Apollo 8 Astronaut Disses SpaceShipOne
by Aero-News Senior Correspondent Kevin R.C. "Hognose"
O'Brien
Thursday night, PBS held a screening of its new documentary on
Apollo 8, "Race to the Moon." The three astronauts who crewed the
first circumlunar flight were all there: Frank Borman, Jim Lovell,
and Bill Anders.
After the program screened in the museum's packed IMAX theater,
the three astronauts took questions from the rapt audience.
Borman's answer to one question has the commercial-space-oriented
corner of the net humming this weekend, and many of the commenters
are saying not-too-nice things about him.
What did Borman say? According to the Space Politics blog, the
question, asked to all three astronauts (paraphrased): "How do you
feel about the recent addition of SpaceShipOne to the museum and
the role of commercial spaceflight?"
Borman's answer: "Well, I think Spacecraft One [sic] was a nice
stunt. You spend twenty-five million dollars to win ten. I'm not
taking anything away from it because the people who flew it were
very brave and courageous, but I don't think it leads to much, and
I think it's inappropriately displayed up there next to Lindbergh's
and Yeager's airplanes."
A handful of audience members applauded Borman's statement.
Commenting in the blog, a man who identified himself as the
questioner said, "I was stunned with the response. I was further
floored that some in the audience actually applauded!"
There is a sense, among space buffs, of betrayal. That their
hero of Gemini 7 and Apollo 8 dare to put down Burt Rutan's
SpaceShipOne -- mangling the name in the process -- is a bit like
having an archbishop name Judas as his favorite Apostle -- it stirs
the faithful.
For the last several days the knives have been out for Borman,
figuratively speaking, around the new-space webpages and blogs.
Space Politics's Jeff Foust himself was mild, although he did call
it a "curmudgeonly opinion"; to Foust, the comments and approval of
same show that "proponents of commercial human
spaceflight—especially those who want to sell such services
to the government—have not convinced everyone yet of the
utility of such efforts."
And some similarly reasoned comments followed, such as Dwayne A.
Day's: "And on one level he is right -- SS1 was a stunt,
not necessarily proof of the viability of the commercial suborbital
tourist industry." Monte Davis contrasted conventional wisdom of
space fans, a narrowly-selected subgroup of society, with
conventional wisdom in general, and that of potential investors in
particular: "I'd bet that for every Musk, Bezos, Allen, Bigelow or
Branson, there are still ten to a hundred who'll be happy to tell
you in pained detail about the Iridium-Teledesic-GlobalStar
bust."
Others pointed out that Borman appeared to answer only the
SpaceShipOne part of the equation, and may not have been speaking
about commercial space. And he makes a valid point: apart from the
fact that it was done, by space standards, on a shoestring, for
about one-quarter of what it cost the government to deploy
bureaucrats to regulate it, most of what SpaceShipOne did has been
done before.
Of course, Lindbergh had been beaten to the Atlantic crossing by
eight years (Alcock & Brown in a Vickers Vimy, 1919); Yeager
had been beaten to Mach 1 by fifty years' worth of high-powered
projectiles from guns and cannons. Day again: "[L]ots of things in
aviation are stunts. Lindbergh's solo flight over the Atlantic was
a stunt, more a matter of endurance than aviation technology or
commerce."
Not everyone was content to bash (let alone analyze) Borman's
particular statement. Others made personal attacks on Borman or on
the astronaut corps in general. Several posters have delightedly
pointed out that, as Rand Simberg dryly put it, "Frank Borman
should hardly be considered an expert on commercial anything." A
couple linked to the US Centennial of Flight Commission page on the
rise and fall of Eastern Airlines, in which the former astronaut
plays a villain role second only to that of Frank Lorenzo, who
succeeded him as CEO.
Another common theme, as typically expressed by Clark Lindsey of
HobbySpace: "[M]ost of the Space Age astronauts, except for a few
exceptions like Buzz Aldrin, were not space buffs.... After working
their way up to the elite world of test pilots, they saw their
selection as astronauts as the ultimate proof that they were the
hottest flyboys around. They didn't go through all that just to
open up the cosmos to any Tom, Dick, or Dennis Tito."
A commenter in Clark's blog, Kelly Starks, concurs. "I was
working at JSC in the shuttle flight planning dept when Garn and
Nelson used their ... positions to get a ride.... The astronauts
and ground folks were so indignant at having a civilian intrude,
they went out of their way to make Senator Garn physically ill
during his flight." Starks concludes that the astronauts and the
NASAcracy "...did NOT see themselves as opening space for common
folks - even mere mortal Senators and congressmen."
The amount of hostility blasting like solar flares between the
private-space and NASA enthusiast blocs reminded us of something
from college. Then we realized what it was: adherents of different
strains of an upstart religion excommunicating one another over
charges of heresy. (And as every student of comparative religion
knows, heretics catch greater hostility than the unconverted
infidels or heathens).
The dichotomy is to some degree false. I don't know anyone on
the private side that doesn't admire and envy plenty of the
gov.space accomplishments, and while Frank Borman may not see much
in private space, enough other astronauts do that you run into them
at events and see their names popping up on corporate boards.
Meanwhile, Frank Borman is known as a warbird collector and the
owner of Borman Autoplex - "your source for quality vehicles from
Ford, Lincoln, Mercury, Honda, Mazda and Hyundai," in Las Cruces,
NM. "Astro-", you say? He has a 1997 Chevy Astro van, 70,000 miles,
on the lot -- if you act now, space cadets. Stock number
TB20534.
In the light of that, perhaps both sides can best serve the
overall interests of humanity in space by making a truce -- at
least long enough to watch the new PBS show, which all space fans
ought to enjoy. So put down the invective and step away from the
blog -- at least until after the show on Monday, October 31.
(The FMI link has more information, including the complete film
transcript, and a link you can click for local listings).