White Noise Insanity

FORGIVE US (U.S.) OUR TRESPASSES

John Conley, former United States Marine.

DO we show as much care for casualties in Iraq as for our space travellers? Astronauts truly have to possess an extraordinary amount of courage and commitment on the road to performing their duties in space. While the mission itself may be exciting and even necessary in expanding our knowledge of the universe in which we live, it seems, rightfully so, that nothing is spared to ensure the safe return of our fellow Americans. This is always priority number one and as a nation we expect nothing less if the shuttle program is expected to continue. We’ve collectively mourned the loss of what seems like too many lives in our quest for knowledge of space and we’ve discovered our threshold for suffering the loss of astronauts to be very near. As a matter of fact, space agency NASA has made it known unequivocally that should another disaster happen for any reason the shuttle program would be ended.

I feel a sense of wonder at our universe in general and the space shuttle program in particular. Listening recently to Wayne Hale, shuttle project manager, reporting on the success and progress of the Independence Day shuttle launch, I paused and attempted to grasp the enormity of just what’s required to lift a shuttle from its launch pad, send it into space, and return it safely to earth.

Hale was understandably excited with the current progress of the mission, but in response to a question was nonetheless quick to answer such an undertaking can never be risk-free. Indeed, consider for a moment the numbers googled from NASA and other authoritative sites.

To lift a total gross weight of 8.77 million pounds off the launch pad to a speed of 17,000 miles per hour in 8.5 minutes requires the rocket engines produce 15 million horsepower of thrust. During this time the speed of the gases exiting each of the Solid Rocket Booster motors is 6,000 mph, three times the speed of a high-powered rifle.

It’s not difficult to imagine the nervousness an astronaut must feel sitting within and preparing to ride this mindlessly powerful mechanical monster, especially considering the existence of innumerable possibilities for malfunctions and disaster. For example, the two solid rocket booster engines cannot be shut down once they are ignited at lift off. Talk about ‘point of no return’! Consider also the vast array of complex electrical components and computers to go with 230 miles of electrical wiring in just the orbiter alone. I suspect it might be difficult to get Murphy’s Law (if anything can go wrong it will) out of your head at Take-off minus five seconds.

Now, let’s imagine the brass at NASA arguing for an early launch to Mars citing sketchy and fabricated intelligence that Martians actually exist and are committed to destroying Earth lest we act quickly. Because of the extreme and predictable danger to our astronauts, mission specialists and safety engineers plead for caution before a launch is even considered, yet they are ignored, ridiculed, threatened and even fired by the bosses for speaking out.

Now imagine this incompetence results in 325 consecutive launch failures, each one claiming the lives of eight Americans whose only sin was simple dedication to his or her country. In time we learn the Martians weren’t actually going to attack us at all and, as a matter of fact, they didn’t even possess the means to harm us if they wanted to. Then we notice the drumbeat to ‘attack lest we be attacked’ has somehow morphed seamlessly into a mission to colonise Mars and, while we’re at it, take the Martians’ gold for ourselves - ‘ourselves’ being myriad corporate entities with obvious connections to the NASA bosses.

Is it not a shame that, as a nation, we apparently do not have the same regard for the lives of our brave men and women being killed daily in Iraq as we have for our astronauts? In our hypothetical, eight Americans killed in each of 325 launches because of the inability of NASA bosses to admit they’ve committed one incompetent blunder after another would result in a total loss of 2,600 astronauts. Which is close to the number of Americans killed in Iraq since President George W. Bush and his Secretary of State made dire warnings of imminent ‘mushroom clouds’ hovering over America. As we know now, this singular, ominous motive has been replaced by another, now billed as original, to ‘spread democracy’ to the Middle East.

Besides the American and Coalition casualties, how do we calculate the ‘collateral’ loss of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians killed as a result of crossfire and some, more tragically, by our own hands?

Do we Americans have no shame? Have we completely lost our sense of right and wrong as a civil society? Do we not deserve God’s wrath for the destruction wrought and tolerated under the ‘leadership’ of George W. Bush?

It’s a terrible and tragic irony that on Independence Day 2006 we wring our hands at the very thought of another disaster taking the lives of Americans travelling in space, yet yawn at headlines of another young marine or soldier killed - killed sacrificially - while fighting on our behalf in an American pre-emptive war, a war planned months or years prior to September 11, 2001, based on lies and for the enrichment of corporate America.

God forgive us.


USA July 2006.

Vietnam War veteran John M. Conley, winner of two Purple Hearts, was formerly in the United States Marines.

# posted by KayInMaine @ 7/11/2006 03:54:00 PM