Read Online The As It Happens Files by Mary Lou Finlay - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Mary Lou Finlay
Ads: Link
Portugal to Hawaii.
As for Victor Yasekov, his arm’s fine, apparently. Carlin met up with him in Charleston, Virginia, when the race was over. Isabelle Autissier, the French Vendée Globe racer, was also there, and Carlin said he was thrilled to find himself in such terrific company.
They’re such great people. They’re humble, soft-spoken, easy to work with—you can tell them to do anything and they do it. They’re a unique group of people.
Not so crazy after all? I’ll let you decide.
FIVE
Touching the Earth
Radio that has all the right stuff
S pace pilots, or space sailors as they’re sometimes called, aren’t adventurers in the way the Vendée Globe sailors are. In some ways, astronauts are the antithesis of what we think of as venturesome: they don’t work alone, they need the backing of hundreds of people and billions of dollars and so on. Not to belittle them at all, but the first astronaut was actually a monkey called Able—the first one to survive anyway—and he was followed by an assortment of guinea pigs, other monkeys, frogs, rats, and cats and dogs—as well as
Homo sapiens.
That said, you have to have a certain amount of the right stuff to ride an aircraft straight up until you run out of air and the sky turns black around you—as Joe Walker did when he piloted the X-15 into space—or to plop yourself down atop a rocket and head for the moon.
Roberta Bondar, a neurologist by training, was the first Canadian woman in space, a mission specialist aboard the space shuttle
Discovery
in 1992. Her book about that experience was called
Touching the Earth,
but when you think about astronauts hurtling through space, you think,
Here’s another group of people who are also touching the void.
We were especially conscious of their bravery the day in February 2003 when we talked to Bondar about the fiery descent of the shuttle
Columbia
and the loss of its seven crew members.
I asked Dr. Bondar if there had ever been a moment during her trip when she believed she wouldn’t make it home. She said that one day they’d heard a loud bang, like an explosion, and immediately everyone started rushing around to get the shuttle ready for what she called “an emergency de-orbit.” It turned out that what they’d heard was only the noise of metal tanks expanding—but it sure scared them.
Astronauts don’t often talk about the fear they must feel, especially at the time of launch. Bondar was more candid than most. “If you don’t have respect for the seething monster that’s about to engulf you,” she said, “there’s something wrong with you.” What gets you through is that you’re very focused on the job you have to do. In eight and a half minutes, the blast-off is over, the fiery engines have been dispatched and you’re sailing through space. Even so, everyone who flies the shuttle is very much aware that it’s still an experimental system.
“We’re all test pilots. We’re sitting on a rocket. It’s not licensed by the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration). We get our affairs in order before we fly.”
But fly they do, and I, for one, am quite envious. It’s the one kind of exploration that I can imagine myself doing if I were qualified, notwithstanding the fact that I’m a total coward. Quite a few people with the means have already flown as “space tourists,” and many more are reserving places on the first private commercial tours, so I guess the idea of exploring outer space appeals to a lot of people. My own interest probably stems from nights spent with my father on the roof deck of our house in Ottawa when I was growing up, the two of us mesmerized by the night sky and speculating about what other kinds of life might be out there. (You could see the night sky in the city in those days! And we often saw the Northern Lights.) No doubt these moments also explainwhy, when I was old enough, I had to get a pilot’s licence and why I never pass up a chance to watch Canada’s
As for Victor Yasekov, his arm’s fine, apparently. Carlin met up with him in Charleston, Virginia, when the race was over. Isabelle Autissier, the French Vendée Globe racer, was also there, and Carlin said he was thrilled to find himself in such terrific company.
They’re such great people. They’re humble, soft-spoken, easy to work with—you can tell them to do anything and they do it. They’re a unique group of people.
Not so crazy after all? I’ll let you decide.
FIVE
Touching the Earth
Radio that has all the right stuff
S pace pilots, or space sailors as they’re sometimes called, aren’t adventurers in the way the Vendée Globe sailors are. In some ways, astronauts are the antithesis of what we think of as venturesome: they don’t work alone, they need the backing of hundreds of people and billions of dollars and so on. Not to belittle them at all, but the first astronaut was actually a monkey called Able—the first one to survive anyway—and he was followed by an assortment of guinea pigs, other monkeys, frogs, rats, and cats and dogs—as well as
Homo sapiens.
That said, you have to have a certain amount of the right stuff to ride an aircraft straight up until you run out of air and the sky turns black around you—as Joe Walker did when he piloted the X-15 into space—or to plop yourself down atop a rocket and head for the moon.
Roberta Bondar, a neurologist by training, was the first Canadian woman in space, a mission specialist aboard the space shuttle
Discovery
in 1992. Her book about that experience was called
Touching the Earth,
but when you think about astronauts hurtling through space, you think,
Here’s another group of people who are also touching the void.
We were especially conscious of their bravery the day in February 2003 when we talked to Bondar about the fiery descent of the shuttle
Columbia
and the loss of its seven crew members.
I asked Dr. Bondar if there had ever been a moment during her trip when she believed she wouldn’t make it home. She said that one day they’d heard a loud bang, like an explosion, and immediately everyone started rushing around to get the shuttle ready for what she called “an emergency de-orbit.” It turned out that what they’d heard was only the noise of metal tanks expanding—but it sure scared them.
Astronauts don’t often talk about the fear they must feel, especially at the time of launch. Bondar was more candid than most. “If you don’t have respect for the seething monster that’s about to engulf you,” she said, “there’s something wrong with you.” What gets you through is that you’re very focused on the job you have to do. In eight and a half minutes, the blast-off is over, the fiery engines have been dispatched and you’re sailing through space. Even so, everyone who flies the shuttle is very much aware that it’s still an experimental system.
“We’re all test pilots. We’re sitting on a rocket. It’s not licensed by the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration). We get our affairs in order before we fly.”
But fly they do, and I, for one, am quite envious. It’s the one kind of exploration that I can imagine myself doing if I were qualified, notwithstanding the fact that I’m a total coward. Quite a few people with the means have already flown as “space tourists,” and many more are reserving places on the first private commercial tours, so I guess the idea of exploring outer space appeals to a lot of people. My own interest probably stems from nights spent with my father on the roof deck of our house in Ottawa when I was growing up, the two of us mesmerized by the night sky and speculating about what other kinds of life might be out there. (You could see the night sky in the city in those days! And we often saw the Northern Lights.) No doubt these moments also explainwhy, when I was old enough, I had to get a pilot’s licence and why I never pass up a chance to watch Canada’s
Similar Books
