When I was a kid, astronauts – in the Mercury and Gemini and
Apollo missions – were all over television. You couldn’t escape them. They were
always up in space, on endless dull missions, orbiting and spacewalking, and
they pre-empted all my favorite shows.
This was lovely, and very exciting. But, god love them, they
were so deadly dull. None of the
astronauts had any personality to speak of; they were all big average-looking
white men in puffy space suits. Later – much later – we found that some of them
had personalities: Michael
Collins could write well, and Alan
Bean could paint, and Edgar Mitchell had interestingly
creative ideas about spirituality and humanity and the Universe.
But that was later: much much later. At the time, in the
1960s and 70s, they were all just names and faces. NASA scrubbed all the
personality out of them.
Well, it’s much later now.
Over our heads now orbits the International
Space Station, crewed by Russians and Americans and – OMG! – Canadians. One
particular Canadian, Chris
Hadfield, has become an Internet celebrity. How? He takes pictures. Like
this:
And this:
And this:
He sings with children on Earth (especially in Canada). He’s
excited about being in space, and he enjoys it, and he communicates his
enjoyment to us on earth.
Most recently, just before his return to Earth, he
lip-synched a (slightly rewritten) cover of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,”
complete with zero-G guitar.
I wish those repressed/oppressed 1960s astronauts had been
given the freedom to express themselves, the way Chris Hadfield is expressing
himself right now. I’d have been a lot more involved, and excited.
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