For much of the world, Saturday was just another weekend day filled with all of this planet's problems and perils. The Omicron-fueled pandemic raged around the globe. New York emerged from its first snowstorm of the season. Turmoil continued in Kazakhstan and elsewhere
But in space. In space. On Saturday, in space, there was a great triumph.
After a quarter-century of effort by tens of thousands of people, more than $10 billion in taxpayer funding, and some 350 deployment mechanisms that had to go just so, the James Webb Space Telescope fully unfurled its wings. The massive spacecraft completed its final deployments, and, by God, the process went smoothly. (ars technical).
I remember during the race to space era, when the USA and the then U.S.S.R, were playing the propaganda game, and also the potential for an arms race in space spectacle, sending up satellites, space ships, and all sundry sorts of space gadgets, my father would often lament the fact that it was somehow easier flying into space, then driving on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, or driving on the hilly streets of Pittsburgh during winter. He would add, that if NASA ran the government like it did the space program, we all might find peace, happiness, and the potential for creating a life worth living on Earth, rather than a planet so hateful! Why is it my father would ask, one of the Jerry’s at the Jerry and Son Barber Shop, we can send men into space, but have such a difficult time maintaining any space between men on Earth? No one really ventured an answer, there was a pregnant pause, a deep sigh, and then if it was summertime, the conversation would immediately go to the Pittsburgh Pirates, or in the winter the Pittsburgh Steelers. I would listen intently, trying to figure out why going so far away was easier than doing anything closer, and honestly even back in the day, just considering ALL of this caused me great angst.
Mazol Tov to those who so diligently and brilliantly created the James Webb Space Telescope, congrats on imagining it, developing it, and setting it to sail into the void of the universe. I am in awe, but in shock that while all of that HAPPENED, we are still permitting the unintelligent, to dictate the health and welfare of Americans during COVID, we are still polluting our environment for the sake of Capitalism and Profits, we are still at war, either waging it or threatening it, internationally or domestically, we are using poisons to feed the crops, water is still unsanitary in parts of the world, and urban and rural locations of our own nation and medical care is considered a luxury, something to be earned. I still trying to avoid thinking too hard or too long about the successes of SPACE adventures, all the while, while back on this space called Earth, each day the doomsday clock ticks closer and closer to Midnight!
