Date: Fri, 08 Jul 2011 22:02:13 -0400 From: mark <whitroth at 5-cent.us> To: wsfa-forum at yahoogroups.com CC: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net> Subject: [WSFA] Re: [wsfa-forum] Changing subject lines, etc. [Fwd: What a Stupid Lousy, Crappy Last Flight] Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net> Elspeth Kovar wrote: > Um, okay, I'm confused. She's bitter about the space program, as a number of people are, both those > who are involved in it and those who aren't. But your opinion is what matters to your friends so > why post it here? Especially with a subject line makes it sound as if *you* thought it a lousy, > crappy last flight. Did you read what she wrote? Around the bitterness (you don't want to know the full story, honest): the launch, and I don't know *anyone* who writes a launch report better than her, not published anywhere. mark > > mark wrote: >> This is my recent ex. Her writing was what brought us as friends, >> originally, when we were both in TAPS. And yes, she *did* work as an >> engineer at the Cape, on Shuttle and Station, for 17 years. And yes, she >> told me the same things about her lousy managers, the one who "bragged" >> his degree was in typing, and the ones serving time until their pension, >> who wouldn't *let* them innovate, like leaving the external tanks up >> there and building with them (they had to loft *extra* weight to >> de-orbit the damn things). >> >> mark >> -------- Original Message -------- >> Subject: [WSFA] What a Stupid Lousy, Crappy Last Flight >> Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2011 17:51:58 -0400 >> From: DH >> >> I could almost wish the damn shuttle, that long ago ceased to earn its >> name, would ram the damn useless station, and blow all of it to orbiting >> trash until it all burns up falling back into the atmosphere in a >> thousand years. >> >> What an awful, boring, pathetic final launch. >> >> The media hype was so desperate you would think nothing else had ever >> launched. Or was going on in the world at all. "Weather! Electrical >> problems! A hundred thousand people! Traffic! Five seconds about the >> history of the space program! Interviews with anyone who ever climbed >> into the orbiter! Politicians! Unemployment! Insects on the windows!" >> >> Pitiful. Embarrassing. >> >> Even NASA management crawled off with their tail between their legs. >> They tried to invent a problem at the last minute (the last three >> minutes, actually, where the Major Fuckup Points come fast and furious), >> and you could actually hear someone in the background in the Launch >> Control Center saying "bullshit." >> >> So they fired the duct-taped hangar queen into a completely overcast >> sky, so as not to disappoint all the tourists in their mobile homes >> parked all along what passes for roads around here, rather than pull the >> plug a week ago and finish changing out the payload into something >> useful, instead of trash bags. >> >> A high-powered launch rattles windows. This lightweight didn't even >> wake up the cats, who usually demand a treat for witnessing a launch. >> >> No blinding blaze of blue-white, orange-gold fire, riding ahead of a >> controlled explosion. No rolling sustained thunder. No climbing trail >> of steam-smoke, reflecting the sun and casting a mile-long shadow. They >> could have faked it with a boom box and a.ten-LED flashlight. >> >> Exit Atlantis, my own orbiter, that I worked hands-on, start to finish, >> from the day when we first walked in awe around her indescribably >> overwhelming presence, and near-solid aura of potential, in 1984 ... to >> this limping ignominy, a testimony to everything that has been wrong >> with the space program for more than a decade. >> >> Atlantis' maiden launch, in 1985, was one of those idiotic super-secret >> military missions, where we had to radio the Russian "fishing boats" a >> mile offshore to get the launch status, and fortunately they spoke >> better English than any of us did Russian. (Parusski comes in dialects >> too. One radio operator cursed out another over the radio for his >> Georgia accent. Their Georgia, not ours.) When I translated the five >> words of it that I understood, two of which were profanity, the team >> spent DAYS inventing puns and trying to figure out what the rest of the >> words might have been. >> >> And of course, for a maiden launch, the odds of going up within even the >> first month of an initial try are pretty much zero. (Discovery holds -- >> held -- THAT record for last-minute F^#k-ups.) So this was >> entertainment value, more than anything else. >> >> We were in a three-story field engineering warehouse building. So we >> trudged up the fire escape stairs to peer at the launch pad. Nope, no >> motion over there. We trudged back down into the air conditioning. >> >> An hour or so later, a babble of Parusski with a word I think meant >> "Go." So we trudged up three flights and stood on the roof for awhile. >> Nope, no motion over there. So we trudged back down. >> >> There was another trip in there, I forget why, but the clanging of fire >> escape stairs got to be REALLY annoying. >> >> Another hour or so later, an excited babble from the "fishing boat" that >> included something like "down," which of course we immediately decided >> was "countdown." Back up to the roof. Yep! Stuff being moved back >> from the stack over there. We chose sitting in the fall Florida sun >> over another trip on the stairs. >> >> We could see the "sparklers," that burn off stray hydrogen leakage. >> Then the mains ignited, one-two-three, clean as fire can get. T-minus >> Two. One. The SRBs hit the water-filled flame trench, and the >> explosion of smoke-steam made twin small nuclear mushrooms. Whatever >> she was carrying, it was heavy enough to need full firepower. She >> lifted from the tower, blazing a white rainbow in the sapphire October >> sky, turning the wispy clouds to multi-colored wild pearl. Everyone >> said awed obscenities, including some in Russian. "They did it," said >> my boss. "They really did it!" >> >> Acceleration, from the slow ponderous graceful lift to the rocket speeds >> you only think you know, flexing millions of pounds of muscles towards >> thousands and increasing thousands of miles an hour, throwing away fire >> in exultation. Shrugging away the solids. Still reaching for more >> speed. Wings like a falcon diving, only diving upward. Free. >> >> The point of light finally faded, cut out. It's only eight minutes to >> MECO. Couldn't prove it by us. We stood there, following a path >> visible only to instruments and imagination, for a lot longer than that. >> >> Her first mission patch was a stolid gray, which pissed me off -- I >> wanted ATLANTIS. Her last mission patch is a pretentious piece of >> bullshit, and I don't even want the t-shirt. May all NASA managers, and >> all the kiss-ups who sided with them instead of hollering for new >> engineering, rot in hell. >> >> Goodbye, my lady, my own. You served well and honorably, and it is not >> your fault that you have no heir, physical or spiritual. Your legacy >> will remain, written in fire and knowledge. We will remember when you >> first took up the gauntlet, and left the sky behind. >> >> I only wish you could have gotten the final sendoff of the beauty and >> wonder that you deserve. >> > -- "I don't want to see a single war millionaire created in the United States as a result of this world disaster," Franklin D. Roosevelt warned as WWII loomed.