Spacing Out

Most days the news that greets me sets my hair on fire.  What?!! is my new greeting.

Let me sum up the state of the world we live in with a recent example.  After years of strange and tragic mishaps aboard their airplanes and the resulting loss of hundreds of lives, Boeing, once the greatest name in aviation, admitted that maybe there were some problems in the manufacturing plant and within the corporate culture…BUT that didn’t stop them from launching two astronauts into space in a questionably-functioning spaceship  for an eight-day trip.  Well, guess what? HOUSTON WE HAVE A PROBLEM!

Since NASA and Boeing couldn’t agree on the risk assessment, Boeing could not bring the astronauts back to earth aboard its Starliner.  Astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore were left behind to float around in the International Space Station awaiting a celestial savior.  No one seems troubled.   Except me.

With all of the political outrage about minor things like the energy efficiency of refrigerators and EVs, this aerospace situation does not seem to be ruffling a feather.  The attitude seems to be a yawn, and a “so what?” or “Are they still out there?”

Maybe I am too much of a pessimist.  Maybe I am too out of touch with the miracles of technology.  Who knows? Maybe an ingenious and determined Uber driver will reach those astronauts before the planned February rescue by Elon Musk’s Space-X. In any case, I remain INCREDULOUS.

While the culture at Boeing that led to all of this does not surprise me, anyone who has held a job in the last 10 years could see what was happening to corporate culture and the workplace, but what sets the match to my hair is that even with knowing all of this…THE ASTRONAUTS WENT! When most other employees are refusing to come into the office or work overtime, these astronauts went into O-U-T-E-R S-P-A-C-E.  And they did so WILLINGLY.

It seems we live in a time when people jump into the deep end whistling, “Don’t worry; be happy.” (Except for the ones who are asked to come into the office that is.)  I have actually heard people say, while they are JAYWALKING, “If I get hit by a car, I’ll just sue.”  The assumption is that I can do what I want and someone else will pay.  At the very least, I can get even.  Forget the part about being maimed or dead.  Of course, should  the Starliner astronauts be lost in space forever, the tragedy will become the subject of such notoriety that it will earn itself some additional Congressional hearings to embarrass as many people as possible under the guise of weeding out those responsible.  Will it be the left?  The right?  The woke?  Or, maybe in this case, whoever was asleep at the launch pad?

I grew up in a time when it wasn’t just the Boy Scouts who had the motto: “Be prepared.”  We all did. We were taught to think things through.  Do what is right. That went along with wear clean underwear just in case.  Which leads me to wonder, what are those astronauts, who expected to be in space for 8 days, doing for clean underwear 180 days later?  Maybe I was so preoccupied with the basic life and death issues that I missed the grand opening of the first Lunar Target.

Perhaps Williams and Wilmore are just so happy to be free of post-election politics that they would rather be in outer space.  Maybe I would too.  Hopefully, Elon Musk will stay in Donald Trump’s good graces long enough to get the astronauts home because I heard the incoming president is conducting deportations of immigrants who get on his nerves.

My words of wisdom to you are this: if someone offers you a once in a lifetime opportunity, think long and hard…because it just might be.