Help Wanted: Space Shuttle Astronaut / Tile Mason

Is it just me or do they launch the Space Shuttle these days for the sole purpose of repairing what went wrong on takeoff so there are no catastrophes upon reentry? I’m all for safety, but nowadays the phrase “Let’s light this candle” – famously said week after week by Rabbi Mordechai Goldfarb of Congregation Beth Shalom in the quaint Connecticut suburb of Old Saybrook - takes on a whole new meaning.

The Space Shuttle program launched, with much fanfare, in the early 1980s - presumably by a group of engineers who thought that 80s electronica music was so bad that they couldn’t even stay on the same planet with it. The world simultaneously welcomed Soft Cell and bid goodbye to a handful of lucky astronauts who were protesting the death of rock music.

The Space Program was all but dead, and out of the public eye, after a successful series of missions in the 60s and 70s which brought human beings to the surface of the moon. Of course, this WAS the heyday of LSD, so whether or not man actually flew to and walked on the moon remains a true mystery. The only thing that we know for sure is that Tom Hanks was THIS close to walking on the moon but missed his opportunity (as illustrated in the Hollywood blockbuster film, appropriately titled, Tom Hanks Never Walked on the Moon).

In any case, the Space Shuttle program was the next revolution in space travel. The orbiter was able to launch, reenter and launch, again and again. Unless, of course, someone forgot to tighten a screw somewhere along the way.

Such was the unfortunate case with the Space Shuttle Challenger, which completed just nine missions before disintegrating on January 28, 1986 - just 73 seconds into the launch of its tenth mission. This disaster could have been avoided had the O-rings, which in this case were shaped like rhombuses, been shaped like actual O’s. Seven lives, and a vehicle almost as cool as a De Lorean, were lost as a result of a shape problem that could have been solved by any random nursery school teacher.

This disaster brought the space program to a grinding halt – until someone indiscriminately suggested that they build another Space Shuttle and give it a much cooler name. Thus were born the Discovery, the Atlantis and the Endeavour (the last one, by the way, while an American spacecraft, was inexplicably named by a Brit called Reginald Huggins, III – thereby explaining the randomly placed “U”).

Over the years, space shuttle launches became passé, and coverage of launches and landings moved from national broadcast networks to the pages of the Weekly World News, which covers the latest breaking space news you won’t read anywhere else. Included is news like in this actual passage from an article about the planets:

“Last year, the fifty-four-year-old astronomer claimed that not only was Pluto still a planet but that it was inhabited by Irish sheepdogs.”

You can’t make this stuff up. This is clearly news you will see nowhere else.

All remained boring with the shuttle program until February 1, 2003, which was when Cuban percussionist Ramón "Mongo" Santamaría passed away unexpectedly as a result of a stroke. Ironically, it was his music that was playing at mission control that day when the Space Shuttle Columbia burned up upon reentry. NASA scientists determined that a hole had formed on the shuttle’s wings when a piece of insulating foam from the external fuel tank peeled off during the launch 16 days earlier.

It is unfortunate that the only way NASA can get headlines anymore is to have a major catastrophe that involves a Space Shuttle. They could probably take a lesson or two from English entrepreneur Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson, the world’s recognized King of Self-Promotion.

The end result, however, is that NASA has turned into a bunch of overprotective kindergarten mothers when it comes to its space program. Every single time a shuttle is launched, the cargo bay is filled with heat-resistant black replacement tiles, concrete, grout, a Costco-sized container of Tang and several cases of those diapers the crazy astronaut lady wore when she drove clear across the country at a rate of speed faster than a Space Shuttle, in order to “talk to” (read: kill) a flight attendant who was making whoopee with her imagined astronaut boyfriend. (For the record, I believe her insanity was founded. I mean, who WOULDN’T go crazy with a car full of dirty diapers? Anyone who has kids can vouch for this. But I digress….)

The tiles in a shuttle’s cargo bay are there to replace damage sustained by the tiles on the orbiter when it takes off. Which means, by my calculations, that the space program has essentially turned itself into the world’s most costly unnecessary repair shop. In fact, I’ve been informed by insiders that the bulk of the training that new astronauts undergo involves replacing various parts of the Space Shuttle while in space.

It does seem to be a waste of a space program to simply fix what goes wrong instead of really ‘living on the edge’ like the old astronauts used to do. That’s why they were so revered. They stared death in the face and, in most cases, died doing so - but not without the everlasting acclaim of the American people.

I think our resources are being spent foolishly in space. Case in point: The Jetsons first appeared on TV in 1962 – 45 years ago! – and we STILL do not have flying saucer cars that convert into suitcases. What a waste of technology.

I think noted sci-fi author Larry Niven put it best when he said, “The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program. And if we become extinct because we don't have a space program, it'll serve us right!" He said that in 2001, which makes me really wonder whether or not he had been conscious for the past 40 years.

Needless to say, the NASA space program will forge ahead. There’s a space station that isn’t going to build itself, there are astronauts in diapers training for their next tile-replacement mission, and there are science fiction writers who need to obviously ignore reality and say ridiculous things about why dinosaurs went extinct.