I have always
loved space flight, and all the rockets and liftoffs and the moon suits that go
with it.
I remember the three major incidents that have
blemished an otherwise wonderful and courageous effort to not only orbit the
earth in near space, but to sail across the Unknown Void towards the Moon.
1967, the year I
graduated from high school. Early that year, three men sat on a launch pad. It
was only a training mission, and the immense Saturn rocket was scheduled to go…
nowhere. Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee were strapped in, and
performed various tests of the equipment. Then the unspeakable happened. A
flash fire burned quickly through the craft, trapping the men inside. The
astronauts panicked voices screamed for assistance. The escape hatch had not
been designed to be opened rapidly. The 100% oxygen environment nurtured the
contagious spread of the fire, offering no hope of escape.
1986 and the Moon
had been long since conquered, and men were once again circumnavigating the
earth in winged craft that looked more like airplanes, than spacecraft. The
Space Shuttle was a marvel of technology. Space flight had become so common
that a civilian teacher was strapped in, and prepared to “travel to the stars.”
Christa Mc Cauliff was excited about the opportunity. Then the unspeakable
happened, again. Seven brave astronauts died 73 seconds after liftoff. I was
working a hundred miles from the Cape that day, and though I didn’t witness the
explosion, I remember the white, wispy smoke that hung in the sky long
afterwards.
2003, and a
veteran space shuttle had descended to four hundred thousand feet above the
continental United States. Sixteen minutes from landing everything literally
began to fall apart. The Columbia burned up in earth’s low atmosphere, and
small pieces were scattered over several states.
Gus Grissom and
his fine crew died as a result of faulty wiring, a too rich oxygen atmosphere
in the cabin, and a door that was not designed for quick exit. The Challenger
was doomed as a result of an poorly designed “O-Ring” that allowed hot gases to
escape the main rocket, made less durable, as a result of cold weather
conditions that day.
The Columbia was damaged in the first few
seconds after liftoff, as a large piece of insulation bounced off its left
wing.
I heard a sermon
once that sounds just about right. We learn three ways; by insight, through crisis, or finally as a result of catastrophe. If insight is ignored, the
next incremental step is crisis. If crisis is somehow taken for granted, the
subsequent and final step becomes catastrophe.
We were in too big
a hurry to get to the Moon. President Kennedy had promised we’d be there before
the new decade began. Designs were hurried up, and too much was overlooked. The
Saturn test vehicle should never have caught fire, and the door should never
have been so difficult to open. An oxygen-rich environment and a poor escape
design spelled disaster. The Challenger needn’t have exploded on that cold day
in 1986. Seven wonderful people needn’t have died. The sub-contractor had
warned NASA against launching on such a cold day. The Columbia accident was
tragic, and unnecessary. Insulation had fallen off the main fuel tank in the
past. Potentially, a spy satellite could have been used to identify the wing
damage, and another shuttle might have been “prepped” and rushed to the doomed
spacecraft, and the unfortunate astronauts.
Time and space
would fail me to list the hundreds of famous “accidents” among ships, and
planes and all manner of vehicles over the past hundred years. And in so many
of these instances, insight was tossed aside in favor of crisis and
catastrophe.
And to summon up
one further example. There was once a bridge which spanned a rather small river
in a rather insignificant town in West Virginia. The bridge was built in the
mid-twentieth century, and had stood for over thirty years. On one particular
day the metal structure began to sway and creak and buckle. Dozens of cars and
multiplied people fell into the river that day… to their doom.
The final accident
report revealed that one small, and
seemingly insignificant bolt had shattered. It was a “time bomb waiting to go
off,” for you see, the flaw was there when the bolt was originally fabricated.
It is imperative that we learn through information leading to
insight. There’s just nothing like it. It has the potential to save us from so
much harm, and abject suffering. God would spare us crisis and catastrophe, so
much of the time, if we would but grasp insight and embrace it with all our
might!
By William McDonald, PhD. Excerpt from "(Mc)Donald's Daily Diary" Vol. 11
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