MY Vast Right Wing Conspiracy

Remembering

• Posted by MacStansbury on January 28th, 2006 filed in John    

It’s a Day of Remembrance at NASA.

It was January 28, of 1986, when I was standing in the back of band practice, as usual. A freshman in the percussion doesn’t get to do much at Westfield high, once the concert band season starts. Nothing was out of the ordinary, until the first chair trumpet player said, “yeah, the Space Shuttle blew up.” His class watched the launch of the Challenger, even though by then they were becoming so common as to become boring.

It was different that day. Now, the years and youth and emotion have clouded what little recollection of the day I had, but I seem to recall the band director pulling out the TV. They had to warm up back then, and we could hear the people on the television before we could see them. They were going over just what they saw.

The shock that we’d feel was palpable. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Space flight was a guarantee; we’d defeated those countless errors of the 50s and 60s. If it was then, or if I saw it that night, I don’t remember, but I was introduced, in a real way, to Ronald Reagan.

We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and “slipped the surly bonds of earth” to “touch the face of God.”

Like I say, I don’t really remember when I saw that. As a boy, and through adulthood, things like Star Wars and Star Trek have been this geek’s passion more often than icky girls. I was brought to the mortality of life in that moment, and I looked to my leader to give me strength. It wasn’t until this morning that I realized the feeling I had in 1986 was the same one I had in 2001.

It was like watching a movie. As I saw the two towers collapse, and braced for more attacks, I was certain that I’d be going somewhere, doing something. Soon, I was. Along with the 3ID, our unit was called to help liberate Iraq from a despotic, tyrannical regime.

As we prepared to cross over into an uncertain future, the loss of another Space Shuttle went largely unnoticed by the forces in Kuwait. The strain of making sure you had everything you needed, trying to figure out the battle plan, and trying to say as much to as many people that you loved, knowing you may never hear from them again took precedence.

Had I heard about the Columbia disaster, I didn’t remember it. Like everybody else, I was focused on the task at hand. It wasn’t until I got back to the sea-port in Kuwait as we were loading out vehicles to go home, that I saw a memorial to Columbia painted on a concrete barrier. To think, for once in my life, I was part of was something so significant that I missed out on something else that touched so many people’s lives.

I can only wonder what it would’ve been like to watch the launch of Apollo 1. Space flight really was a dangerous proposition; they were used to seeing rockets never make it off the ground. They were used to seeing disasters. And yet, there were brave, some would say crazy men who took up the challenge. Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chafee knew that this ride could be their last.

What they never could’ve expected was just how they would go. A flash fire in the module, through a design flaw no-one figured would happen. Doors to difficult to open, medical help too far away. Through the lessons learned, they made space flight better for those who came after them, but you never want to be the one in the highlight film of what not to do.

NASA has declared this a day to remember. Some days, I would rather forget.

Links to the NASA site:

Day of Remembrance Flash (Flash Plugin Required)
The Vision for Space Exploration: Our Journey Continues

Hat-tip to The Truckin’ Blog