Billionaires in Space

I didn't have plans to watch Richard Branson's foray out of the atmosphere last week, but the TV was on at my mom's house and I didn't have anything better to do so...

Quite honestly, having horrible memories of two space shuttle tragedies that claimed the lives of 14 astronauts, I was a little worried about being witness to another horrific event. That's exactly why I'm not an auto racing fan, just not into seeing people die in front of my eyes.

Fortunately my fears were not realized as Branson and his five fellow astronauts, two pilots and three other passengers or in the official space travel jargon, "mission specialists", arrived safe and sound back on terra firma about 45 minutes after their brief experience of the weightlessness of inner space.

I use that term because there is some disagreement as to where the earth's atmosphere ends and space begins. In the fifties, physicist Theodore von Kármná calculated that the atmosphere became too thin to support aerodynamic flight at around 100k or 62 miles above sea level. Branson's spacecraft did not cross the "Kármán Line" therefore to some, including his chief competitor in the current billionaire's space race Jeff Bezos, who is scheduled to blast off in his own space ship in about oh T-minus 58 minutes and counting from this writing, Branson didn't quite get there.

However NASA, who I'd say has a little experience with the subject, draws its space line at 50 miles above sea level and (something I just learned the other day) awards astronaut wings to folks who pass that threshold. For the record, Branson's craft reached 53.5 miles.  

Before the flight I was hopelessly ignorant of Branson's, Bezos's or Elon Musk's SpaceX missions. Such a far cry from when I was a kid glued to the TV for every US space launch from sometime during the early Gemini missions, through Apollo and the moon landings, SkyLab, the first American "space station" and into the era of the Space Shuttle. 

Then after about three or four shuttle missions, I lost interest, as there didn't seem to be a glamorous objective for the space program anymore, at least the manned part of it. I wasn't alone in my indifference which I'm sure inspired NASA, in order to attract more public attention and political support to their efforts, announced through President Reagan in 1984 that it would send their first civilian, a teacher into space on the shuttle. The person selected out of 11,000 applicants was middle school teacher Christa McAuliffe from, Concord, NH. 

That got my attention.. But the Chicago Bears had just won the Super Bowl and the rest of the city and I were thawing out after the glorious victory parade in single digit degree temperatures in the Loop the day before the launch of the Challenger. Let's just say my mind was elsewhere. I was at work that Tuesday and will never forget exactly where I was when I learned that Challenger had exploded shortly after the launch, killing McAuliffe and her six crew mates.

Needless to say, like practically everyone, I was deeply affected by the tragedy, I can only imagine how it must have impacted the people who were watching the doomed launch as it unfolded live on TV, especially the tens of thousands of students in their classrooms watching because of McAuliffe's involvement in the mission. 

It had been nearly twenty years since the last fatal NASA accident involving astronauts (which took place on the launch pad during a pre-flight test) and Americans had become accustomed to seeing astronauts blasting off into space and returning safely. Even the near disaster of Apollo 13 only proved that the brilliance, ingenuity and quick thinking of the team of professionals who ran the space program, made a tragedy like the one that befell Challenger, inconceivable.

Well that's what it seemed like anyway. Because of the perpetual chin up attitude (at least in public) of the folks at NASA and let's face it, a little luck, few of us I think really had any idea until January 28, 1986, how truly dangerous going into space was.  

Just as after the tragedy of Apollo I, the issues that caused the Challenger disaster were addressed, the appropriate heads rolled, and we were back in business, up in in space after an appropriate hiatus.

Then it happened again, 17 years later. Once again I had by and large little if any interest in the Shuttle program and had no idea there was even a mission taking place. But by chance I happened that day to be on my way to an all day retreat when I heard a report on the radio that the Space Shuttle Columbia, the first of the shuttles to be launched 22 years before and on its 27th mission, was preparing for re-entry after a two week mission. I said a little prayer for the astronauts' safe return, then didn't think about them for the rest of the day. The retreat went without a hitch until the end of the day when one of the leaders of the retreat announced that early that morning, Columbia broke up upon re-entry, killing everyone on board. 

Space travel is serious business indeed. 

That fact was brought up during the broadcast of Branson's flight to one of the fellows involved in the current race to space by private entities who hope to very soon be sending paying customers into space. When the interviewer pointed out that the current mortality rate of astronauts on missions into space is a little over three percent, (therefore not a very good business model), space guy assured us that today we have computer modeling systems that can predict and correct far more problems before they occur that ever before.

I'm sure he's right. I can remember when you could bank on there being at least one or two major airline crashes every year in this country alone and many more around the world. Because of artificial intelligence systems detecting problems in time, and greatly reducing the chance of pilot error, and because of ever more stringent safety regulations in place, crashes such as those common in the past, taking the lives of hundreds of people every year, are rare indeed, at least in the US and Europe.  

But they still do happen. Of course, even back when airplane crashes were fairly commonplace, your chances of surviving a commercial air flight were greater than your chances of surviving a ride in the car. Today they're far greater. 

Obviously space flight is a different matter which begs the question, what's the point of investing all the time and money into a venture that when you come to think of it at these early stages anyway, is little more than providing very rich people the world's most expensive and dangerous amusement park ride? And of course the inevitable lament that I've been hearing all my life: "just think if all that money going up into space was spent down here on earth, all the problems we could solve."

Personally I'm on the fence with this one. What Branson, Bezos, Musk and others are doing is what people have been doing since we've been people, exploring the unknown and challenging themselves to get there. It's in our DNA. Without it, the species Homo sapiens would have never left its ancestral home in Africa. 

Some say that would have been a good thing, especially for our planet. Perhaps. 

But given the fact that didn't happen, it's pointless to get on a soapbox harping about these people and their ambitions to get into space. Whether we like it or not, they're going ahead with their plans. Like all innovation, there will be discoveries made that right now we can't even imagine. ones that will in fact address many of the problems we have down here on earth. There will also be discoveries that may make matters worse for us as well, that's just how innovation works, no matter how good the intention. 

We will certainly see our home planet in a different light. You can't see national borders from space for one thing, but you can see much of the impact human existence has had on the earth's environment, most of it not for the good. From all I've ever heard, the experience of being in space is a profound, life-altering experience, perhaps it will dawn on some of the movers and shakers floating around during their magic carpet rides in space to rethink their attitudes about how we treat our home and our fellow space travelers who inhabit it.

On the other hand, I've heard arguments for expansion into space that say it's necessary to explore and develop other worlds because one day, our old world may not be inhabitable anymore.

I have a better idea.

Let's not let that happen.

POST SCRIPT:

Jeff Bezos's flight this morning came off seemingly without a hitch. The passengers which included both the oldest person who has ever been to space (and who deserves a post of her own) and the youngest ever, along with Bezos and his brother, all grinned from ear to ear as they disembarked from their capsule minutes after it touched down. The flight was seemingly so flawless, it inspired one reporter to remark that space travel was no longer dangerous.

That struck me as a wildly ignorant comment, and reminded me of the first passenger aboard a US space flight, Ham the chimpanzee.

That event inspired this comment from the film The Right Stuff, uttered by Sam Shepard in the role of Chuck Yaeger, regarding the character of astronauts at the time who unlike pilots, had very little if any control of their spacecraft and were essentially replacing chimps in space:

 Think a monkey knows he's sitting on top of a rocket that might explode? These astronaut boys, they know that, see? Well, I'll tell you somethin' - it takes a special kind of man to volunteer for a suicide mission, especially one that's on TV.

While going into space is no longer exactly a suicide mission, there is still a good amount of risk involved. I'm afraid once Bezos' and Branson's space tour buses get a few successful journeys under their belts, folks both working on them on the ground and those paying top dollar to fly in them are going to become complacent and forget this process still involves human beings sitting atop a glorified stick of dynamite. That complacency is where the real danger lies I'm afraid.

Real astronauts, and by that I mean the ones who train for years to get their chance to work on a mission are another story. They know exactly all of the risks involved, and that any moment, especially during launch or re-entry, may be their last. Perhaps one of the most enlightened writers I've read, explaining the experience of being in space is former astronaut, Chris Hadfield. Here is an interview he gave with NPR's Terry Gross in 2013.

If you have even the slightest interest in space travel, or for that matter life on earth, trust me, listening to this interview is 43 minutes well spent.

Anyway here's the deal. Having just said everything above about my reticence of sending civilians into space, if someone offered me a free ride in either Bezos's of Branson's space buggies, would I take them up on it?

You bet I would.