Taking Up Space

Within 24 hours of the Columbia Space Shuttle accident, NASA made three announcements worth examining. OnSunday, February 2, as reported by AP writer, Pam Easton, "NASA warned members of the public Sundayagainst trying to sell purported Columbia debris on eBay, as local law enforcement agencies struggled tocordon off and protect the hundreds of pieces of wreckage."

"People should not be collecting that at all. It's all government property," warned NASAspokesman Bruce Buckingham, but he was too late. On Saturday, listings for pieces began appearing on eBay.

"We live in an evil world, and there are people that will do those types of things," Buckinghamsaid, claiming to be "stunned."

I certainly have no desire to defend those who may or may not have tried to sell alleged wreckage debris,but I couldn't help but remember that, besides studying the effects of weightlessness on spiders, fish andsilkworms, one of the "scientific" experiments conducted on Columbia's final mission, was thedevelopment new products ranging from paints to perfumes...stuff to be sold (maybe even on eBay).

And how about NASA and our culture at large? Won't they, in the name of American values and thecontinuation of the space program, readily "sell" this tragedy to us? The Sunday press was filledwith early examples of spin:

"These brave astronauts died for all humankind," Daniel Ayalon, the Israeli ambassador to USsaid, before adding: "This event has galvanized the two countries together. We have full trust inNASA."

The Rev. Mike Weaver of the All Saints Evangelical Lutheran Church in Columbus, Ohio, said the doomedshuttle crew had touched "the face of God."

Daniel Salton, brother of mission specialist Laurel Clark said his sister was "a great role model forkids," proving "you can do great things for humanity if you just set some small goals and always gofor the next thing and set your sights higher."

Dubya himself declared, "The crew of the shuttle Columbia did not return safely to Earth, yet we canpray that all are safely home," before attending Mass at St. John's Church near the White House where theRev. Luis Leon laid down the hard sell:

"We grieve because they represent the best in us, a part of which has died," Leon said."God's heart is more heartbroken than our own, and I believe they're already resting."

Leon said he had heard some who believed the shuttle's disintegration was "God's way of getting backat us" for Bush's Iraq policies. "I don't believe in that kind of God," he assured ourpresident. "That's hokum. That's just garbage." The Columbia's destiny, Leon told the congregation,was "the price for our freedom."

But the ultimate commodity being sold is NASA's very existence. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach,chairman of the House space subcommittee, said: "We're going to correct the mistakes...but, we have toknow that space policy has got to come off the back burner. Space policy for the last 10 years hasn't beengiven the attention it deserves."

"I hope it won't impair public support for the program," said David Hyland, chairman of theUniversity of Michigan's Department of Aerospace Engineering. "If we really want to be a space-faringnation, we've got to ante-up."

"Our journey into space will go on," President-Select Bush concluded.

Another product we'll be asked to purchase came in the second announcement: safety through US technology.The New York Times reported that the space agency "spent tens of millions of dollars improving safetyafter the Challenger accident," and has "estimated the risk of a calamitous event on re-entry as 1in 350." Also from the Times came the NASA estimate that the "risk of disaster in any given shuttleflight is about 1 in 145, or 99.3 percent."

But, as journalist Karl Grossman reminds us, "Before the Challenger accident, NASA based thelikelihood of a catastrophe at 1 in 100,000. Then came the Challenger, and now it's 1 in 74. [It] just showshow ridiculous these claims by NASA are."

Grossman has written extensively on nukes in space, i.e. an October 1997 launch from the Kennedy SpaceCenter in Florida of the Cassini space probe with 73 pounds of plutonium on board. For those of you justtuning in, plutonium is rather deadly. Called "the most toxic chemical known to science" by MichioKaku, a professor of Theoretical Physics at the City University of New York, less than one-millionth of a gramof plutonium-an virtually invisible particle-is a carcinogenic dose. According to Dr. Helen Caldicott,"one pound, if uniformly distributed, could hypothetically induce lung cancer in every person onEarth." A capricious scenario, you say? Not when you consider that the Russians have a fifteen percentfailure rate with nuclear payloads and the US has already launched twenty-four devices carrying nuclearmaterial into space and three have met with accidents. This includes the infamous Apollo 13, although thenuclear factor was conveniently omitted from the Ron Howard/Tom Hanks film spectacle.

Which creates a nice segue for one last NASA announcement. Mission control in Houston said on the day ofthe accident, "Any debris that is located in the Dallas-Fort Worth vicinity should be avoided and may behazardous."

Apparently, poisonous rocket propellant was the main concern as "debris smashed through a roof,splashed into a reservoir and dropped amid farms, homes and businesses," Easton wrote. Some 70 people inNacogdoches County, Texas had gone to two hospitals because they had touched debris and were worried. Willthere soon be a Columbia syndrome?

Thank to its so-called "Mission to Planet EARTH," NASA has gained a reputation as a tree-huggingoasis within an arid governmental desert. For example, a 1993 shuttle Discovery mission was designed to"study the ozone layer." However, there is one small detail that those kooky space kids at NASA tendto omit: The National Toxics Campaign has reported back in 1993 that three space shuttle launches release asmuch ozone-destroying chlorine into the atmosphere as DuPont-the single largest industrial producer ofchlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)-generates in a year.

When one considers the military role of NASA, the environmental façade becomes laughable. A 1998 report,"Vision For 2020," outlines the US military's plans to control space. "It's politicallysensitive, but it's going to happen," explained US Space Command Commander-in- Chief Joseph W. Ashy."Some people don't want to hear this, and it sure isn't in vogue, but--absolutely--we're going to fightin space. We're going to fight from space and we're going to fight into space.... We will engage terrestrialtargets someday--ships, airplanes, land targets--from space."

"Not only are there to be weapons in space," adds Karl Grossman, "but they will likely neednuclear power as their energy source."

Is this news to you? That's probably because the corporate media would rather report on brave astronautsand scientists paying the price for freedom than a taxpayer-subsidized militarization of space. "Militaryspace policy is a media wasteland," says Loring Wirbel, communications editor of Electronic EngineeringTimes. "I think part of it has to do with a lot of editors thinking Americans like being Number One, likebeing the bully, so no one should raise the ethical questions involved in that."

Perhaps the greatest legacy of the fallen Columbia crew could be some of us taking a closer look at NASAand beginning raising those ethical questions.