Accents
Conversation with an astronaut
Down here in California, I’m looking back to April 19, at Cape Canaveral, Florida, the Sunday after our cruise to the Bahamas. Cape Canaveral is the docking station of cruise ship SENSATION and is also the site of the huge Kennedy Space Center where I got to shake hands with Jon McBride, astronaut. More on this later.
We made use of our Florida time at NASA’s KSC (Kennedy Space Center of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) with tickets that proudly bear this info: “KSC Visitor Complex is solely supported by its visitors. No tax dollars are used to fund the facilities, staff or operations.” Short of saying, no burden to the government.
At the Rocket Garden of thick, wide, hard concrete were the Redstone, Atlas, and Titan rockets that first put NASA astronauts in space. Cameras clicked as visitors climbed aboard the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo capsules. In one capsule (I forgot which one), I had to carefully enter with body bent and legs first; otherwise, I could have banged my head. One could just imagine how astronauts could have endured the cramped quarters. For grandkid Danika, getting in and out of the capsules was as easy as abc.
At the IMAX theater, we viewed “Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon 3-D,” dramatic shots by NASA astronauts during actual missions as narrated by actor Tom Hanks, an astronaut in the movie Apollo 13. Did the actor feel the overwhelming desolation felt by the astronauts out there in the cosmos far removed from the rest of humanity ensconced in Mother Earth? I wonder… We were also shown “Space Station 3D” where astronauts “live, work and adapt to months of weightlessness” narrated by Tom Cruise, who acted daring maneuvers as a fighter pilot in Top Gun.
We watched the simulated Moon landing of Neil Armstrong, the first man on the Moon. As commander of Apollo 11, he successfully touched down on the Moon’s surface, and uttered the famous phrase, "That's one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind." The date: July 20, 1969. I could still picture us, young and old alike, in triumphal joy over the news, as it must have been in other parts of the world — because Armstrong’s feat was a shared triumph for all of mankind. He and his fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin stayed for two and a half hours exploring the lunar surface.
“Moonwalking can make you hungry,” says the brochure that advertises Moon Rock Café where one can “dine among the sights and sounds of the Apollo lunar landings.” Exhibited here is a piece of the Moon that astronauts brought home, and which us visitors got to touch. We tasted Space Dots, a frozen treat, “a cool taste of the future for ice cream,” and took with us its fancy container for souvenir.
The younger members of the group went for the Shuttle Launch Experience. My husband Rudy and I inhibited ourselves from the realistic simulation that could aggravate one’s medical or physical conditions. We might not be able to stand the loud noise, the shaking, and the vibrations. Instead, we had fun tracing the different constellations in the Constellation Sphere Plaza. I especially looked for Orion the Hunter that I always see in the early evenings in the Philippine night sky—Orion with the aligned three stars which, according to our Science teacher, represent the Hunter’s three dogs.
The Astronaut Encounter was a face-to-face audience with one who has flown in space. Jon McBride, a retired astronaut from West Virginia, was on schedule the day we visited. A fighter pilot and a former US Navy Captain, he belonged to the 1978 NASA Group Selection. His total time in space: 8 days, 5 hours, 23 minutes. In 1980, McBride’s home state honored him with the title "West Virginia Ambassador of Good Will Among All Men.” (Reminds me of the honorary title recently given to our country’s boxing champion Manny Pacquiao, “Ambassador for Peace and Understanding.")
In the open forum, Rudy asked whether it’s true that the only man-made structure recognizable from the Moon is the Great Wall of China. The astronaut answered in the affirmative, adding that stretches of lakes and rivers could be seen, too. Picture-taking followed with visitors posing with Jon McBride. This time I had the chance to ask him whether the policy “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” ever existed in the choice of astronauts. “Never,” was the reply. The question occurred to me because in a Newsweek recent issue, columnist Anna Quindlen wrote End of an Error where she criticized the US military policy as regards a soldier’s sexual orientation. Now gays can openly serve in the military. Like Quindlen, I find the policy “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” condemnable. Let a man or woman be, straight or gay!
About six miles away from the Kennedy Space Center, we drove to the imposing edifice of the United States Astronaut Hall of Fame, said to contain the largest collection of personal astronaut memorabilia. It being the United States’ own, it is to be expected that the name of Yuri Gagarin would be absent. On April 12, 1961, Gagarin, a Russian cosmonaut (cosmonaut was then the preferred terminology rather than astronaut) was the first human in outer space and the first to orbit the Earth. His pioneering flight in space earned him worldwide acclaim, as did Armstrong and the rest of the US astronauts. All heroes in the great family of mankind!
Speaking in 1962, Pres. John F. Kennedy affirmed that Man will be on the Moon before the end of the 1960’s. “It will be done. And it will be done before the end of this decade.” An assassin’s bullet in 1963 prevented him from seeing his prediction come true: Neil Armstrong landed on the Moon in 1969. A portion of Kennedy’s inspiring speech runs thus: “Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, ‘Because it is there.’ Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.”
Last May 11, space shuttle Atlantis ferried seven astronauts to do repair job on the 19-year old Hubble Space Telescope. With space explorations unstoppable and mankind’s thirst for knowledge unquenchable, it won’t be long when Frank Sinatra’s popular song of the 1960’s would be real for you and me; if not in our time, eventually in the coming generations: “Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars… Let me know what life is like in Jupiter and Mars…”
(Email: lagoc@hargray.com)