Instead of studying for my EE108B midterm today, I wandering into the book store and started reading Light This Candle: The Life and Times of Alan Shepard. I’ve always been interested in space travel. I read a lot of popular science books on astrophysics as a kid. That’s probably a little unusual. On the other hand, I think space travel in general is kind of like dinosaurs or trains in that it’s just one of those things children love. The harsh reality that there is a cosmic speed limit and that even approaching it becomes exponentially more impossible is just one of those dream-crushing facts of life that you have to face while growing up. When was the last time your day was ruined by a cosmological constant?
I think my interest in the history of the American space program started freshman year. I was taking a silly PWR class on the rhetoric of war or some BS like that and I ended up writing a 15 page final paper on the space race. The main appeal of the American space saga for me is really not the science, but rather the character of the astronauts themselves. These were truly brave men and I think one would be hard-pressed to find heroes of similar stature in contemporary American culture. So, in short, I would recommend this book, though it is not as good as some of the biographies I have read on John Glenn (though I can’t name a particular one that stood out as being excellent).
As a small aside, despite my admiration for the original American astronauts I believe that the show is now over and that manned spaceflight is a ridiculous waste of resources. There was a time and a place for technological saber-rattling during the Cold War; and there is no disputing that the space program is what gave impetuous to the American aerospace dynasty. The Apollo program cost 2-4 percent of the federal budget for more than ten years. In present day terms this is trillions and trillions of dollars. Instead of blasting this cash into outer space, I think it should be spent on solving humanity’s more immediate problems, namely: disease, hunger, and energy.
