I’m amazed at how little Andrew Sullivan has to say about this weekend’s big story, and how little value there is to what he does say.

I’ll have a column on this subject tomorrow at NRO, but there’s no way (as usual) to say it better than Lileks (sorry, no permalink, he screwed up–maybe I can fix it later, but it’s good through the end of Monday…):

…we?re not sending smart toys on our behalf – we?re sending human beings, and one of them will put his boot on the sand and bring the number of worlds we?ve visited to three. And when he plants the flag he will use flesh and sinew and blood and bone to drive it into the ground. His heartbeat will hammer in his ears; his mind will spin a kaleidoscopic medley of all the things he?d thought he?d think at this moment, and he’ll grin: I had it wrong. I had no idea what it would truly be like. He?d imagined this moment as oddly private; he’d thought of himself, the red land, the flag in his hand, and he heard music, as though the moment would be fully scored when it happened. But there isn’t any music; there’s the sound of his breath and the thrum of his pulse. It seems like everyone who ever lived is standing behind him at the other end of a vast dark auditorium, waiting for the flag to stand on the ground of Mars. Then he will say something. He might stumble on a word or two, because he?s only human.

Yes. He’s only human.

I have a special Fox column up for the occasion, if there’s anyone who hasn’t gotten enough of me from my blog.

Derek Lowe, bioblogger extraordinaire, weighs in with some insightful, and sadly resigned comments (i.e., he agrees with yours truly). Also, Kevin McGehee has thoughts on the nature of astronauts, among other things.

Here’s my first entry to kick it off:

Futility

Fire in the sky
No warning or procedure
Heroes gone to rest

I’ll post the best in a couple days as they trickle in.

In addition to Instantman, you might want to check out Pathetic Earthlings for a lot of good commentary, including a more detailed critique of the Easterbrook article.

Scott Ott has the right take.

Ever since the Shuttle first started flying, and perhaps even before, I’ve often thought about a nightmare scenario. I’ve even thought about writing a SF short story, or even full-length novel about it, except that I can’t (intentionally) write fiction (though some would say that I do it often in my attempts to write non-fiction).

A Shuttle launches. Once they attain orbit, it is discovered that they have damage to the tiles that will not allow them to safely enter. In the real world as it existed in the early nineteen eighties, this would be a soul-torturing dilemma, and one that would likely be ultimately passed up to the President. Here’s the problem. The Shuttle doesn’t have enough consumables to last long enough to launch another one to rescue them. The Soviets might be persuaded to launch a couple Soyuz’s, but it’s not clear if they can do it in time, either, and there’s no way to dock them (though early on, they had the “rescue ball concept” for transfer).

But assume as a given that they cannot be rescued (which really did correspond to reality). They only have two choices. They can cross their fingers, pray, or do whatever non-technical things they wish to maximize their chances, and attempt to come home anyway, or they can run out of air on orbit (or choose some faster way to go), and the vehicle becomes a flying tomb, to be either repaired and retrieved later, or reenter in a few weeks. The ethical question, related to this post, is should we destroy the vehicle in a futile attempt to save the crew, or should we sacrifice the crew, who will die either way, and at least attempt to salvage the vehicle? How do the politics play? How does the public react? To make it more interesting, assume that there really is a credible capability to do such a repair and retrieval–that the vehicle really can be saved, and that the crew really cannot.

Now realize that we just averted this scenario in real life only because of the ignorance of Mission Control about the true situation. Is it possible that the tile damage was ignored partly out of (perhaps unconscious) wishful thinking, because the alternative to ignoring it was to face exactly that ethical dilemma and public-relations nightmare? The only difference is that the likelihood of repairing the Orbiter is small. But depending on the level of damage, it might have been larger than the prospects for a safe entry.

One more consideration. If this had been an ISS mission, the crew would likely be alive today, and wondering what to do with a broken orbiter. It’s likely that the damage would have been viewable, and even apparent, when approaching ISS, and the crew would have been able to use the station as a safe haven. But once they launched into an inclination different than that of ISS, if it turns out to be true that the tiles were fatally damaged on ascent, then their fate was sealed, as was their inability to know about it.

All of this, of course, points up the folly of the space policy that we have had in place for the past thirty years, in which we have a single, fragile, unresponsive system to get people to and from space.

Ever since the Shuttle first started flying, and perhaps even before, I’ve often thought about a nightmare scenario. I’ve even thought about writing a SF short story, or even full-length novel about it, except that I can’t (intentionally) write fiction (though some would say that I do it often in my attempts to write non-fiction).

A Shuttle launches. Once they attain orbit, it is discovered that they have damage to the tiles that will not allow them to safely enter. In the real world as it existed in the early nineteen eighties, this would be a soul-torturing dilemma, and one that would likely be ultimately passed up to the President. Here’s the problem. The Shuttle doesn’t have enough consumables to last long enough to launch another one to rescue them. The Soviets might be persuaded to launch a couple Soyuz’s, but it’s not clear if they can do it in time, either, and there’s no way to dock them (though early on, they had the “rescue ball concept” for transfer).

But assume as a given that they cannot be rescued (which really did correspond to reality). They only have two choices. They can cross their fingers, pray, or do whatever non-technical things they wish to maximize their chances, and attempt to come home anyway, or they can run out of air on orbit (or choose some faster way to go), and the vehicle becomes a flying tomb, to be either repaired and retrieved later, or reenter in a few weeks. The ethical question, related to this post, is should we destroy the vehicle in a futile attempt to save the crew, or should we sacrifice the crew, who will die either way, and at least attempt to salvage the vehicle? How do the politics play? How does the public react? To make it more interesting, assume that there really is a credible capability to do such a repair and retrieval–that the vehicle really can be saved, and that the crew really cannot.

Now realize that we just averted this scenario in real life only because of the ignorance of Mission Control about the true situation. Is it possible that the tile damage was ignored partly out of (perhaps unconscious) wishful thinking, because the alternative to ignoring it was to face exactly that ethical dilemma and public-relations nightmare? The only difference is that the likelihood of repairing the Orbiter is small. But depending on the level of damage, it might have been larger than the prospects for a safe entry.

One more consideration. If this had been an ISS mission, the crew would likely be alive today, and wondering what to do with a broken orbiter. It’s likely that the damage would have been viewable, and even apparent, when approaching ISS, and the crew would have been able to use the station as a safe haven. But once they launched into an inclination different than that of ISS, if it turns out to be true that the tiles were fatally damaged on ascent, then their fate was sealed, as was their inability to know about it.

All of this, of course, points up the folly of the space policy that we have had in place for the past thirty years, in which we have a single, fragile, unresponsive system to get people to and from space.