When Failure Was Not an Option

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It struck me as ironic — perhaps that was by design? — that Barack Obama came to the Kennedy Space Center this week to defend the changes he has proposed for the space program.

I say that, not because of the Tea Party's now annual April 15 protests or the increasingly strident criticism that comes Obama's way from the Republicans, but because this month marks the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 13 space mission.

In fact, today is the anniversary of the Apollo 13 crew's return to earth, so Obama made his remarks during the 40th anniversary of that ill–fated mission.

Jeffrey Kluger, a writer for TIME magazine who co–authored "Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13" with Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell, reflected in TIME recently that the mission was a miracle that was "due to the extraordinary technological and navigational improvisations the people on the ground and in the spacecraft dreamed up along the way." But he also gave considerable credit to Lovell and flight director Gene Kranz and their "surreal cool."

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As well he should.

Essentially, Lovell and Kranz were products of a special mindset that has always existed at NASA. Some folks would call it a "can–do" spirit. In a memorable scene from Ron Howard's movie about the mission in 1995, Kranz (played by Ed Harris) summarized it for the ground crew during the crisis — "failure is not an option" — although it is my understanding that Kranz never said that.

Maybe that's an example of the differences in word usage from one generation to the next. In 1970, an option was something extra you had installed in your car. "Option" simply wasn't used in that "failure is not an option" context in those days. But it was used in that context when the script writers were doing their interviews in preparation for the 1995 film.

Dramatic dialogue, yes, but it also pretty efficiently describes the problem that NASA faced in April 1970.

It may be hard for many modern people, conditioned by the convenience of the internet and cell phones and global positioning systems, to imagine how challenging Apollo 13 was. The folks on the ground had to figure out how to bring the crew back to earth when an oxygen tank exploded — I guess it was more or less understood immediately that, once that tank blew up, the original mission was out of the question.

After the crew returned safely to earth 40 years ago today, it was frequently called a "successful failure" as people learned how remarkable the accomplishment had been, even though the original mission had to be scrapped.

President Nixon didn't seem to be nearly as jubilant posing with a crew that never made it to the moon as he did the year before when he was only too happy to bask in the glow that came from Apollo 11. I always thought Nixon regarded the Apollo 13 crew as losers. Well, it was an election year. Perhaps he felt he had been deprived of a victorious photo for campaign pamphlets.

I was pretty young at the time. I remember the incident and being as stunned as everyone else to discover that something actually could go wrong on these space missions, which often seemed to be routine. But I don't think I understood the issues that had to be dealt with.

And I don't think many outside NASA's ground crew and the three men in space knew how perilously close the crew came to losing their lives.

To preserve power, the crew had to power down. Back on earth, the ground crew had to design and then describe "the mailbox" that would remove carbon dioxide. It had to be built from materials that were on board the space ship — it wasn't just laying around the capsule.

Modern folks, immersed as they are in 21st–century technology, may wonder why an image wasn't transmitted to Apollo 13. But there was no e–mail in 1970. I don't know if fax machines existed, but, if they did, no one had figured out how to send a fax from earth to outer space.

In fact, the computer you use at work or at home is far more powerful than the computers NASA was using 40 years ago. In hindsight, the space program was nowhere near as advanced as most Americans believed it was — but it did represent the best that was available at the time.

It wasn't primitive, but if it sounds primitive, that is only in comparison to what we have now. But let's not lose our perspective. Modern technology was made possible to a great extent by the research that was done by America's space program in the 1960s and 1970s. Even Apollo 13 made its contributions to scientific knowledge.

So, when Obama insists that the federal government will continue to support NASA financially as it has done over the years, I hope he is telling the truth.

I hope he will always remember the United States consistently and adequately supported NASA, even at those times when its work could not be linked to any tangible benefits.

And let's all remember a couple of truisms that emerged from NASA's moon program:

First, discoveries don't follow preset timetables. They happen when they happen.

Second, when the new technologies of tomorrow emerge from the research that is being done today, let's take steps to use it to benefit our economy. Let's encourage companies to keep the jobs that will be created by new industries we can't even imagine here instead of outsourcing them to other lands.

Happy Birthday, Facebook

Every year brings new milestones. Next week, for example, America will observe the 200th anniversary of the birth of the man who is widely believed to be the greatest American president, Abraham Lincoln. As fate would have it, another man whose name lives on — Charles Darwin — was born on the very same day in the very same year.

There will be similar anniversaries all year — and not just the anniversaries of the births of famous people but also the anniversaries of deaths of famous people. In my family, this year will be the 20th anniversary of the death of my grandmother, who lived a long life before dying in her 90s. She wasn't famous, but she was loved by all and is missed by those friends and relatives who are still living.

This year will also bring milestone anniversaries of significant events — one noteworthy example is the anniversary that will come this July, when it will be 40 years since man first walked on the moon.

This is kind of a roundabout way of leading up to what I want to say, which is that today is the fifth anniversary of the founding of Facebook. I have only been a part of Facebook's online community for a few weeks, really, but it has re-connected me with so many old friends with whom I thought I had lost touch forever.

In fact, I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago. But I didn't realize at the time — in fact, I didn't realize until today — that Facebook was founded five years ago, on Feb. 4, 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg, who was a 19-year-old college student at Harvard. He is 24 now, and he is the CEO and president of Facebook, which, according to Wikipedia, has a net worth of $1.5 billion.

Wikipedia describes Facebook as an "online social network," which is probably a significant part of the reason why I resisted it. As I've said before, I tended to dismiss it as a dating and social site. One of my disappointments has been my failure to find someone to share my life with, and, when I was younger, a dating site would have had tremendous appeal for me. But, by the time Facebook came along, I had pretty much reconciled myself to the idea that I wasn't likely to find someone, and I didn't give it much thought. It seemed like something that was aimed at younger participants.

After being prodded by a friend from my college days, I decided to join last month — and I was pleasantly surprised to discover the diversity of the site. As I say, I've been re-connected with many old friends through Facebook — including a woman who, 40 years ago, used to babysit for my brother and me!

I'm not trying to shill for Facebook. I have a good friend who knows a lot about the ins and outs of computers and the internet. And, based on his experiences and his knowledge, he is suspicious — and perhaps justifiably so — of any site where personal information is gathered — even the most innocent-appearing information. He continues to resist Facebook. I respect his opinion, and I know that privacy is a genuine concern in the virtual world.

But I want to make it clear that membership in Facebook is free. It earns its income from advertising, and, to be honest, I've seen complaints about some of the ads on Facebook expressed by some of my friends who are members there.

So, like everything else in life, Facebook is not without its drawbacks. Users will have to balance any concerns they have with the potential benefits.

By the way, in the spirit of the occasion, I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that Facebook shares its birthday with many famous people who were born on this date — Charles Lindbergh (in 1902), golfer Byron Nelson (in 1912), civil rights activist Rosa Parks (in 1913), feminist Betty Friedan (in 1921), former Vice President Dan Quayle (in 1947), former pro football player Lawrence Taylor (in 1959) and Olympic gold medal-winning gymnast Carly Patterson (in 1988).

Likewise, there were famous people who died on this date. Singer Karen Carpenter died on Feb. 4, 1983. Another famous musician, Liberace, died on this date in 1987. Former House Speaker Carl Albert died on this date in 2000. And Friedan died of congestive heart failure on her 85th birthday, in 2006.

And, as a lifelong Beatles fan, I feel compelled to observe that it was one year ago today that NASA transmitted "Across the Universe" in the direction of the star Polaris, which is 431 light years from earth. It was done to mark the 40th anniversary of the recording of that song, the 45th anniversary of the Deep Space Network and the 50th anniversary of NASA.

Modern Marvels

Today, I want to express a few personal thoughts about modern technology.

I'll be the first to admit that I don't know everything I should about today's technology. I have friends who do, and when I have questions I turn to them for answers. Sometimes they have them. And sometimes they don't.

Yesterday, I experienced some problems accessing some of the websites that I like to access. And I kept trying to post a comment on a friend's blog, but he never received it. I spoke, via e-mail, with one of my friends who frequently has the answers I need. He told me that web servers have been under a lot of stress lately. Perhaps (and this is my speculation, not his) it has something to do with all the internet traffic that surrounded the inauguration on Tuesday.

Today those problems seem to have cleared up. But it underscores a point I want to make.

Modern technology is not perfect. But it makes so many things possible today that weren't possible even a few years ago.

For example, my father, my brother and I were all devastated when my mother died in a flash flood in 1995. At that time, the internet was still in its infancy — if one were to go back in time and look at what was available then and compare it to what is available today, I think the word "primitive" would come to mind.

And, when the year 2022 rolls around, what is available today will seem just as primitive to people of that time.

My mother never had personal e-mail to use to contact faraway friends. She did have a fax machine, and she used it all the time to send messages to local friends — and she sometimes faxed messages to me. I lived about 200 miles away from her and, at the time, I also had a fax machine.

I know she would have loved e-mail. She liked to compare faxing to "passing notes in school." Today, I suppose the paperless approach has entered the classroom and, instead of passing notes, today's students "text" one another.

But I digress.

As I say, when my mother died, it was a devastating experience for my family. I didn't have an internet connection at the time and, while I did have a computer that I used for some word processing tasks, I still prepared most of my personal documents on an electric typewriter. I couldn't send e-mails to distant friends or search the internet to locate friends with whom I had lost touch. And I certainly couldn't use the internet as an outlet for my grief.

I think I went online the following year, and I found something of an outlet for my lingering grief in chatrooms, conversing with strangers. That helped, but it left a residue of grief that never had an outlet — until recently, when I began to explore the possibility of creating a memorial website to my mother.

I found a host that provides free webspace for such a memorial. It allows me to post pictures and write my thoughts. I can share the link with friends and family members, and it gives them a place to go to see my mother's pictures and reflect on their own memories of how she influenced their lives. They can sign a guestbook. They can even contribute their own pictures.

It was an emotional experience for me, but I know that creating that website has had a cleansing influence on me. And, from the feedback I've received from others, it has had the same influence on them. One of my dear friends, Liebe, looked upon my mother as a mother figure of her own. When she had seen the site, she remarked, "It feels like she just died yesterday." And she said she was glad I had done it because she's been thinking of doing something similar in memory of her father, who died last summer.

That's a way that the internet helps people — beyond giving them a convenient place to shop or look for jobs or a place to live (or, in its less admirable mode, as a provider of pornography).

Another recent discovery is the Facebook website. An old friend of mine recommended it to me by e-mail, so I signed up for it and was amazed at how many people saw my name and contacted me. It has re-connected me with many old friends in just a few days. I had heard of Facebook before, but I tended to dismiss it as a social and dating site. I've been pleasantly surprised to discover that it is much more than that.

I'm not a particularly religious person, but I have to say that I feel richly blessed to have these friends back in my life. And it is something that probably never would have been possible if not for the internet.

When my father (who is 79 now) first decided to go online a dozen years ago, I told him that the internet's websites were like a bookstore. You will find shelves and shelves of books in a bookstore, I told him, and, although much of it is not worth your time or money, there are a few nuggets that are worth finding if you look hard enough.

My recent experiences confirm that I was right.