get a “nap” along the way: it’s a nineteen hour pursuit to meet the station in low earth orbit, so there’s an eight hour sleep cycle scheduled.
And as the Falcon Rocket cleared Launch Complex 39-A, home of the Apollo and Shuttle Launches, the SpaceX announcer gave the NASA invocation with an informal twist: “Godspeed, Doug and Ben!”
Welcome back America!!
