What does it mean that America has done so much to advance space travel and now we have decided to stop? This is the central question governing Margaret Lazarus Dean’s book Leaving Orbit: Notes from the Last Days of American Spaceflight. She asks the question to people who work at NASA, to astronauts, to space fans, journalists, her students at the University of Tennessee and discovers that no one has a single answer and most have none at all. Dean herself is not even certain what it means, even over the course of writing the book she can never pin it down. However nearly everyone she talks to expresses varying degrees of sadness, disappointment, confusion and anger that America is no longer sending humans into space on our own ships.
Since she was a child, Dean has been fascinated by space travel. She followed shuttle launches, even got to see one in person, remembers where she was when Challenger exploded and later Columbia. She knows the history of space flight from Gemini to Mercury to Apollo and the shuttle era. She knows the names of astronauts past and present. She even wrote a novel about the Challenger disaster and in the process made a friend of Omar, a NASA worker at Cape Canaveral.
Framed, no not framed, more like companioned, with Norman Mailer’s Of a Fire on the Moon documenting the Apollo 11 moon landing, Dean weaves together the heroic beginnings of space travel with the end of the shuttle program and thus the end of American space flight. Now all American astronauts going to the International Space Station get there on Russian Soyuz rockets. Far from being a recounting of historical facts, Dean also takes a page from Mailer and “new journalism” and places herself squarely in the narrative. This serves to make the book more personal and provides a high degree of emotional impact. Dean attends in person the final two shuttle launches as well as the installation of Discovery at the Smithsonian. She serves as a kind of witness to the end of an era. What does it mean to see the Discovery’s final launch into orbit and then several months later see it turned into a museum piece?
Dean often has more questions than answers as she moves back and forth through time, narrowing in on the incredible difficulty of getting to the moon and all the things that could have gone wrong and how none of the astronauts on that first flight truly believed they would all make it back to Earth. I was on the edge of my seat as she described the moon landing and I know that it had a happy ending! Then we zoom ahead in time to watching a shuttle launch or introducing Buzz Aldrin at a book signing. As nonlinear as the narrative is, there is a definite feel of forward momentum and as much as it jumps around, Dean handles it all so well that getting lost is not an option.
If you are looking for straight up history full of facts and technical details, this book is not for you. That is not to say there are not plenty of facts and technical details, there are, Dean drops them in throughout. But if you are looking for something a little different, a little less traditional and a little more human, than you will probably like this book very much.
I wouldn’t call myself a space fan, not like the avid people in Dean’s book, but I have a vivid recollection of reading John Glenn’s account of orbiting Earth in an elementary school reader. How it fired my imagination! I remember watching space shuttle launches on TV. I remember where I was when Challenger exploded. I have heard the double sonic booms when a shuttle had to land at Edward’s Air Force Base in California. The base is near Los Angeles and you could hear the booms in the San Fernando Valley where I attended university, they were that loud. And it was both exciting to hear them and also a matter of course, nothing so very remarkable. And yes, when the shuttles were retired I was sad. How could there be nothing to take their place? The Mars rovers are exciting but not in the same way as people going into to space is. Will NASA ever send people to space again? It is open for debate. They have big ideas but Congress has no plans to fund them which is sad in so many ways. Whatever happened to big dreams? To no longer reach for the stars kind of leaves me feeling diminished.
Leaving Orbit was published by Graywolf Press and won their nonfiction prize in 2012. The prize is awarded every 12-18 months to a previously unpublished work of literary nonfiction written by a writer not established in the genre. Dean is in good company as previous winners of the prize include Leslie Jamison, Kevin Young and Eula Biss.
I bet this was a very interesting read. I don’t consider myself a “space” fan but when we were in Vancouver we went to a Planetarium & Space museum and it was so interesting. I couldn’t believe how much I enjoyed it. I still can’t tell you anything about the night sky but I do love looking at the stars 🙂
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Iliana, it was really interesting and a bit sad too. I love planetariums and space museums. They are never a direct destination but when I happen into them I never fail to enjoy them. And, like you, I can’t really tell you much about the night sky but I do love looking at the stars! 🙂
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I don’t think of myself as a huge space fan either, but I do get all excited when we make new space discoveries. Water on Mars! New pictures of Pluto! It’s all so fascinating. I would love to see more manned missions. To Mars maybe? Manned mission to Mars? FOR SCIENCE?
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Jenny, I know, water on Mars, right? How cool is that? NASA has plans to send people to Mars but Congress isn’t funding it and it might end up being done by a private company which would be really sad because all the tech and scientific discoveries would belong to a private business instead of the public. The implications are really disturbing.
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I wouldn’t call myself a “space fan.” Rather I think we have far more important things to do on this earth, problems that shout to be solved and each one costing a fortune. Best to allocate the enormous costs of space travel to them, don’t you think?
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Richard, NASA’s budget has never been more than 1-2% of the federal government spending (Dean provides the exact amount but I don’t have her in front of me at the moment). While there are plenty of problems to solve on the ground, there is no reason we couldn’t still explore space. The technology and science and knowledge that have come from what we have done is invaluable. Much better to fund space flight than better ways to kill people.
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I certainly agree with your last sentence, bring an end to aimless wars in places that are best left alone. It seem there is never an end to one war or another for this country.
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I know, just when it was starting to seem like things in Iraq and Afghanistan were coming to an end we now have Syria. When will it all end? All the refugees trying to escape and be safe in Europe and meeting with all sorts of additional problems are probably wondering the same thing.
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I pretty much agree with Richard, although it’s not the money that I resent. I hate that humans take mysterious and pristine places (like our own planet Earth) and destroy them. As soon as we show up, the death knell sounds.
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Joan, I don’t think space exploration and fixing problems at home are mutually exclusive things. I’m also not too worried about messing up or destroying other planets or moons, we don’t have the capacity do that at the moment and by the time we do, I’m hoping we will have learned to be more careful.
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It is sort of sad that we have dropped our space program considering how much money we spend on other things. Maybe someday it will change–or maybe it will just be left up to the private sector (which could be sort of scary, too). This sounds like a really interesting book–more up my alley than anything too technical. I get bogged down when there are too many facts and figures (as interesting as they are!) and do like a more ‘human’ approach to things like this.
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Danielle, I’m hoping it does change sometime. NASA should be the one to go to Mars, not a private business. It is definitely a human approach, less dates and this happened then this happened and more here are some of the really really interesting people that made this happen and here are some of the hows and whys of it happening.
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I enjoyed this post Stefanie, and reading the thoughtful comments too. I must say that Joan has a fair point. I’m not sure, given history, we can trust that we will have learnt to be more careful. I wish I had your faith!
Another thing that interested me about your post is your point about Dean taking a page from Mailer and “new journalism”. I didn’t know it was a page from Mailer, and I hadn’t heard it called “new journalism” but I love this style of writing – which I describe as narrative non-fiction. I’ve read quite a few Aussie books like this (by Helen Garner, Anna Krien, Chloe Hooper). I think Helen Garner is seen as one of the proponents of the style – over here anyhow. An American proponent whom I’ve read is Mary Roach and her book Stiff. It still requires good analysis and research but I like the fact that it’s open or honest about the author’s decision making in what s/he does or doesn’t tell us.
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whisperinggums, I am ever the optimist! 🙂
New journalism came about in the 60s and 70s and advocated subjective reporting of events among other things. I suspect narrative nonfiction may have come from that. I’m not entirely sure though so don’t quote me on it!
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Thanks Stefanie, yes, I don’t know the order then either, but I hadn’t heard that term.
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