No Grandson On The Moon

My signature rests on the Moon.

While it contributed nothing to the American space program, I get a lot of personal satisfaction from the above. It came about this way.

Shortly before John Young, Charles Duke and Ken Mattingly lifted off on the Apollo 16 mission, many people at the Kennedy Space Center presented them with  a 'bon voyage and good wishes' card.  The physical card was quite large, with hundreds of signatures; and every ounce counts on a lunar lander. The card was reduced to a single microfiche, weighing less than an ounce, and that's what actually went aboard the lunar lander. (The microfiche itself was photographed, and paper copies distributed to all signers. What you see here is the front of the card.) When the upper half of the lander lifted off to return Young and Duke to the orbiting Command Service Module where Mattingly waited, the microfiche stayed behind in the bottom half.

None of my duties at KSC ever brought me into contact with Duke or Mattingly, but I did meet John Young. He and Robert Crippen (who later became my boss when appointed Director of The Kennedy Space Center) served on the task force preparing the NASA report on the loss of Challenger, where I was the lead writer. Later I invited Young to be keynote speaker at the 1992 World Science Fiction Convention in Orlando (I was on the Con staff as liaison to NASA), and he accepted. When commercial travel arrangements somehow fell through, Young hopped into a NASA jet and flew himself to Orlando. He gave a fine keynote speech, much appreciated by the audience.

I also met Charles Bolden, now the Administrator of NASA. At the time he was a Colonel in the Marines, a fighter test pilot detached to NASA. I spent two days escorting Charley on employee motivation visits, while he was stationed at KSC for a year as astronaut-in-residence. A great guy, Charley, friendly and approachable. He strongly impressed me with his support for education (I worked in the KSC Education Office) and his willingness to speak with anybody. I remember once a janitor, sweeping the floor in the foyer of a building we had just entered, dropped his broom and engaged Charley in conversation. The only relation between the two was that both were black men. After several minutes I had to urge Charley to move on, because we were holding up a large group waiting for us inside.

Charles Bolden returned to the Marines after completing four Space Shuttle missions, two as pilot and the next two as commander. He continued to rise in the ranks, finally retiring as a major general. He came back to NASA when President Obama appointed him Administrator, with an easy confirmation by the U.S. Senate. Now he oversees a NASA that has completed the Space Shuttle program and entered a time of radical change, where private contractors, using their own space vehicles, will soon be ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station.

The only wholly NASA manned space flight program still in work is the Space Launch System (SLS), which will not likely fly its first crewed mission for another decade -- if ever. SLS is essentially a larger and more capable Saturn V, with a larger and more capable Orion spacecraft riding on top. The whole 'bigger and better' concept has many critics, me among them. I think this program is more likely to be canceled than completed, and actual missions to an asteroid, the Moon and Mars unlikely. I'm disappointed NASA couldn't come up with a more original and innovative way of resuming human exploration of the inner solar system. Several alternatives have been suggested, but none gotten very far.

Knowing how difficult human space flight really is, I had no expectations that I'd one day take a commercial passenger spaceship to the Moon, and walk over to stare at the Apollo 16 Lunar Module base, still holding the microfiche (hopefully undamaged). But I did think my grandson, perhaps . . . Now I can no longer support even that hope. I'm pessimistic that SLS will survive long enough to put people on the Moon again, and expect that unmanned robots will remain the only way to explore other planets for the foreseeable future. (The fact they are doing incredible work is one of the major arguments for canceling SLS and putting the money into more robots.)

I have no easy solutions to offer that will get humans back into exploring deep space. Wish I did.

Sir Arthur At The Kennedy Space Center

Arthur C. Clarke (who died Sir Arthur, after receiving a well-deserved knighthood) was a casual but long-term friend. He often had dinner at the Greenhouse when visiting the Kennedy Space Center. (He also attended the Apollo 11 prelaunch party at the Greenhouse, a tale told elsewhere.) A large briefing room at the KSC Visitors Center had been named "Room 2001" in his honor, and the NASA branch stationed there dubbed their conference room "2010". Just before I retired I persuaded the manager of the Astronauts Memorial Foundation, also at the Visitors Center, to name their major presentation area "Room 2061", to complete the trilogy. (I don't know if he followed through.)

Working behind the scenes, I usually managed to get myself assigned as Clarke's official escort. The last time he came (August 1994) before I retired in 1996, he had some difficulty walking, and needed a wheelchair for long distances. He managed the short walks in and out of buildings by holding on to my shoulder.

Clarke was at KSC this time primarily to attend a press conference, in his capacity as a member of the Diane Fossey Gorilla Fund Board of Trustees. The NASA connection with Fossey was the Space Radar Laboratory-1, which had flown in the cargo bay of a Shuttle Orbiter the previous April, obtainiing some excellent multi-use data on gorilla habitats. But as with most distinguished guests, his itinerary included visits to several sites of major interest.

Over the course of most of a day, while being driven from site to site (KSC is very big, and spread out), we had several chances to chat. The subject of the then-extant SF mags came up. Clarke told me he faithfully subscribed to ALL of them -- but they just went directly on to his library shelves. He didn't actually read them; couldn't find the time.

The press conference came at the end of the day, when Clarke was visibly tiring. The local press turned out in force, probably 30 or more; an unusually high number for anything less than a launch. I escorted Clarke to the table on the dais, which he shared with some other people associated with the Gorilla Fund, and took a seat in front.

The press conference itself was fairly routine, except that the press concentrated their attention on Clarke and almost ignored the others. He perked up a little while sitting and answering questions. At the end of the standard 30-minute conference I stood up and announced that we would take two more questions, and then had to go.

The two questions came, the conference officially ended -- and then half or more of the reporters present hurriedly dug into their rucksacks or tote bags, pulled out copies of Arthur C. Clarke books, and rushed the table for autographs!

Press people, by and large, are a skeptical lot. This uncoordinated, spontaneous rush to get their books autographed while they had the chance warmed the intake valves of this cynical old heart. Clarke, although a little startled, seemed happy to comply. So I sat back down, and for another ten or twelve minutes, Clarke autographed books. Then, finally, I could get him out of the building and into our waiting limousine.

I had already escorted Arthur to see several people and places, including a meeting with the highest local dignitaries in the KSC Center Director's office. But it was that demonstration of genuine, unforced admiration on the part of the press corps that I most like to remember.