oracle
02-03-2003, 12:07 PM
'Just Doing Their Duty' (http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-aldrin3feb03,0,6352736.story?coll=la%2Dnews%2Dcomm ent%2Dopinions)
Despite the Columbia catastrophe, it is essential that we continue our efforts to exploit outer space.
By Buzz Aldrin, Buzz Aldrin is the second man to walk on the moon.
On Saturday, I set three alarms for 6 in the morning. But when I turned on the television, I was puzzled by the relative silence at Mission Control. Though landing time was approaching, there was little activity. The realization dawned as slowly for me, a veteran astronaut, as for everyone else. There was no immediate or decisive announcement, only a slow recognition that a catastrophe had occurred.
I didn't know these astronauts. But I know what they were doing, because I've done it. Astronauts face danger all the time. It's a job where danger is a basic assumption. But you don't think of it that way. You can't.
I became an astronaut because flying had always been part of my life. My father had flown in the 1920s and '30s; he was a major in the Army Air Corps. He was acquainted with Amelia Earhart and Orville Wright. My aunt was one of the first stewardesses, and my uncle was an air traffic manager at Eastern.
Flying at that time was exciting; it was a new kind of frontier. It wasn't yet something all the other children thought of. There was no such thing as being an astronaut in those days, but I knew from a very young age that I wanted to go up in the air.
It was always dangerous. Being a pilot in Korea was dangerous and I did that. For a fighter pilot, the danger is that people are shooting at you. In space, the danger is different: It is the unknown, the inability to respond. In space, we always knew that we were risking our lives.
But if you're going to do it, you can't think of it that way. I've had my moments where things went wrong, and I've had to push aside fear.
In 1969, when Neil Armstrong and I made the first landing on the moon, descending toward the surface we experienced a series of computer alarms, and then we ran low on fuel. We didn't panic because we had learned to manage those emotions and set them aside. We had been trained to understand that not everyone survives these situations. That's just the nature of the business.
...
Click here to read more (http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-aldrin3feb03,0,6352736.story?coll=la%2Dnews%2Dcomm ent%2Dopinions)
Despite the Columbia catastrophe, it is essential that we continue our efforts to exploit outer space.
By Buzz Aldrin, Buzz Aldrin is the second man to walk on the moon.
On Saturday, I set three alarms for 6 in the morning. But when I turned on the television, I was puzzled by the relative silence at Mission Control. Though landing time was approaching, there was little activity. The realization dawned as slowly for me, a veteran astronaut, as for everyone else. There was no immediate or decisive announcement, only a slow recognition that a catastrophe had occurred.
I didn't know these astronauts. But I know what they were doing, because I've done it. Astronauts face danger all the time. It's a job where danger is a basic assumption. But you don't think of it that way. You can't.
I became an astronaut because flying had always been part of my life. My father had flown in the 1920s and '30s; he was a major in the Army Air Corps. He was acquainted with Amelia Earhart and Orville Wright. My aunt was one of the first stewardesses, and my uncle was an air traffic manager at Eastern.
Flying at that time was exciting; it was a new kind of frontier. It wasn't yet something all the other children thought of. There was no such thing as being an astronaut in those days, but I knew from a very young age that I wanted to go up in the air.
It was always dangerous. Being a pilot in Korea was dangerous and I did that. For a fighter pilot, the danger is that people are shooting at you. In space, the danger is different: It is the unknown, the inability to respond. In space, we always knew that we were risking our lives.
But if you're going to do it, you can't think of it that way. I've had my moments where things went wrong, and I've had to push aside fear.
In 1969, when Neil Armstrong and I made the first landing on the moon, descending toward the surface we experienced a series of computer alarms, and then we ran low on fuel. We didn't panic because we had learned to manage those emotions and set them aside. We had been trained to understand that not everyone survives these situations. That's just the nature of the business.
...
Click here to read more (http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-aldrin3feb03,0,6352736.story?coll=la%2Dnews%2Dcomm ent%2Dopinions)