The Far Call: We pray for one last landing...

[athelind]

In the wake of columnist and Nixon speechwriter William Safire's death, here is the speech that he wrote for the President to read in the event that the Apollo 11 astronauts were stranded on the Moon.

It's surreal to read this today; earlier this morning, I found the lyrics to "The Green Hills of Earth" running through my head:

We pray for one

Comments

[tombfyre]

Aye, its quite good that nobody ever had to read that. And hooray for The Green Hills of Earth. A very good read, and what appeared to be a fairly nice song.

[archteryx]

Kind of ironic that the truly daring missions of the Apollo era, the ones where terrible risks were taken and at least one catastrophic failure occured -- all ended with the entire crew recovered, safe, and more or less uninjured.

Where decades later, the relatively routine missions of the Space Shuttle ended in catastrophe and the loss of all crew -- twice. That speech, in another form, did end up being read, but read by future Presidents, trying to explain the inexplicable.

[hafoc]

Maybe it's ironic. It occurs to me, though, that the first drive by automobile across the US, and the New York to Paris automobile race, went through with no fatalities. While I wouldn't want to even guess the number of people who have died bopping down to the convenience store for a gallon of milk.

Doing something dangerous for the first time concentrates your attention the way a routine operation never can.

Besides, Apollo had nearly unlimited resources behind it. Seems to me the Space Shuttle has always been much more of a low budget operation. The Shuttle is impressive, but it's a very compromised design. Had they built it in the Apollo era they'd probably have gone with a titanium structure (instead of aluminum covered by ceramic froth), and hang the expense. For just one example of the compromises they made.

[archteryx]

Oh, both of those are excellent points, and I wouldn't seek to argue either of them. Especially the low budget part of it; I don't think a super-high budget would have saved Challenger. That was just raw human error. But it very well might have stopped the Columbia disaster; their wing heat shield wouldn't have gotten holed nearly so easily.

Though sometimes the reverse IS true. Look at the Indianapolis 500; its early and middle days were plagued with fatalities, because cars' performance spectacularly outran their control and safety features, especially in the 'middle years'. Once those caught up to performance, fatalities became much rarer (though they still occasionally occur!).

[athelind]

Challenger exploded because of a failure in an O-rings on one of the solid-fuel rocket boosters, due to cold weather.

The shuttle program only opted for solid-fuel rockets as a cost-cutting measure -- the U.S. Space Program had never considered using those things for manned spaceflight before.

A better budget would have meant a shuttle design without the component that failed catastrophically on Challenger. Not a minor component like a rubber O-ring, but a primary launch unit.

[araquan]

Sobering stuff, but that's just the nature of exploration like this. Fortunately it wasn't needed then, but of course, we've had other disasters in space since. The road ahead is never easy.

[siege]

The link to the song seems to be borked.

[notthebuddha]

The X Minus One adaptation is here, with the verse beginning about 21:00 and given a sort of folk ballad treatment.

I've used it in games as a reverent prayer along the lines of Nimoy's 1971 recording.

[athelind]

Ooh, Nimoy did one? I'll have to find that.

As a Common Meter verse, it fits a zillion different tunes. I'm surprised more people, in this day of mp3s and YouTube, don't take a stab at it.

[athelind]

Crud. RealAudio.