Mike, Ron, Ferdinand and the Quest

With a good bit of attention focused on space in recent weeks – mainly about the New Horizons probe that has given us a new appreciation for the planet Pluto – I’ve been thinking about the broader idea of exploration, of mankind’s timeless yearning to find out what’s beyond the horizon.

My thoughts keep turning to two of my fellow Carolinians whose lives were cut short by that quest for the unknown, and to an historical figure whose name will be forever linked to the notion of exploration.

Mike Smith and Ron McNair were among the 7 crew members killed when the Challenger space shuttle blew up 73 seconds after launch on January 28, 1986.  Smith was the shuttle pilot, McNair was a mission specialist, in charge of scientific experiments on the craft. 

The shuttle disaster is seared in our memory.  There was a huge television audience for the launch because one of those on board was Christa McAuliffe, the first teacher in space.  If you weren’t watching at the time, you’ve seen the video -- the horrific dawning realization that something was going wrong, and then the explosion that scattered flaming debris across the Atlantic.

The space shuttle program was put on hold for almost 3 years after Challenger while investigators pieced together what happened and NASA corrected design flaws.  In September, 1988 the shuttle Discovery lifted off on a successful mission.  There were some who thought the shuttle program should be scrapped, that human beings should stop trying to explore the hostile environment of space.  But the quest for the unknown prevailed, even through another shuttle accident in 2003 that took the lives of the Columbia crew.

Not long after Challenger, NASA launched an unmanned space probe to study Venus, the place in our solar system the most like earth.  They named it Magellan, after the 16th century explorer, and I thought it was a fitting name for a venture into uncharted territory.

The original Magellan left Spain with a small fleet in 1519, determined to reach the East Indies by sailing west.  That meant he had to find a route around the tip of South America.  He did, and it’s named the Strait of Magellan in his honor.  Magellan sailed on across the Pacific, becoming the first to navigate it from east to west.  It was a perilous voyage.  Magellan battled starvation, disease, mutiny, and warfare.  In the Philppines, he was killed in a battle with natives.  But his second-in-command sailed on, back to Spain, proving conclusively that the earth is round.

Ferdinand Magellan was a resourceful man, determined and often ruthless.  In the mold of all great explorers, he was consumed by curiosity – the insatiable hunger to know what’s beyond what we can see.  It’s an essential part of being human.  Were it not, we would all still be living, elbow-to-elbow, in the place where humanity began.  It is an essential part of people like Mike Smith and Ron McNair and Christa McAuliffe.  And it will go on, disasters or not, as long as we are unwilling to sit still.  We explore earth and sea and sky and space – and the mysterious inner worlds of subatomic particles and nanotechnology -- no matter what the risk, because it is there, beckoning to us.

There are impressive memorials to Mike Smith, in his hometown of Beaufort, North Carolina, and to Ron McNair, in Lake City, South Carolina.  But the most fitting memorial to people like them and Ferdinand Magellan, is that we carry on their work.  We just won’t give up.

We yearn to know the unknown, even when we put ourselves in peril.  Part of the thrill is in the discovery, but maybe the best part is the journey itself.

Resurrecting Pluto

I was on a plane 16 years ago, headed for Florida, when I read about the downsizing of Pluto, its demotion by pointy-headed astronomers to “minor planet” status.  Pluto was my favorite planet because it had a neat name, one that Walt Disney appropriated for the world’s most lovable cartoon dog.  And these science types wanted to say it wasn’t a planet at all, just a big ball of ice out there on the edge of our solar system?  How dare they.

So you can imagine how excited I and millions of other Pluto-lovers are by having our special planet (we don’t give up just because some pointy-heads say we should) in the spotlight these days, as NASA’s New Horizons space probe arrives at Pluto after a 9-year, 3-billion-mile journey.  Snapping pictures and collecting data.  Putting dear old Pluto in the spotlight, giving even the pointy-heads a new appreciation for this remote, intriguing piece of our universe.

When I think about Pluto these days, I also think about my seatmate on that flight to Florida years ago.  She was about 75, I guessed – petite, lively of eye and pleasant of manner, traveling from her home in Connecticut to visit friends in Florida.  It was January and she was happy to leave the snow and ice of Connecticut behind, as she had done for a month the last dozen years.

But this year, the trip was different.  It was the first time she had made it alone, because she had buried her husband a month before.  She was handling it well, and the friends in Florida were a big help.  They had told her, “You’ll never be homeless,” and I realized that meant a lot more than a place of physical shelter, especially now.  She would spend a few days with each of her Florida friends and then fly back to Connecticut, knowing that it was not her only home.

We talked for awhile, and I remember hoping that one day, if faced with similar circumstances, I could handle a loss with as much grace and that I would have friends somewhere who would make sure I was never homeless.

Across the aisle from me was a man about the same age as my seatmate, a woman seated next to him that appeared to be his wife.  He was impatient with her, grumpy and out of sorts in a sour, scrunched-faced way.  He had two Bloody Marys and drifted off to sleep, and she looked relieved.  I wished I could introduce her to my seatmate and they could steal away together for a month of Florida sun.

But of course the wife would never do such a thing.  Somehow she had put up with his grumpiness all these years and here in the twilight she wasn’t likely to exchange the known for the unknown.  So she would probably keep putting up with him, but maybe kick him in the shins every once in awhile.  Someday, odds were, she would lose him, and miss him, grumpiness and all.

I went back to my newspaper and re-read the story about the downsizing of Pluto and pondered for awhile on the nature of loss and its aftermath.  I decided that I could never again think of our solar system in the same way, and it made me sad that poor little Pluto didn’t have anything like friends in Florida to ease the pain.  I thought of those astronomers downsizing Pluto as a bunch of old grumps, too – in need of a kick in the shins.

But now, 16 years later, with New Horizons putting my favorite planet in the news again, I’m happy.  For me and lots of other folks, Pluto will always be a planet – maybe the runt of the litter, but part of the litter, nonetheless.  I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for runts.