How very odd.

[baratron]

The division between the people I know in the UK and US has never been greater. Looking through my friends page today, every single post from a US-person has to do with the Space Shuttle explosion. Not a single UK-er has even mentioned it: people are talking about their weekend plans and parties. How very, very odd.

I never hear news that happens at the weekend. The Evening Standard is my main source of news (because I object to paying money to read news from the previous night), and it only publishes on weekdays. If stuff happens between Friday night and Monday morning, I don't hear about it. This Space Shuttle explosion doesn't seem very real to me, because I've only read about it on the internet (even if it was the BBC's site). It will continue to not feel real until I see it on the front pages of tomorrow's newspapers.

It's weird. I'm confused as to what the big deal is, why so many of my American friends are upset. Of course, it's tragic for anyone who knew the people involved - any death is tragic for those left behind. But all this stuff about dreams... it must only make sense to a country that has actually been involved in space exploration. I've veered between seeing it as a valuable way to find out more about our planet and a colossal waste of money. I've always seen it that way, even when I was a student in a Space and Atmospheric Physics Group.

Edit: OK, I mis-spoke. One UK-er mentioned it. A couple more in email. But even then...

Comments

Huh?

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

Not a single UK-er has even mentioned it: people are talking about their weekend plans and parties. How very, very odd.

Just off the top of my head, UK-ers such as myself (http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=yonmei&itemid=17286#cutid1), brisingamen, green_amber and blufive have certainly mentioned it.

Re: Huh?

[baratron.livejournal.com]

I don't know any of you. You're not on my friends page. How do you expect me to have seen your journal entries?

Holy Crap

[barty.livejournal.com]

I only just heard about it from your journal. It wasn't on the TV news this afternoon. It seems that CNN are the only channel to consider this newsworthy. Right now BBC News 24 is showing a documentary about plastic surgery and Sky News have something about sport.

I hope they don't shut down the program again this time. I think the crew on ISS would have something to say about that.

[bitty.livejournal.com]

Well, I've deliberately steered away from it. And I'm about to add another fluffy post. (kitchen geeking, in fact!) So hey, I'm bucking a trend ;)

[kiya]

The space industry has produced vastly more technical advancement value than has been spent on it. I find it hard to find that plausible as a waste of money.

One of my partners is actively involved in space work and research; my other partner is thinking about trying to get a job in that field when he gets his PhD.

I'm a sci-fi writer.

A lot of people are pretty justifiably afraid that something that has produced tremendous value -- not just in technology and prosperity, but in the sense of human striving and achievement -- may be crippled or killed by this. I have hope that it won't -- or if it is, it won't last. But that fear a thing that intimately concerns all the people whose dreams as children were to go into space -- dreams that some people (my partner teinedreugan, brian1789, wcg to name people you might know or know of) have had shape their choices in education and career.

I wish I had a good enough grasp of British zeitgeist to find a parallel for you, so the gap could be bridged. I don't even know what questions to ask to find a thing that shaped the last fifty years, a perpetual part of cultural awareness, something that even people who pursued careers in entirely different fields might look at events in and say, wistfully, "You know, I wanted to be a [fitb] when I was a child. . . ."

this is rushed out, not properly worded, but...

[baratron.livejournal.com]

The space industry has produced vastly more technical advancement value than has been spent on it. I find it hard to find that plausible as a waste of money.

Were they things that we actually needed, though? I mean... yeah, now we have Teflon and can make non-stick pans out of it, for instance. I suppose there may be laboratory uses for it where it is very important, but apart from that, I'm not sure that the finances are justified.

Not trying to start a huge argument or negate your grief or anything, but I have a real problem spending money on space technology instead of looking after the planet we have already. There is a definite problem with the way we conduct space exploration already: with space junk floating round as "pollution". Then I get stressed about the huge amounts of fossil fuels and metals that get wasted in the process, and... I mean, this bugs me on Earth as well, the waste of fossil fuels and how little material gets recycled and how little can be recycled: overpackaging of things and so on. When I start thinking about environmental issues, I get so upset that I end up in a place where I can't function anymore. I recycle as much as I can and don't own a car, and try not to waste heat, but... I'm aware of how little it is compared to what should be possible - for instance, the huge number of plastic items I have to throw away because nowhere collects random plastic packaging for recycling, only bottles and bags - and it makes me cry.

The impression I get from... well, maybe science fiction, but could be some fact in there as well, is that we need to explore space so we have somewhere to go when we've finished crapping up the Earth. I don't think we deserve other planets until we've started to take better care of this one. That includes all the Earth's inhabitants - all its peoples, animals and plants. How many people die of hunger each day? How many endangered species are lost each day?

The part of me that's a scientist has never really got on with the part of me that's a 10 year old kid who wants world peace :/ In an ideal world, we'd spend money on space exploration and solving world hunger and recycling all our crap. There may even be ways in which space exploration helps us solve world hunger (this has to be true for atmospheric science... I just don't know how). But it doesn't seem to be what happens in practice. Ultimately, going to space is sexy, and starving people and ruined natural habitats are not.

Re: this is rushed out, not properly worded, but...

[kiya]

Were they things that we actually needed, though?

I don't know. How do you feel about improved odds on breast cancer prevention? Air quality monitoring systems that make it possible to rate compliance of factories with air pollution standards? Scratch-resistant glasses lenses? Hydroponics? Laser angioplasty? Emergency cutters used to cut people out of wreckage? Lighter-weight, stronger, safer structural materials in buildings and automobiles? What I'm guessing is a fairly comprehensive thing is listed here.

Re: this is rushed out, not properly worded, but...

[baxil.livejournal.com]

> The impression I get from... well, maybe science fiction, but could be some fact in there as well, is that we need to explore space so we have somewhere to go when we've finished crapping up the Earth.

Sustainable living isn't going to help us any if a 20-mile meteor wipes out one hemisphere and throws the other into perpetual winter.

I agree completely; in an ideal world, a space program would be part of a balanced breakfast, complete with 10 vitamins and minerals. But for the overwhelming majority of human history, we've had frontiers to explore, and places to go if catastrophes beyond our control lay waste to our homes. Now we don't, and that scares me. Reclaiming that is, in my opinion, a justified and necessary expense. I actually find myself hoping that we DON'T find any other planets to settle before we figure out how to live responsibly on this one; but it's important that we keep searching, and stay aware of why the search is important, and give the sort of people who are most comfortable on the frontiers a place to go.

The fact that humanity currently the world's biggest potential threat to humanity doesn't make it any less urgent to me that we keep pushing out into the void.

Re: this is rushed out, not properly worded, but...

[redbird]

Two words: weather satellites.

Knowing where hurricanes and other major storms are saves lives every year. It doesn't make headlines anymore, unless you're in the area that's being told to evacuate--"thousands not killed by storm" isn't news.

Re: this is rushed out, not properly worded, but...

[baratron.livejournal.com]

These three comments all make sense. Thanks.

Re: this is rushed out, not properly worded, but...

[damerell.livejournal.com]

I think it's hard to worry about "polluting" space with space exploration when the only effect is the nuisance to space exploration. Likewise the other planets are as dead as a very dead thing - we could hardly make them worse.

It may look like launches use a lot of fuel and material, but there aren't very many - next to, say, mass motorcar ownership it's not even a drop in a bucket.

I would hope - bit of a pipe dream - that experience gained from terraforming Mars would help us deal with climate change here.

the loss of the shuttle

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

But all this stuff about dreams... it must only make sense to a country that has actually been involved in space exploration.

not really -- i've always thought space exploration was great, even when i still lived in europe, long before there was an ISS, and i sure wasn't alone. i've eagerly listened to reports about russian and US space exploration when we didn't even have a TV. i've always wanted to be an astronaut, not in the sense of having it as an actual goal, but i would love to go into space, walk on the moon, or mars. oh yeah. dreams indeed.

but as usual i am at odds with the -- to me very strange -- way americans mourn such things. it doesn't affect me the same way, and i sure as hell don't want to see news all day long that regurgitate only what we've already heard the first time, and speculate way less inventively than i can on my own. i am sad for the loss of those seven people, but no more sad than i am for the loss of any life when i don't know anyone who's directly affected; it doesn't move me to tears. i am afraid for the space program because the challenger destruction did terrible things to it, and i tend to believe that this loss could have been avoided if there hadn't been so many financial cutbacks.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

I think it's to do with the extent to which the collective sense of identity of a particular group of people is invested in a particular person or project or location. The closest UK parallel in recent times is probably the death of Princess Diana - people who had never even met her were passionate in their grief. I suspect it's the same phenomenon that's involved when people passionately root for a sports team they've never themselves played for, which can result in similar grieving if a sporting hero dies (Ayrton Senna, to take an example from the sport I most follow, or the Manchester United plane crash).

It's interesting to me to reflect that I felt very much affected by the Challenger disaster, but not nearly so much by this one - the things I'm invested in have changed.

[lovingboth]

I think that's right, and I'd also add the extent to which the event was a surprise and that perception will vary according to where you are.

So 11th Sept came as a huge shock to Americans, not used to terrorism at home. It wasn't such a shock to many non-Americans, most of whom could also understand that someone could hate the US enough to want to do such a thing.

Olaf Palme being shot was a shock to me. Ronald Reagan being shot wasn't.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

The closest UK parallel in recent times is probably the death of Princess Diana - people who had never even met her were passionate in their grief.

And that was another thing that completely boggled me. I grieved for the two, at that time quite young, children who had lost their mother. But that was as far as it went. I saw people crying a week or two weeks later, taking time off work because of their grief, and these were people who weren't even fans of Diana or the Royal Family. It didn't make any sense at all. I'd understand people being so upset if perhaps it had reminded them of a past bereavement of their own, but not for the death itself. I had people I didn't know emailing me because I had a .uk address to tell me how sorry they were for my country!

At least in this case, I can see that the Space Shuttle/space program stood for something. I might not understand what it stood for properly, or understand all the repurcussions, but I can see there is something. With Diana (who wasn't ever "Princess Diana", only ever "Diana, Princess of Wales"), I wasn't sure what was going on at all.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

I think the thing you're missing is that for a lot of people, Princess Diana (I think that's perfectly fine for colloquial usage) did stand for something. For some of them it was compassion, for others it started out being the belief that fairytales can come true and turned into more of a "girl next door against the Powers That Be" sort of story. Just about anything and anyone can be turned into a symbol if people have a need for one.

[meirion.livejournal.com]

i don't know whether i'm the uk-er you meant, but i did mention it. and expanded more fully on why i was upset in response to one of the comments made as a response to that post.

-m-

I feel nothing for the loss of the shuttle, only for the lives

[meeping.livejournal.com]

It is a tragedy that seven people have lost their lives, but more people die than this every day around the world without hitting the head lines - therefore I totally understand what you are feeling as I am feeling the same way.
With regard to some of the other comments to this post:
It is difficult to assess really what the technological benefits of space travel are as I suspect many of the discoveries and advances would have been discovered anyway. After all, how many discoveries have come from WEAPONS AND WAR research, and we would not say that either of those are admirable.Also we should not forget science goes on down here still! I think one should not be either too carried away with the idea of pouring billions into space discovery or abandoning it as a bad idea.

Also ...

[baxil.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, some of the most impassioned commentary I've heard has been from native Australians (http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=dewhitton&itemid=252675).

[kixie.livejournal.com]

AND ONE AMERICAN DIDN'T!! :-P