America for the Win? Nope.
America for the Loss...
Talk about No Man... or No Person Left Behind: A Boeing related space project that you might have heard news of in social media has finally made the mainstream media news, albeit a small item in the online digest. The press can no longer ignore this story either: America has two human "trapped" in space. Is this your worst nightmare? Being trapped in a situation not your making?
Can you imagine having to risk getting back into a defective transporter if you want to return home? It's like having a junk car and being miles away from your loved ones. Do you risk it? Or stay put? Can you stay away... forever? Where does your hope lie? I bet these two, and their families, are praying hard right now...
It's a shame this story is not front-page national news. But like with Evan Gershkovich or homeless and hungry Gazans hanging on today, non-happy news stories -- and the people involved -- tend to drop from the headlines these days, as journOlists conspire to breathlessly report the latest polls, the latest gossip, the latest "Get Trump!" stories.
It would be and will be BAD news if a disaster like the Challenger occurs to the partially Boeing-built spacecraft upon re-entry and even two human lives are lost. But human life is cheap today, and nobody can think ahead or take pride in their work for its own sake...
Give it a few weeks time. Soon this will be the biggest story in the nation, and where there's money to be made, the new digital media will have all journOlists on the roster opining on this one, just like they have now belatedly discovered Joe Biden, the American president, is showing signs of not-so-early-onset dementia after his son died of a brain tumor (genetic?) and the president himself had at least two brain surgeries in his medical past.
God Bless America, and I am not saying that tritely. Intelligent Americans are hurting these days, because we cannot just disappear into our technology or our cares for "our own" family people and ignore what the digital revolution is doing in absolutely cheapening human life -- all life, truth be told -- today. Pray if you can, and urge your church leaders to include prayers for the two trapped space explorers, and the people still surviving in Gaza in your collective prayer services. These stories are not going away, and the legacy media, some say, are nearly braindead today too.
NASA has sent hundreds of people into space since 1961. Doing that is hard, but for an agency like NASA, it is supposed to be as routine as one can expect.
That makes the Starliner saga of the last several weeks all the more troubling. On June 5, Boeing sent two NASA astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, to the International Space Station aboard its new Starliner spacecraft. It was the first time the vehicle had ever ferried humans into space — after years of developmental delays caused by design and testing problems. This mission was supposed to be a moment of redemption for the company’s space program as well as its larger reputation.
But Boeing can’t catch a break. Helium leaks were detected soon after Starliner made it to orbit. Upon approach to the space station, five of its thrusters started to behave aberrantly. While the crew made it to the space station safely, a planned eight-day stay has stretched to 26 days and counting. NASA and Boeing say they are still trying to discern what caused the thruster issues — and, more important, ensure Starliner can safely bring back the astronauts.
That is, of course, the prudent move. The Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters could have been prevented by more thorough checks. But it’s one that leaves Williams and Wilmore stuck in space.
Now, NASA and Boeing object to that kind of characterization; they have emphasized that in an emergency, the astronauts can take the spacecraft home. But if the pair can’t come home yet, because of circumstances outside their control, and there’s no timetable for when they could return, that seems to fit the very definition of being stuck.
This isn’t how NASA’s new era of human spaceflight was billed when Starliner was first announced. NASA wanted to elevate the private sector: For its new partners, it picked a newcomer, SpaceX, and a seemingly dependable veteran, Boeing. But the veteran is the reason Williams and Wilmore are having to adapt to new routines hundreds of miles above their homes on Earth.
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