Spacelift Washington: Of Courage and Hesitation

WASHINGTON, MAY 20 – Seventy-five years ago this morning a man climbed aboard a tiny airplane, waiting on a muddy dirt strip at an airfield in New York. His only companions aboard that single seater were his courage and a ham sandwich. Three thousand six hundred and ten miles, and thirty-three hours thirty minutes later he descended over a darkened airfield in a country and a place he had never been before. When the wheels of his plane touched the French soil at LeBourget Field, Paris that night of May 21, 1927 history changed. That man was Charles A. Lindbergh, his tiny ship was named the Spirit of St. Louis, and his voyage into history the first non-stop transatlantic flight.

Among the roar of the thousands of French citizens waiting for Lindbergh in that darkened field of dreams was the sound of the doorway to commercial aviation being ripped from its hinges and thrown wide open. One man’s courage matched to opportunity and daring had shifted history itself, and the world of transportation-our entire world since- would never again be the same.

We remember Lindbergh’s flight today on this anniversary as both a tribute to him and to all of those who have followed him, in the sky and beyond, to establish humanity’s grip on flight. But it also serves as a reminder that such courage is not only rare, but rarely applied to opportunities of, well, historic proportions.
And this remembrance comes at a time when it is not courage but hesitation that is in vogue today. It is time we matched the courage of those who came before us with some fresh initiatives of our own.

For space activities, the courage in our own time has been that shown by the countless astronauts and cosmonauts that fly rockets into space and back. By their willingness to risk themselves they have, for all of us, built a legacy of living and working in space that will, undoubtedly form the future of our civilization, and hopefully our culture as well.

Year after year and flight after flight they have built a sustained legacy of maturity in space operations that is as breathtaking as much as it has been overlooked. At year’s end we will mark the 30th anniversary of another event-the final Apollo voyage to the Moon of Apollo 17 in December 1972. With the rolling passage of the calendar, we move ever increasingly from the era of the pioneers to the era of the transparent integration of aviation and space flight into the average, workaday life we lead.

But as September 11, 2001 taught us, flying machines are merely tools. They can be used to open doors and create opportunity, as one did in the hands of Charles Lindbergh 75 years go, or to destroy and wound, as four other flying machines did on September 11th. Whichever role they play is largely up to us, in the broadest sense.

For they are but tools.

And like most tools, they are best used to build.

Build new things that bridge the distances between us; provide opportunity; and, like all flying things, link us with the rest of the natural world -and the universe.

On this date, it is fitting that we call for more courage from those who lead us; not to spend money or make speeches, but to point the way ahead.

I’m talking about leadership.

It is time- in fact way past time- for the leaders of our country to set aside a moment to remind us all, in the authentic voice that only elected leaders can use -of the importance of aviation and space flight to our country.

Aviation remains broken after the September 11th attacks, with a new national airspace system under design and airports across the country still seeking the right mix of security and expediency. For General Aviation the past nine months have been bleak, especially in the regional General Aviation airports near the Nation’s Capital. It would be particularly effective leadership for the country to hear from its president on how these elements are making air travel both safer as well as uniformly more efficient. The two should not be mutually exclusive.

For if commercial aviation never evolves past the point when it takes three hours of waiting in lines to fly an hour in the air, growth will only make air transportation worse.

And it should be our task to see past these problems to making it better.

For space activities, how do all of these pieces fit together?

Station. Probes. Shuttles. Technology.

What do we want this stuff to do?

And where do we want it to take us in the future, and what will it take to get there?

A national vision, matched with a roadmap to take us on that journey.

I am not talking about NASA’s vision. This is not about Sean O’Keefe. His task is clearly to fix the mess he inherited from a decade’s worth of neglect.

But once O’Keefe has, well, made his agency better, fixed it in the broken places as he surely will, what then?

Only those who have been elected to serve can frame that vision and light the way to those unmarked paths.

Consider what President Bush once said:

“My commitment today to forge ahead with a sustained, manned exploration program, mission-by-mission, the space station, the Moon, Mars and beyond- is a continuing commitment to ask new questions, both in the heavens and on Earth. James Michener was right when he said ‘There are moments in history when challenges occur of such a compelling nature that to miss them is to miss the whole meaning of an epoch. Space is such a challenge’.

Somewhere out there … the Americans who will first walk on Mars are now only children, perhaps your children. We leave you today with the hope of that day when another President stands with those pioneers and echoes the last words spoken to the departing Apollo 11: Good Luck and Godspeed.”

Of course, that President was George H.W. Bush, speaking from the south lawn of the White House on the night of July 20, 1989. In the 13 years since that barbeque, we have seen little courage of the kind shown by Charles Lindbergh, and much hesitation when it comes to speaking of aviation and space as national symbols, symbols of our country’s deepest strengths and our best impulses.

“The stratosphere planes of the future will cross the ocean without any sense of the water below. Like a train tunneling through a mountain, they will be aloof from both the problems and the beauty of the Earth’s surface. Only the vibration from the engines will impress the senses of the traveler with his movement through the air. Wind and heat and moonlight takeoffs will be of no concern to the transatlantic passenger.”

Charles Lindbergh was right when he wrote those words nine years after his flight.

In a sense, he set us on that pathway, which lead not only to commercial flight, but space as well.
All of us should say ‘thank-you’ today for the man who helped set us on that quest.
Where we go next on that path, however, is up to us.