goodnite little sister

[sepdet]

Last time I knew the names of the people, before they were news-- at least the senior member of the crew, I always kept track when a launch was coming up, and that was Scobee...
and "your father is a murderer" is a high school refrain I will never exorcise from my soul.
this time I can't make myself think of the people, and it's terrible
but the reason that i'm devastated and bawling my eyes out is for that stupid ship,

Dad was gone 6 months in 1978 helping get the boosters ready-- working on a SPACESHIP, the first REAL spaceship, that was going to be able to fly up into space and come down and land and go up again... not just one of those things we send one way and never see again. But we've lost two of the six now. And Enterprise has no engines, isn't built for outer space.

I think of Crip. My Dad's boss. I loved being able to say that, it was such a status symbol in my own head... MY Dad's boss is THE Bob Crippen, the first pilot ever of the first space shuttle. He sent me a birthday card with his picture. Looks like Buck Rogers in his stupid orange jumpsuit, with Carl Sagan hair. Birthday card was four years ago. Crip's been bald for at least 12. We have a GI Joe figurine of him we keep on hand for blackmail.

Thousands and thousands of people have worked for the shuttle, either at NASA or Boeing or all the ten zillion contractors that help get it done...
I send Susan some email that tries to sound casual and cheerful and low-key. I'm sending hugs to someone who used to sit and stare at telemetry from a spaceshiip. Strange day. And the blame has already begun. I think I'm going to start blaming the woodpeckers; they don't care. Worse than the blame-- it bites in somwhere-- is scorn for it all, that NASA should be more careful, that a 22-old-spaceship hitting the earth's atmosphere at Mach 18 could have the efrontery to have anything go wrong, ever... ever...


I'm going through my operator's manual. It's dogeared. There's faded notes on newsprint, bookmarks written in a childish handwriting... "LANDING" "ORBITAL ARM" making sure I could find the checklists quickly. During launch, I'd watch TV, or later, listen to the tape recording I made at a Challenger launch sitting on the beach waiting for it to go up; there were big loudspeakers so we could hear Mission Control. I haven't had the heart to listen to it in years... the sound of the main engines kicking in, that marvellous moment when it llllleeeeeaned back, and you waited with your breath held and WHOOOM up it went.

I'd sit with an egg timer and my recording, and my complete blueprints of all the cockpit panels spread out carefully on the ugly green chair in the living room, and I'd carefully press all he right buttons at the right time, for take-off and landing.

I find one of the checklists, look down-- it's 2 pages from the end-- hit the flaps -- that's the button up on the dashboard over the altimeter ... then "Control, this is Columbia, we're ready for entry interface, waiting for LOS, over..." and then the radio would go dead and they'd have to wait ten minutes as they hit the atmosphere til they got signal again. And I know, that's where they lost contact, this time. That's just 30 minutes from touchdown.


I get calm going over the checklist. It's familiar. It's from when I was very young and buttons were important. I have the ABORT button carefully marked with a yellow highlighter, so the astronauts won't forget where it is. That's why I had to go through all that when I was little. I missed the very, very, very first launch because my friends didn't wake me up as they promised, and for years after that I was obsessed... couldn't miss it. I'd mostly stopped doing that by 86.

I've got a little pamphlet here by my Dad's company telling ALL about the shuttle, what it would be like, and that they'd just gotten the contract for the boosters. But I don't have to look. I remember the magic words:

The Spaceship That Returns To Earth!

THAT would be cool. We could see it land.
I still haven't watched a landing, and it's been 20 years since I saw Challenger lift-off at Cape Canaveral.
Susan got to ride on the crawler just before 9/11, since she was part of the Mission Control team. She took lots of pictures looking up to the orbiter and boosters and all overhead, and she rode the elevator up and stood by the wing, and was good and didn't touch, and then she rode up to the nose cone and there's a picture of her leaning over the nose. I can't remember which one it is.

I remember Neil Armstrong telling my Mom about the woodpeckers pecking holes in the insulation of the tank. They were always having to be shooed off. I remember that hurricane that was headed straight for the cape a few years ago, winds of 175mph, and all the shuttles were home just then, in a building with walls strong enough to stand 150. I was worried. AGAIN. Worried about lumps of plastic and metal and ceramic tiles, instead of the people outside. My brain has feasted too long on Star Trek; the ships matter to me, when they shouldn't.

When I was about six I told my Dad I was sad because I was born after the space age.
But then it started again. And this time it wasn't some race to get to point A, plant a flag, grab some rocks and come home. This time we weren't going to let it fall out of the sky after five years. This time we were going for the long haul to learn to live up there, discover all sorts of things. People don't realize their cellphones and satellite TV have anything to do with what just happened.

Numbness starts setting in finally.
Last four days, I only slept two. I'll be up for 48 hours, and won't eat in 24. I know that is courting disaster. But I didn't feel it. And it's unusual, even for me. I just didn't want to sleep the last few days, and didn't know why. Something was coming. I just didn't know.

And now I know why, and I have to admit, it's not for the people on that ship who so much did not deserve to die.

It's for Columbia, a childhood friend.
About three weeks ago I took a Christmas ornament down, a scaled model of Columbia with little lights inside.

Whoosh. let it go out. Tiredness hits like a brick. Now I can sleep instead of mourn.

There's a note from Crip in the front of my Manual:





We gotta keep trying.

(a few scraps of childhood treasures)

Comments

[tersa.livejournal.com]

*HUG* I think of all the journals I've read so far, this has been the better entry, because it *is* personal for you.

But at least I managed not to cry at work this time. :}