Blip on a nation146;s radar

There is a special NASA language for tragedy. 8216;8216;Obviously a major malfunction8217;8217; was the phrase heard 17 years ago as the Challenger exploded. 8216;8216;A contingency for the space shuttle has been declared,8217;8217; a voice said this time. 8216;8216;Those of us who are close to the programme know it8217;s never routine. The difficult has been made to look routine because of the quality of NASA8217;s work,8217;8217; said John Logsdon, director of the space policy at George Washington University8217;s Elliott School of International Affairs. 8216;8216;Some of the romance is gone, except when bad things happen. Then we remember these are brave people willingly taking risks. This is about the riskiest thing a person can do.8217;8217;

The general public, supportive of the space programme in the main, pays less attention when things go smoothly. This happened even during the Apollo programme, not long after men set foot on the moon. It happened in the early years of the shuttle. Two and a half years after the Challenger blew up, the shuttle programme returned to flight, and soon disappeared, yet again, from the broader cultural radar. Roy Bridges, director of the Kennedy Space Centre, told a reporter in 2001, 8216;8216;We make it look easy, and that8217;s the good news and the bad news.8217;8217;

The American space programme was born amid panic, after the stunning announcement by the Soviet Union in 1957 that it had put a spiky satellite named Sputnik into orbit. The Mercury programme gave America a new kind of hero, astronauts with what journalist Tom Wolfe later called 8216;8216;the right stuff.8217;8217; Science fiction fuelled the Space Age; 8216;8216;Star Trek8217;8217; helped persuade a whole generation of people that they would someday travel at Warp 8.

The space race was a Cold War competition, and for a while the Russians seemed to do everything quicker and better, with larger rockets, while ours kept blowing up or fizzling on the pad. A capsule fire in 1967 took the lives of three American astronauts. But the US still won the race to the moon, and then faced a difficult question: Where next?

The 1960s had been a boomtime for dreamers and visionaries, a moment in American history when a person could plausibly talk about living in orbiting space colonies, or building an antigravity machine, or crossing the galaxy in a particle-scooping contraption called a ramjet. NASA in the early 1960s made preliminary plans for a manned mission to Mars. But the technological challenges of keeping people alive in the hostile environment of space were not trivial, and the distance to Mars daunted even the visionaries.

Pragmatism triumphed 8212; or short-sightedness, as critics would argue. In 1969, soon after Neil Armstrong and Edwin 8216;8216;Buzz8217;8217; Aldrin walked on the Sea of Tranquillity, government bean-counters cut the projected NASA budget for 1971. Three moon missions were soon cancelled. Then came the decision to build a fleet of reusable shuttles. Trekkies were disappointed: This spaceship would go only into Low Earth Orbit, a couple of hundred miles off the surface.

The Challenger disaster inspired a presidential affirmation of man8217;s destiny in the heavens. President Reagan, speaking to the nation, directed a special message to children, and quoted an obscure sonnet written by an American airman killed in World War II: 8216;8216;We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and 8216;slipped the surly bonds of earth8217; to 8216;touch the face of God8217;.8217;8217; President Bush struck a similar tone on Saturday: 8216;8216;Mankind is led into the darkness beyond our world by the inspiration of discovery8230;.Our journey into space will go on.8217;8217;

In recent years NASA has earned headlines for multi-billion-dollar budget overruns caused by construction of the International Space Station. Longtime administrator Daniel S. Goldin stepped down in 2001, replaced by Sean O8217;Keefe, reputed to be a management expert more than a space buff. Already there had been many years of debate about how and when to replace the shuttle. It had survived in part because it was the workhorse for the space station. The station, currently occupied by three astronauts, needs the shuttle for delivery of heavy cargo and parts, and for boosts into higher orbits. Many space enthusiasts would like NASA to be more ambitious, and announce a new challenge, such as a human mission to Mars.

8216;8216;We should risk lives only when the game is worth it, and the game is worth it only when we8217;re exploring the unknown,8217;8217; said Louis Friedman, executive director of The Planetary Society. Brian Chase, executive director of the National Space Society, said, 8216;8216;Even though we may have a halt or a delay in the space shuttle programme, it8217;s important that NASA not slow its overall plans for space exploration.8217;8217;

Space travel advocates say that human spaceflight continues to have meaning above and beyond the practical, immediate benefits of microgravity experiments and engineering innovations. Going into space, they say, reflects something fundamental about the human spirit, and the United States specifically.

8216;8216;The space programme has become an icon of America,8217;8217; said Richard Berendzen, an American University physics professor and former NASA consultant. 8216;8216;We are the leading space nation. Aside from the benefits that come from it, and aside from the benefits of exploring the vast unknown, it8217;s a matter of global stature.8217;8217; People who work on the programme understand that failure is part of the enterprise. When he retired in 2001, Dan Goldin had a message for the NASA staff: 8216;8216;Be bold and don8217;t fear failure. Treat failure as a blessing, because mediocre goals are poison.8217;8217;

LA Times-Washington Post