Rocket Summer
In high school I heard a news story on the radio about how Buzz Aldrin punched a conspiracy theorist who cornered him in public, demanding that he swear an oath on the Bible that astronauts did, in fact, go to the moon. Thomas and I were briefly obsessed with the Moon Hoax (it preceded the obsession with the Paul is Dead Hoax), so I'm proud to say I'm familiar with the arguments supporting the claim that the moon landing was actually filmed inside a NASA soundstage. It's a stupid theory, yes; its greatest argument is that the lunar photos aren't real because there aren't any stars in the background (apparently NASA could construct a "fake" 363-foot Saturn V rocket but they couldn't fudge little white dots in their photographs). But the theory is entertaining (what if the Apollo mission was just a way to distract the public from Vietnam?), and nowadays a juicy hoax sounds a lot more sexy than a dull moon landing ever could.
The anniversary of the moon "landing" was a few weeks ago (the best part of being a conspiracy theorist is that you get to put "quotes" around "everything"), and in reflection, the Apollo missions seem far-fetched, almost science fiction, compared to what the Discovery is doing forty years later, which is Mission: Don't Die. Moreover, we're learning more and more that NASA is not run by Ed Harris and a crack team of buzz-cut rocket scientists in white shirts and half-rim glasses, but by unattractive, fat, and apparently lazy engineers. This NY Times article illustrates pretty well the range of reactions to the Discovery mission (which succeeds in being both really boring and awfully nail-biting) and to the space program in general.
I reside in the "camp" of space enthusiasts who will "bend over backwards," according to the article, to defend NASA. I don't defend their technological prowess or their organization or even their vision, but I do defend their right to exist and waste all the taxpayer's money they possibly can. Which is obviously a right that some people contest.
If I was thorough, I would provide a few links to editorials and articles by people criticizing the space program, but instead I'll just send you to Google and ask you to search yourself and support my point for me.
Instead, I want to suggest support for NASA by pointing to the same source the Times did: Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, which I picked up last week to re-read after the Discovery launched. It's been a while since this blog gave out some Bradbury-love. But if I remember correctly, nobody really liked The Martian Chronicles in high school like they did Something Wicked This Way Comes or Fahrenheit 451 (a brilliant title spoiled by You-Know-Who). The book is a little schizo, not in the good way, because it's really a loose compilation of short stories about Mars written decades apart. I imagine that science-fiction fans are disappointed by the lack of science in it and non-science-fiction fans are turned off by the fantasy and the characters who are named "Ngg" and "Yll." It's never been one of my favorite books either.
The Martian Chronicles deals a great deal with the American imagination and the realization of dreams, two themes highly relevant to its contemporary space race. Bradbury imagines Martian society as the middle-class, American society of the 1950's: nuclear families, an insular confidence in technology, and suspicion of foreign influence.
The Martians, however, are to an extent telepathic. Their thoughts aren't confined to the temporal and spacial cage of the mind; rather, their minds travel freely between other people and eventually take up residence in the Martian landscape long after the race has disappeared. Martians who are insance are executed by the society, because insane Martian's insanity can bleed into other minds, like a contagious hallucinogen. Therefore, in Martian society dreams and imaginations are prophecies, tangible energies, and historical records that influence and are influenced by social changes in a very palpable way.
I think Bradbury recognizes a similar state in American society during the years he wrote his Mars stories, a time in which American imagination could seemingly will a satellite into orbit at the same time that it could manufacture a Cold War mentality from scratch. According to Bradbury the American perception was that technology could follow American ingenuity and imagination as far as it went; because what was technology but an extension of that American will?
The consequences of that will are illustrated in two directions in The Martian Chronicles. The will of the American earthmen is outward-reaching and idealistic. Their own imagination inspires themselves. The Martians, however, are inward-looking. In the second chapter of the book, a Martian man kills the first American astronaut to Mars out of jealousy and fear that the astronaut will steal his Martian wife. When the second expedition led by Captain Williams arrives at a Martian home, Captain Williams exclaims heroically over and over, "'We're from Earth!'" to which the Martian Mrs. Ttt responds, "'Get out! If you come in my house, wash your boots first.'"
By the end of the book, the Martian race has disappeared, leaving dead Martian towns abandoned. In their place are American Earth colonists, stranded on Mars because a world war has erupted back on their home planet. Isolated, retaining contact neither with former Martians nor new Earthmen, the colonists cease to identify with Earth and come to think of themselves as Martian. In their new society, they are free from war and self-destructive "Earthian logic," but they are also fearful and paranoid of new rockets bringing disorder to their peace bred in isolation. Mentally and socially, they colonists truly become Martian in the end. The planet of Mars is a conduit for different strains of human will: as a destination it inspires the imagination, and as a home it inspires suspicion and paranoia. These are the two faces of the Janus-like American imagination as perceived by Bradbury.
While The Martian Chronicles is fairly relevant to Cold War America (if you buy my personal take on it), it has a secondary effect on me reading it in a post-Cold War age of terrorism. This is that it is difficult for me to imagine a time when there was a perceived national imagination, an American "fantasy" of a space frontier, and a genuine belief that technology could reach us great accomplishments for the human race. The national imagination now is seen as a many-splintered thing, a complex mess of toleration and fear. The best achievement that technology can make is to get us out of the environmental grave it dug for us in the first place. And the space frontier, well... as we've seen, the frontier is brought down with little more than a rebel piece of foam.
However, I think it's even more important now to nurture a space program because it still retains the broken remains of a national imagination. The best argument for supporting the national space program is that it's no longer as "national" as it used to be. With the Cold War over, we can finally go into space with motives clean of "beating the Russkies" and actually explore in the name of humankind, which is currently obsessed with trauma from blowing itself up with suicide bombs and airplanes. Space reminds us that we're still capable of thinking beyond our present situations and that the human imagination can still go beyond imagining how we might be the next terrorist target.
"Rocket summer. The words passed among the people in the open, airing houses. Rocket summer. The warm desert air changing the frost patterns on the windows, erasing the art work. The skis and sleds suddenly useless. The snow, falling from the cold sky upon the town, turned to a hot rain before it touched the ground.
Rocket summer. People leaned from their porches and watched the reddening sky." -Ray Bradbury
In high school I heard a news story on the radio about how Buzz Aldrin punched a conspiracy theorist who cornered him in public, demanding that he swear an oath on the Bible that astronauts did, in fact, go to the moon. Thomas and I were briefly obsessed with the Moon Hoax (it preceded the obsession with the Paul is Dead Hoax), so I'm proud to say I'm familiar with the arguments supporting the claim that the moon landing was actually filmed inside a NASA soundstage. It's a stupid theory, yes; its greatest argument is that the lunar photos aren't real because there aren't any stars in the background (apparently NASA could construct a "fake" 363-foot Saturn V rocket but they couldn't fudge little white dots in their photographs). But the theory is entertaining (what if the Apollo mission was just a way to distract the public from Vietnam?), and nowadays a juicy hoax sounds a lot more sexy than a dull moon landing ever could.
The anniversary of the moon "landing" was a few weeks ago (the best part of being a conspiracy theorist is that you get to put "quotes" around "everything"), and in reflection, the Apollo missions seem far-fetched, almost science fiction, compared to what the Discovery is doing forty years later, which is Mission: Don't Die. Moreover, we're learning more and more that NASA is not run by Ed Harris and a crack team of buzz-cut rocket scientists in white shirts and half-rim glasses, but by unattractive, fat, and apparently lazy engineers. This NY Times article illustrates pretty well the range of reactions to the Discovery mission (which succeeds in being both really boring and awfully nail-biting) and to the space program in general.
I reside in the "camp" of space enthusiasts who will "bend over backwards," according to the article, to defend NASA. I don't defend their technological prowess or their organization or even their vision, but I do defend their right to exist and waste all the taxpayer's money they possibly can. Which is obviously a right that some people contest.
If I was thorough, I would provide a few links to editorials and articles by people criticizing the space program, but instead I'll just send you to Google and ask you to search yourself and support my point for me.
Instead, I want to suggest support for NASA by pointing to the same source the Times did: Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, which I picked up last week to re-read after the Discovery launched. It's been a while since this blog gave out some Bradbury-love. But if I remember correctly, nobody really liked The Martian Chronicles in high school like they did Something Wicked This Way Comes or Fahrenheit 451 (a brilliant title spoiled by You-Know-Who). The book is a little schizo, not in the good way, because it's really a loose compilation of short stories about Mars written decades apart. I imagine that science-fiction fans are disappointed by the lack of science in it and non-science-fiction fans are turned off by the fantasy and the characters who are named "Ngg" and "Yll." It's never been one of my favorite books either.
The Martian Chronicles deals a great deal with the American imagination and the realization of dreams, two themes highly relevant to its contemporary space race. Bradbury imagines Martian society as the middle-class, American society of the 1950's: nuclear families, an insular confidence in technology, and suspicion of foreign influence.
The Martians, however, are to an extent telepathic. Their thoughts aren't confined to the temporal and spacial cage of the mind; rather, their minds travel freely between other people and eventually take up residence in the Martian landscape long after the race has disappeared. Martians who are insance are executed by the society, because insane Martian's insanity can bleed into other minds, like a contagious hallucinogen. Therefore, in Martian society dreams and imaginations are prophecies, tangible energies, and historical records that influence and are influenced by social changes in a very palpable way.
I think Bradbury recognizes a similar state in American society during the years he wrote his Mars stories, a time in which American imagination could seemingly will a satellite into orbit at the same time that it could manufacture a Cold War mentality from scratch. According to Bradbury the American perception was that technology could follow American ingenuity and imagination as far as it went; because what was technology but an extension of that American will?
The consequences of that will are illustrated in two directions in The Martian Chronicles. The will of the American earthmen is outward-reaching and idealistic. Their own imagination inspires themselves. The Martians, however, are inward-looking. In the second chapter of the book, a Martian man kills the first American astronaut to Mars out of jealousy and fear that the astronaut will steal his Martian wife. When the second expedition led by Captain Williams arrives at a Martian home, Captain Williams exclaims heroically over and over, "'We're from Earth!'" to which the Martian Mrs. Ttt responds, "'Get out! If you come in my house, wash your boots first.'"
By the end of the book, the Martian race has disappeared, leaving dead Martian towns abandoned. In their place are American Earth colonists, stranded on Mars because a world war has erupted back on their home planet. Isolated, retaining contact neither with former Martians nor new Earthmen, the colonists cease to identify with Earth and come to think of themselves as Martian. In their new society, they are free from war and self-destructive "Earthian logic," but they are also fearful and paranoid of new rockets bringing disorder to their peace bred in isolation. Mentally and socially, they colonists truly become Martian in the end. The planet of Mars is a conduit for different strains of human will: as a destination it inspires the imagination, and as a home it inspires suspicion and paranoia. These are the two faces of the Janus-like American imagination as perceived by Bradbury.
While The Martian Chronicles is fairly relevant to Cold War America (if you buy my personal take on it), it has a secondary effect on me reading it in a post-Cold War age of terrorism. This is that it is difficult for me to imagine a time when there was a perceived national imagination, an American "fantasy" of a space frontier, and a genuine belief that technology could reach us great accomplishments for the human race. The national imagination now is seen as a many-splintered thing, a complex mess of toleration and fear. The best achievement that technology can make is to get us out of the environmental grave it dug for us in the first place. And the space frontier, well... as we've seen, the frontier is brought down with little more than a rebel piece of foam.
However, I think it's even more important now to nurture a space program because it still retains the broken remains of a national imagination. The best argument for supporting the national space program is that it's no longer as "national" as it used to be. With the Cold War over, we can finally go into space with motives clean of "beating the Russkies" and actually explore in the name of humankind, which is currently obsessed with trauma from blowing itself up with suicide bombs and airplanes. Space reminds us that we're still capable of thinking beyond our present situations and that the human imagination can still go beyond imagining how we might be the next terrorist target.
"Rocket summer. The words passed among the people in the open, airing houses. Rocket summer. The warm desert air changing the frost patterns on the windows, erasing the art work. The skis and sleds suddenly useless. The snow, falling from the cold sky upon the town, turned to a hot rain before it touched the ground.
Rocket summer. People leaned from their porches and watched the reddening sky." -Ray Bradbury
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