We Can Never Close Those Portals We Have Opened

It’s a bright, sunny day here in Texas. Not a cloud in the sky. I step outside to relish the perfect weather. “They’ll be having an exciting time in Cape Canaveral,” I tell myself.

My phone rings. My secretary, calling from my office, says: “Have you been watching television?”

“I’ve been working.”

“The space shuttle just blew up in Florida.”

Long pause. “On the launch pad?”

“Offshore. One minute into flight.”

Gasp. Then: “Oh, my God! Judith Resnik!

Running to the television, I view the recaps with special horror as our 25th shuttle launch ends in great tragedy. Because of recent experiences I felt myself to be part of that doomed crew, a participant in the disaster and, in an oblique way, part of the cause.

In the closing days of my service with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration I had been appointed to a small committee that had been given the job of trying to determine whether it would be prudent to invite an ordinary civilian to ride as a passenger aboard the shuttle in one of its future flights. The person would be chosen on the basis of his or her capacity to understand what was happening and to report upon it to the nation at large upon return.

I had been an ardent advocate of such civilian flight, and in our protracted debate I continued to support the idea, although others warned of the risks. We considered all angles, weighing the possible triumphs against the equally possible defeats and concluded that it was a reasonable risk. When Sen. Jake Garn (R-Utah) and Rep. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) soared aloft without incident and returned the same way, I applauded, even though I would personally have preferred to see figures who were less political take the first flights.

Still, despite the horror of what the NASA announcer described as “a major malfunction,” I am of the same opinion I voiced in the committee. Our nation should be in space and we should be taking qualified civilians on the great adventure.

We should be accumulating the hard-won knowledge and expertise that will allow us to erect in space permanent study stations from which we can conduct the unforeseen adventures of the next century. I remain as vigorous an advocate of experimentation in space today as I was before Tuesday’s tragedy.

Space is the premier adventure of our age and to restrict it to military and quasi-military personnel would be improper. Poets, philosophers, writers, musicians and graphic artists should also share in the great exploration. I often reminded my listeners that the far-flung explorations of Vasco Da Gama attained real significance and immortality because he had had the prudence to take along with him the Portuguese poet Luis Vaz de Camoes, whose “OsLusiads” encapsulated the adventure of finding new worlds.

I also argued that since the cost of space exploration was so great that it could be borne only by some vast national effort, it ought to provide opportunities for those who were paying the bill.

Finally, I reasoned that since the exploration and utilization of space could not be stopped, and since if the United States fell back, other nations were prepared to surge forward, we had an obligation to proceed: “We have opened the portals to a magnificent universe and we can never again close them.”

Now Sharon Christa McAuliffe, a true civilian, a dedicated schoolteacher and mother of two, has perished, along with the rest of the dedicated crew, and I cannot escape a sense of guilt.

But during this long afternoon I think of other notable explorers who died in an attempt to extend human knowledge. In 1519, Ferdinand Magellan strived to be the first man to circumnavigate the globe but failed, slain in the Philippines, thousands of miles short of his goal. In 1845, Sir John Franklin probed the Arctic wastes, hoping to find the fabled Northwest Passage; instead, he found death for his entire crew, but the hunt for the passage continued.

In 1912, Robert Falcon Scott tried to conquer the Antarctic and perished with all his men, but some years later Admiral Richard Byrd made it with the aid of airplanes.

And Tuesday morning I thought especially of those three young astronauts, Virgil Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee, who, 19 years ago almost to the day, died in flames at Cape Kennedy. I salute them, also remembering that two years after their deaths, three other young men just like them reached the moon, and two walked upon it.

The human mind is restless. No matter how great the challenge, gallant men and women will step forward to tackle it.

The noble highway of exploration is pockmarked with craters indicating where some have met disaster, but it is also emblazoned with the banners of those who triumphed. We rarely achieve victories until others have suffered defeats. And only rarely does one person’s defeat deter another from striving for victory.

I see far horizons on this tragic day, noble ones that will be reached only when I am gone.

I also have always been an advocate for exploring space with unmanned vehicles. In the past few days an unmanned flight reached Uranus, an incredible 2 billion miles away and sent back knowledge of inestimable value in enlarging our views as to the origins of the solar system and therefore of earth itself. Today a manned mission failed catastrophically. But on some day in the future the roles may be reversed. Progress is attained through this alteration of success and failure.

I was forlorn as the afternoon waned because a friend of mine died in the failure. Judith A. Resnick and I worked together during a week-long seminar at Woods Hole trying to guess what the universe of space was going to be like in the year 2020, and she proved to be a young woman with a will of iron. She ended almost every discussion with a stern demand: “Get me into space before I’m an old woman.”

Later, when I encountered her in the halls at NASA in Houston her complaint was invariable: “They are moving so slow! I want to get out there,” and one day she exalted: “I’m going!” Judith Resnick could serve as the symbol of why men and women dare great things.

My final service for NASA occurred last week. They sent me a questionnaire asking for my opinion of a newsman who was applying for passage on the next flight. They asked if I thought he was responsible, likely to behave well under pressure and able to communicate his experiences when he returned to earth.

I wrote: “This man is doubly qualified. He’s not only a born adventurer. He already knows space and how to talk about it. Grab him for the next go-round.” I was speaking of my friend Walter Cronkite, and I feel pretty sure that if he’s selected, he’ll go.