Space puts everyday life into perspective

Title: An Alternate Route

I desperately want to be an astronaut. Like, so, so badly. Unfortunately, though, there is no hope for me. When I was a kid, my parents let me do useless things like play hide-and-seek and read books for fun, instead of making me study chemistry and physics, and now I am horribly inept at all things mathematic and scientific. They don’t let you hang out on the International Space Station just because you can give an adequate history of the Industrial Revolution. (I asked.) You have to know things like what NaCl means and that F= ma (These were the only two science-related formulas I could think of. I’m not exactly sure what the second one means …). So my parents failed to instill in me either a love of or an aptitude for anything that would help me be an astronaut. I cope with this by watching the NASA channel.

For those of you who may not be aware, here in Knoxville (depending on your cable provider) you get the NASA channel. It is channel 10, technically the “Educational Access” channel. Sometimes it shows random operas or interpretative dancing, but most of the time it broadcasts NASA TV. I watch it all the time. (You think I’m kidding, but I’m not. I love it.)

I like watching the broadcasts from the shuttle or the space station, watching as the men (and one woman) float around inside the station or maneuver in their space suits outside it, going about their daily routines. My roommates make fun of me for this, but I love the fact that these astronauts are playing amongst stars. They are out in “space,” out of what I consider “normal”: They can see the whole earth, and then are able to look beyond it.

This past July, in celebration of the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11’s moon landing, the Washington Post ran guest editorials reflecting on space exploration: its practicality, its effects on man, etc. An editor had titled one piece “Return to the Heavens, for the Sake of the Earth,” and this phrase caught and held my attention. When I read the op-ed, however, I was disappointed.

The column, written by a science fiction author, Kim Stanley Robinson, justified exploring other planets as a means of understanding our own planet more fully, addressing both climate change and sustainability. While this was an interesting point, it was not what the title, “Return to the Heavens, for the Sake of the Earth,” had brought to my mind. The phrase, for me, had evoked a sentiment best expressed in a Walt Whitman poem, “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer.”

In the poem, Whitman describes listening to a “learn’d astronomer” lecture with his “proofs, the figures … the charts and the diagrams.” Whitman soon “became tired and sick, / Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself / In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, / Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.”

Now let me prevent a misunderstanding: I am in awe of astronomers and mathematicians, physicists and biologists, all the scientists who sort through the chaos of our environment and describe the order which they find. There is both a beauty and utility in that work that should not go unnoticed or unpraised.

I don’t think Whitman was criticizing scientists, per se: What he, I believe, was reacting to is the human tendency, in the midst of the mundane, to lose sight of the awesome. I become overwhelmed by due dates and responsibilities and forget to take time to marvel at the world. I neglect the beauty and the mystery of my surroundings, ignore the pull of the unknown and bury myself in facts and figures, Whitman’s “charts and … diagrams.”

I tend to immerse myself in the practicalities of surviving and forget to appreciate life, as well as survive it: For me, this is especially true during finals time. At the end of the semester, I often lose sight of the forest and focus on the trees (or papers and exams). That is what I thought that column would cry out against: “Return to the Heavens, for the Sake of the Earth,” look to the stars, for the sake of our souls.

I watch shuttle launches and space walks because they make me think about things greater than myself. I am reminded that the universe is bigger than I am; that I am mortal; and that maybe I should rearrange my priorities accordingly. Very few things, I think, are as important as I make them out to be. So I watch the NASA channel and wish I was an astronaut, but content myself with, “from time to time,” looking up in wonder and “in perfect silence at the stars.”

— Leigh Dickey is a junior in global studies. She can be reached at ldickey2@utk.edu.