When Space Exploration Was Cool

The space shuttle Endeavor docked with the International Space Station (ISS) yesterday and it set a record. It was a small reminder of how excited Americans used to get about accomplishments in space travel and exploration. This time, the record was for the most humans on the same spacecraft at the same time: 13. The shuttle's crew of 7 joined the 6 people on the ISS to break the old record of 10. There have been 13 people in space at the same time in the past, but they were on several spacecraft. This record was set just days before the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing (7/20/1969).

Back in the day, Americans followed our space exploration efforts pretty closely, watching the launches of the various Mercury Gemini, and Apollo spacecraft, the moon landings, and the early space shuttle launches. We would sit glued to radios and televisions, listening or watching launches of sub-orbital flights, the first flights around the earth, and the first tentative efforts to reach the moon. It was exciting stuff, never knowing if the spacecraft and astronauts were going to succeed, but always expecting that American ingenuity would manage to overcome all the obstacles. There were mishaps and missteps, but for the most part, the NASA efforts held our attention and captured our imagination.

After the moon landings, something changed, and not for the better. Our famous short national attention span, I think, got in the way and we were no longer as engaged with the process. We lost focus as did NASA, and there was no clear new objective after the moon landing. The space exploration that continued became routine, and not nearly as exciting. The shuttle disasters briefly recaptured our attention, but it wasn't long before our attention wandered again.

I think it's no small thing to have 13 humans on a single spacecraft. And that group is truly international, representing all five member organizations for the ISS: NASA, the Russian Federal Space Agency, the Canadian Space Agency, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, and the European Space Agency).

It's no Federation or Deep Space 9 certainly, but I think it's a big deal that this record has been set. We should all get excited for a few moments.