Re: Is public support for manned space programme dead ?

"Derek Lyons" <fairwater@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:46bb3fa6.253479109@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Jeff Findley" <jeff.findley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:



We've all been raised on the Reader's Digest versions of both Apollo
and various great expeditions, which involves trimming said adventure
down to the sexy and exciting bits and leaving out the mass of dross.
The chief result of this is that many people have never actually read
the primary source material, which means they have a vast
misconception of the actual pace and rhythm of the activity.

I recall watching I think it was the Intelsat VI rescue (first 3 person
EVA?)

For about an entire orbit they just held on to the damn thing and didn't
really move or do anything interesting.

DAMN though I was glued to the tv set. But in reality, I'm a space nerd.
Watching stuff like LOS, etc was fascinating to me.

But you're right. The average person wants to see the 5 seconds where they
capture the satellite and stop its spin and the 5 seconds where they release
it after being fixed.

Not the 90 minutes of them holding it while getting read to latch it, not
the 15 minutes of reading a checklist before they release it, etc.


Ultimately, I think space SHOULD be boring. It should be routine. It
should be the sort of thing that we go "oh hum" about.

(I recall my grandmother saying she didn't bother going outside her Florida
rental home to watch a shuttle launch since she had seen so many. I was
quietly amused that she had already become jaded. A woman that grew up
before most of the streets in her town were even paved. :-)



I've
read the transcripts of the lunar missions, and I've read (well,
deeply skimmed) the journals of Lewis & Clark and several of the
Antarctic expeditions, and in the end they are mainly excruciatingly
boring. (I.E. an awful lot of all of the entries/communications
exchanges are concerned with mundane housekeeping tasks and day-to-day
routines.) "Days of boredom interspersed with minutes of terror".

Tom Clancy had it right when he wrote of one of his characters
performing the opening phases of a vital wartime operation: "What he
was doing as very important, but the actual doing was very boring".

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL



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Greg Moore
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