Astronauts true American idols

I’ve always had a thing for astronauts.

Real hero worship, real admiration and real respect for the men and women who step off the planet into the great out there to see what they can see, learn what they can learn and lift our knowledge and our spirits along with them as they ascend.

And, frankly, I think we could use a little of that kind of hero worship again – when the people we choose as our idols have really done something worth idolizing them for, when they represent a national purpose and goal, when the gifts they give us are tangible and real. Not banal and shallow.

OK, so I’m an old fogey.

I would like to nominate astronauts as a group (yes, I know, there are a few misfits) for American hero/idol consideration once again, even though as a nation, we hardly know their names any more or even if any of them are in orbit at the moment – and even if NASA is a troubled agency.

But consider the astronauts, some of whom die in the doing.

Friday is the fifth anniversary of the scheduled return from space of the Columbia space shuttle, which broke up on re-entry over Texas on Feb. 1, 2003. Among those killed on board that day was Spokane’s own Lt. Col. Michael P. Anderson.

I first got caught up in the magic that outer space held for America during the Cold War, when as a kid I could stand atop a concrete structure in my backyard in Miami and, if the atmospherics were right, I could see in the early morning sky the afterburner of a rocket being launched up the coast at Canaveral. It all took on a human face back in 1961 when President Kennedy committed America to landing on the moon before the end of the decade – and even before that, in 1959, when the seven Mercury astronauts became our American idols.

Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Virgil Grissom, Walter Schirra, Alan Shepard, Donald Slayton – we read all about them and followed their lives with great fascination. Sure, there was a big publicity machine at work, but we were more naïve as a nation about such things then, and we really wanted to believe that they (and we) had the right stuff, even if that phrase wasn’t in the vernacular at the time.

We knew the astronauts’ nicknames – “Deke” Slayton, “Gus” Grissom, “Wally” Schirra – and we had our personal favorites whose particular lives and doings we followed intently. Kind of like having your favorite Beatle: John or Paul? George or Ringo?

My favorite was Gus Grissom. Most of the seven were pretty handsome. My guy wasn’t so much handsome as interesting, with his everyman look and flattop hair cut. Besides, who couldn’t be drawn to someone named Gus?

When he and Ed White and Roger Chaffee, the three Apollo 1 astronauts, died in a fire during a simulation at Canaveral in 1967, I cried hard. It occurred to me then that this wasn’t just about adventure and national pride and beating the USSR in the race to the moon. Real lives could be lost doing this real risky stuff.

I didn’t know at the time that one day I would be living on the other side of the country, in another place with an astronaut connection. Michael Anderson wasn’t the first astronaut to die, nor was he the first African American astronaut to die exploring space. But, here in Spokane, he was “our” astronaut. And we wept for him – and for us – when his victorious space journey ended in tragedy.

His father was in the Air Force, and he lived many places, but he graduated from Cheney High School and considered Spokane his home. No matter where he went in, or out of, the world, home was here. It still is for his parents.

On the eve of this anniversary date, I offer the proposition that astronauts deserve a fresh look from us all. What could be more meaningful and exciting than to explore the heavens and do good science in the process?

Although we know that the space race fostered scientific advances here on earth through transfer technology, miniaturization, solar energy, weather satellites and Doppler radar (to name a very, very few) – the space science continues. Did you know that NASA transfer technology ranges from radiation hazard detection devices to self-righting life rafts, laser angioplasty to programmable pacemakers?

Aboard Columbia, Anderson oversaw 80 science experiments, among which was one that used a bioreactor to grow prostate cancer cells rapidly. He said from the deck of Columbia that “prostate cancer has a high rate of occurrence in African American males, so some of the research we are doing up here can really help out in those areas.”

So, thank you to Michael Anderson and all the astronauts from all the nations who step off the planet to learn about the great out there and do science and bring back knowledge that benefits all of us.

I think I know American idol material when I see it.