Which way will heaven be then? Up? Down? Across? Or far within?
Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.
– Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994
Contents
Sputnik 1 – 4th October 1957
Sputnik 2 – 3rd November 1957
Mercury-Redstone 2 – 31st January 1961
Korabl-Sputnik 4 – 9th March 1961
Vostok 1 – 12th April 1961
Mercury-Atlas 5 – 29th November 1961
Mercury 6 – 20th February 1962
Vostok 6 – 16th June 1963
Gemini 4 – 3-7th June 1965
Soyuz 1 – 23rd April 1967
Yuri Gagarin – 27th March 1968
Apollo 8 – 21st December 1968
Moon – 16th July 1969
Apollo 11 – 16th July 1969
Archaeological Inventory at Tranquility Base – 20th July 1969
Apollo 13 –16th April 1970
Soyuz 11 – 6th June 1971
Apollo 15 –2nd August 1971
Apollo 17 – 7th December 1972
Skylab 3 – 28th July 1973
How to Debunk a Conspiracy Theory – 3rd June 1976
Did U.S. Astronauts Really Land on the Moon? – June 1977
Skylab – 11th July 1979
Columbia (a) – 12th April 1981
Columbia (b) – 12th April 1981
Challenger – 28th January 1986
Halley’s Comet – 8th March 1986
Voyager 1 (a) – 14th February 1990
Pale Blue Dot – 14th February 1990
Hubble Space Telescope – 24th April 1990
Voyager 1 (b) – 17th February 1998
Pioneer 10 – 2nd March 1972 – 22nd January 2003
Columbia – 1st February 2003
On the Death of Astronaut John Young – 5th January 2018
Sputnik 1
4th October 1957
you were just a mid-twentieth century technological
first in a long line of firsts. first stone flung out of a
sling that took some giant in the eye. first arrow that
sped along a path true to its flight feather’s grooming
& staked a cave bear’s heart. first shot of alchemical
lead that killed invisibly like a cast spell. first cannon
ball to break a ship’s bones; compound fracture of
fleets. first tendrils of gas that squeezed through the
impossible tight corners of the human body & suckered
onto lungs. first split atom that generated one thousand
mile an hour winds at ground zero. first fire that burned
even under water; that draped children in ragged skin
anoraks as they fled from their medieval village. first
pellet shot into space, to lodge in the earth’s cornea.
Sputnik 2
3rd November 1957
strapped into her hot seat, the g forces flattened
laika like the technician’s gloved hand after she’d peed
pre-launch, whining at the heart rate monitor that choked
her neck like a leash. a muttnik mongrel selected from
a moscow alley, she was born street tough to withstand
extremes of human kindness. a balloon poodle, a flight
harness tethered her to sputnik’s titanium run. in space
she growled at zero gravity’s strange hand that lifted her.
the previous night, she’d been taken home for a final play
with the children, before the team kissed her wet nose
goodbye. after four orbits she flat lined, the windows
of her vehicle wound up. she crossed the planet’s
lung for five more months, until her orbit decayed
& the radiation belt burnt her dark little kennel up.
Mercury-Redstone 2
31st January 1961
push shiny branch in for
na na when blue sun blinks
or thin no fanged snakes bite
ground paws. i chang, #65, or
ham so hairless apes ape those
japery apery apes. watch blue
sun blink half wake time, soft
one’s wet white warmth no nose
no more. hard paws hold ham
down. push all shiny branches
for na na. sky door opens & big
sun glares fire. i grin fear & no
climb back in stiff belly pouch.
japery apery apes as soft skin.
Korabl-Sputnik 4
9th March 1961
chernushka could tell you weren’t human, ivan ivanovich
as you both travelled through the uncanny valley of space.
you smelt weird like burnt steak, whereas a person smelt
like a fresh kill. but she gave you a reassuring lick on your
spacesuit all the same; half to placate herself. this was how
it’d been for millennia; dogs protecting their human pack.
she could scent the other passengers too; cool dry stealth
of the caged reptiles, the eighty-odd mice implanted inside
your artificial skin like white eggs inside a crocodile’s fold.
there was the strange effect of choir music coming out of
you that her senses struggled with; too many high voices
for the one upright. it was hot too; she was not a desert
creature but neither were you. she was startled when you
left your seat explosively; her stomach whined as she fell.
Vostok 1
2nd April 1961
your urine blessed the launch bus’s tyres. you started
a tradition; marking territory without meaning to, only
needing to go before your trip like a student busting on
a long-distance excursion. sergei knew that fighter pilots
felt in balance with their life if they could steer themselves,
so, he slipped you an override code as you disembarked
like a love letter passed between desks. you were only gone
the length of two college lessons; but you saw the earth’s
pregnant roundness first, cupping your gloved hand under
siberia’s white gown. there were ten earths sitting on your
chest when you flamed back down after one orbit. you
wobbled but didn’t black out, used to pulling gs in migs.
ten years later we learned that you were ejected from
your capsule like a rowdy bully from a classroom.
Mercury-Atlas 5
29th November 1961
the thought-hurt never goes away. neither does the hot-bite
when enos does the right thing, presses the correct man-sticks.
the first eighteen thought-hurts give him ten hot-bites to his body.
thirty-five more hot-bites arrive like the buzz for lunch. thirty-three
hot-bites in a row; oddity-problems the skin-apes call these. after
forty-one more hot-bites, enos is immune to failure. his comfortable-
hole’s condition is good; all the down-circles have been pressed, the
man-sticks manoeuvred correctly. the comfortable-hole gets sun-hot
as enos falls. there are no hurry-drapes to close as the orange-plants
frighten him & grow in their fierceness. then, the orange-plants die
off & enos hits the blue-ground with a slap. he waits in his comfortable
-hole for three clock-turns & twenty hand-turns. out of patience with
the skin-apes he rips his water-bag out of his pee-pee. the comfortable-
hole’s belly opens & skin-apes wearing eye-hats swarm in to get him.
Mercury 6
20th February 1962
i) Launch
even disneyland wasn’t this crazy. strapped in his contoured seat
like an action figure moulded to its packaging, he was part perseus
as he checked the rear-view mirrors welded to the arms of his suit.
as in myth, light’s reflection would guide him on his journey, reading
the master alarms which would glow like medusa’s freezing glare if
his quest was troubled. when the numbers fell off the system, he felt
a shudder rise through him, the reflux of a million horsepower, as he
rode the world’s thinnest fuel tank straight up. soon he felt denser
as if every cell in his body had been shucked clean like an oyster &
resealed with concrete. at his heaviest he weighed half a tonne, as if
a small family car had been placed on top of his chest, but the pressure
fled when his rocket poked through the atmosphere like a needle into
tough skin. he fell forward then as if tripping on an uneven footpath,
drunk on zero gravity his superman body burned with light’s weight.
ii) Orbit
how could he describe the third american’s weightlessness?
the sudden loss of blood & bone, muscles weighing as much
as a baby chick, or less, as heavy as sound, or as soft as light.
rising from the bottom of a public swimming pool & exhaling
his breath, a girl’s hair trailing in water, or an ant caught in sap.
the end of his very first kiss, pollen attached to a bee’s foot.
a trapdoor spider’s silk hatch slammed shut, the weight of a
promise on the heart of a parent. a captured ‘father christmas’
& the excess baggage of a good wish. an eyelash brushed from
his cheek, a balloon’s skin pumped tight. the meniscus bounce
of a dragonfly’s leg on top of a pond. the weight of an eyelid
falling shut. the springs from a dandelion clock losing time,
a foetus in its mother’s rich swamp. the crest of a salmon’s leap
upstream, a lure’s invisible hook. actors photocopied on film.
iii) Fireflies
at first he thought god must have thrown confetti in some kind
of galactic wedding celebration, a coming of age ritual for humans
growing up & abandoning the nest. his ‘fireflies’ weren’t rice though,
they swarmed around the ship, incandescent as the umbrella of an arc
welder’s job, a spray of embers like spots before his face, a concussion
of tv white noise or embodied radio static his eyes listened to, then
tuned out. twice he entered their sphere of influence, like midges
in a sunless swamp, moved by his erratic behaviour, they trailed off.
some earthbound claimed intelligence from beyond the stars, a first
contact with the grand design, the great architect’s flick of pencil
shavings from the working plans of his masterpiece. as the sun
scorched the rotisserie of his ship, baking one side then the next,
his urine, snap frozen to the hull like crystal buttons on a tight suit
cooked instantly & reconstituted itself as friendship 7’s sweat.
iv) Experiments
he developed momentary powers of super-vision, as if his blue eyes
bent the watery lens of the planet & magnified things; he seeded clouds
with a new imagination for the weather bureau, looking down on them
he controlled their shape like a nature god on an alloyed throne, testing.
images of winged beasts were useless as he lorded it over the formations
no longer a child on a trampoline interpreting the wind’s crystalline flux.
they moved hurriedly like translucent amoebas across the sky’s petri dish
their shadows half a smear behind. prometheus chained to his steel rock
in space, for thirty seconds he pumped out the first galactic arm curls as
the eagle of blood pressure soared. on wednesday he invented time travel,
falling back through tuesday, a full body immersion into the river of space.
another strange baptismal; three sunsets enveloped him like lights at a disco,
the sun’s corona sank behind the earth as if someone’s head blocked a strobe.
colours fell until there was only a thin, white halo resting on the planet’s skull.
v) Perth
the under-city flicked out its house lights like a flinch of lightning
curving over the west, or an angler fish trawling in obscure gloom
for electrifying glory. perth sparked as he shot over, corkscrewing
in his tin can, the city-torch played spotlight with him & he saw far
below, the orange glare of an owl’s eyes caught in the high beam of
a country road at night. terra nullius was only ever true in space.
he crossed the nullarbor in six minutes, west to east like someone’s
long distance telephone conversation or a child’s impulsive thought.
he flew rumour-swift across the brown continent, laid out under him
like a skin rug arranged on a living room floor. a candle flame lit in
his honour, in the deep cathedral of dark echo, he acknowledged their
call & radioed in; cosmic thanks from the world’s most lonely man.
on the ground as he passed over them, parents’ swivelled children’s
necks like sideshow clowns swallowing the ping pong ball overhead.
vi) Re-entry
a cable from the retro-pack slapped across his windshield, as if he’d hit
a small bird or some car wash attendant rinsed the suds from his hood.
as if he’d stuck his head inside the active lip of a volcano, or watched
vesuvius erupt, the noise of re-entry engulfed him like a fire blanket,
blood simmered inside the hull of his body looking for places to escape.
he thought his ceramic heat shield was burning apart, as molten drops
of metal poured like mercury over his ship. he expected death like an
obese football fan to come & sit beside him in the cramped coffin
space, but the front row seat remained empty, the astro-kiln checked.
strapped in his moulded chair, he was wicker man sacrifice, as the
flames leapt up. his body only spoke in the morse code of sweat.
he was a man of clay, divinely fired in the creator’s hot furnace, but
a salt-glaze of trust coated him now, belief in human engineering &
titanium screws as he bored through the atmosphere; anti-phoenix.
vii) Splashdown
the change was abrupt like a toddler, head butting a parent’s mouth,
something unexpected but born from love. the drogue chutes burst
open like the petals of a giant tropical flower pulsating with a rotten
flesh scent. radio signals were attracted to him like flies to their sweet
death. he felt like his body was covered in fever, inside the capsule
was sauna-pitch, the instrument panels were hot rocks he poured his
fingers over. his thoughts were steam flushing toxins from his head.
it was as if his brother was a titan & threw him into a pool’s deep end.
in the sudden impact of velocity-fired pan & salt water, he felt baked
like turtle meat as they hauled him mechanically from the pacific’s soup.
teasing open his shell, technicians smelt something roasting; insulation
on some wires dripped sluggishly like candle wax. he emerged from his
steel cocoon in his best smoking jacket, awed by the caterpillar’s neat trick.
his earth-legs he gradually regained, after his body recalculated its math.
viii) Discovery – STS 95, 1998
he remembered the bump & grind as if being sideswiped by a delivery
van, a ghost in the shell of an old man’s body, his youth flickered like
a fluorescent tube turning brown at the end of its reliable life. his head
hauled around as if he were a rally car navigator, his brain strapped in.
zero gs & he felt fine in non-ageist gravity, mass fled from his bones,
this was the human soul’s weight when it departed the host he’d read.
he suited his role, astro-mentor, monk in space with his electric skullcap
he searched far within himself monitoring his right stuff. its potency still
surged through his system after an absence of thirty-six revolutions, the
others glistened in his sweat. perth & rockingham gave him a swansong,
they shone like a distant star cluster & he watched them fade away while
a greater speed enveloped him. he touched down nine days later on what
it meant to be human; space provided us with a greater tool for thinking,
& his job had been to grind the lens that bent the light of inspiration.
Vostok 6
16th June 1963
all the strength of every woman who has ever lived
was in your gloved fist as you hit eject. women make
mistakes you discovered up there as easily as men do.
vega for venus; spent the whole first day strapped into
your seat, the bread was too dry, so you didn’t eat but
vomited anyway from the onions. korolev took manual
control away from you; that’s what men do. you’d won
from a shortlist five hundred parachutists for the pleasure.
the amazon was burning, the moon’s light on the earth’s
dark side was a snow leopard’s pelt. on re-entry there
was an airliner pressing down on your chest. titanium
flakes burned off your capsule’s hull like campfire embers.
you landed on your back. three hours later you phoned
khrushchev. you hung up on him to eat with the locals.
Gemini 4
3rd-7th June 1965
for twenty-three minutes he floated, foetus-tethered
by his golden umbilicus, as if he had sprung from
some account of early creation. in his vernix-coloured
suit, snagged to the titanium wall of his shuttlecock
womb receiving life support via his mosquito proboscis,
nose first in a trough of artificial skin. within his gold-
plated visor, the blue orb blazed in sepia, he became
nostalgic for a firm grounding, as he grappled with this
unseen assailant: zero gravity which toyed with him like
a child punching up a party balloon. earth was a gigantic
night-light left on by his parents, that radiated a sapphire
hue to calm the infant explorer. he left misty-eyed,
his breath condensing into wet stars that slid like
reverse tears, back into the hull of his face.
Apollo 1
27th January 1967 – a found poem
(i)
Again, this is the Command Pilot
1,2,3,4,5…5,4,3,2,1…
Ah roger, Senior Pilot counting
1,2,3,4,5…5,4,3,2,1…Senior Pilot…
Roger, Senior Pilot’s transmitting
1,2,3,4,5…5,4,3,2,1…Senior Pilot…
Senior Pilot counting
1,2,3,4,5…5,4,3,2,1…
Well I haven’t talked to you yet,
how’s this, 1,2,3,4,5…4,3,2,1…
It’s good for ya….
How are we gonna to get to the moon
if we can’t talk between three
buildings…?
They can’t hear a thing you’re saying…
Jesus Christ…
Say again…?
I said, how are we gonna get to the moon
If we can’t talk between two or three
buildings…?
(ii)
Hey…!
Flames!
Hey! We’ve got a fire in the cockpit…!!!
We have a bad fire…!!!
We’re burning up…!!!
(iii)
Hey crew, can you egress at this time?
Confirm it…
Pad Leader get in there and help them…
Pad Leader, CSTC…
Alright crew, did we get verification?
Can you egress at this time…?
Pad Leader, are you able to hear them…?
Gus, can you read us…?
Pad Leader…?
Can you get ‘em outta there…!?
Soyuz 1
23rd April 1967
heat is rising in the capsule. outside the ship
molten slag butters the titanium frame like a
last breakfast of champions. the chutes don’t
open, you’re dead you realise. what need now
a helmet. before the radio phone softens like
camembert cheese in your gloved hand, you
receive a final call, from the premier; your wife.
strangely he is the one crying. you will be a hero
he leaves off. you keep the channel open. you
will give them science to the very end; they
hear your rage hotter than your shell, plunging
down the line at thirty thousand kilometres an
hour. some say only a chipped heelbone survived;
a piece of charcoal you’d fish out of a fireplace.
Yuri Gagarin
27th March 1968
you should’ve died a year earlier in sixty-seven,
but komarov was loyal to you; the statecraft all wrong
so, he went through with his doomed mission. after
your heroics, you were taken off the frontlines like
valerina, never to fly in space again; the propaganda
too spirit potent. so, you augured out a year later, not
in risky space, not on re-entry, but on a routine flight.
the mig-15 refused to shed its plexiglass chrysalis &
spool you out. you laid your head on your motherland’s
lap. aldrin & armstrong left a patch on the moon for you
both. all over russia your face reflects from wall plate visors,
cccp exhaust red. you’ve been immortalised on mid-century
retro space kitsch. collectable like a rare vintage or stamp.
you were the first in space. you made us all comrades.
Apollo 8
21st December 1968
hi tearers
earth rise
is rare the
sierra the
hater’s ire
ha retires!
hearer sit
earth’s ire
at here sir
it rehears
eats hirer
hate riser
err hit sea
heir tears.
heart rise
their ears
reheat sir
rare heist
hire rates
hie arrest
eraser hit
ash retire.
hi rat seer
hera rites
hair trees
ere ishtar
earth sire
hair reset
here’s rita
ere hat sir
heat riser
her rise ta
her satire
hie sartre
as her tier
ere it rash
are theirs.
aether sir
three airs
rare shite.
Moon
16th July 1969
When the men came in for lunch, his mother
Switched on the television. As the Astor’s black
Faceplate warmed up, its inner tubes flaring like
Gas giants, she would carve the corn beef, piling
Layers of salty meat across moon-coloured plates,
The pinkish flesh steaming like a rim of sunrise.
As she eased herself into the tubular steel hull
Of the couch, her body, marooned by its own
Elliptical orbit, bent with spacesuit clumsiness.
As men stepped off their metal ladders, workboots
Scraping the dusty soil, the weightlessness of fatigue
Hit her. In the flicker of shadow, an invisible foot
Kicked out, brushing the spongy ground beneath;
Imprinting the new face growing in front of her.
Apollo 11
16th July 1969
(i) Tree
some great grandchild of newton’s fruit tree.
the climb up was harder; young biceps stretched
like pink bubble gum from the mouth of his bones,
his knees scraped bark leaving skin; instinctual predator
rubbing its scent to mark its countdown on the earth.
he was in his element, gravity, duelling with branches,
his frank determination to get any job done without
fuss, one last ascent before lunch. his mother’s voice
wending into his stick out ears at the speed of love.
his stomach answering. the break in concentration
enough to frighten his grip, released as a booster
burning off into space, the strong law took him
with its see-through grip. this new sense he didn’t
mind; even his gum that was now flavoured blood.
(ii) Cessna
the wright bros gene tricked inside his head early
so, when he first left the earth’s heavy grasp, a
teenager escaping out his parents’ front door
& hurdled the horizon, pilot’s license tucked into
his blue jeans, his hormonal ice-breaker smashed
its rugged path through to his future. before he’d
just been barely a boy; now he was caught in the
whim of forces he was learning about at school.
he felt like all the others before him; first man
to do anything out of his tree. his guts dropping
over a dip in the aerial road. but now he’d mastered
his own fall. icarus pride radiated through the cessna’s
windshield as he was ordered to take her back down.
it didn’t matter; his feathers were already burnt.
(iii) Korea
some supreme force shouldered him as he flew
through the valley’s mouth. a father’s clip around
the ears when he misbehaved at the dinner table,
or a teacher wrenching his head back down into
his physics textbook. it was an invisible impact
as though heaven charged at him, head-on. the
blow jolted his neck; a kid recoiling from a dodgem
car’s rubber hit. steel cable sliced clean through his
panther’s wing: in one powerful stroke he’d watched
his father sever the chicken’s head. his controls fell
slack, his sturdy jet spun out of control; he’d fallen
once from the school’s high board & broken a thumb.
he stalled at 2000 feet. his stick was bone hanging
by its tendon thread. they’d garrotted him.
(iv) X-15
at this speed he began to catch up with time.
the sound barrier was nature’s curfew for men;
but they’d stayed out later than she allowed
& broken her command. a disciplinarian, she
picked up his plane & it stone-skipped across
the atmosphere; titanium shrapnel embedded
in the desert’s skin. lectures on re-entry protocol
fell dead. four times he rode apollo’s chariot &
rocketed past the frozen sun. all that myth he
unpacked at four times the speed of sound. he
breathed through an external throat, oxygen-fed
like an elderly patient on their hospital bed. his
heart ignored the race; a reliable organ nursing
blood through its host; as metred as an ohioan
windmill’s pump. he landed light as an elemental.
(v) Karen
even death stalls the fastest of men. rivals in flight,
had gravity found a way at last to get at him? if he’d
been more of a superman he could’ve flown counter-
clockwise around the earth & reversed time; but there’s
no operational manual for fate. no equation to solve
the body’s impossible question. he couldn’t pull her out
of her fatal tailspin, his heart scorching like an air show
accident; grief’s mushroom cloud rising over his cheek’s
hot tarmac. her brief recce, her dogfight, her little face
resisting the dark plume of cells that trailed behind her
brain’s burning engine. her courage that helped him step
out onto the moon later & confront time’s endless alarm.
that final mission, that solo flight we know we all must
take, that we get up every day & train for all of our lives.
(vi) Gemini 8
a backyard rotisserie turning over every second.
too quick for the sun to fry, but their atoms could
still tear apart inside their new titanium blender; that’s
how nature was testing him in her performance review.
they’d escaped earth’s gravity; the industrial fisherman’s
invisible drift net that hauls everything in, so she stuck
their rear thruster to show them who was still boss,
inside the atmosphere & out. but while time had been
busy painting itself into a corner of the universe, humans
had struck a dogmatic blow; he gave her orbital attitude
& scientifically their terminal spin slowed. with a click
the human washing cycled stopped. pride-clean, but
fuel spent, they had to cut short their cosmic trip
& recalibrate a new path through the fiery waterfall.
(vii) Lunar Lander Research Vehicle (LLRV)
his hands reacted faster than his own thought, as
if they now tutored his brain. a manufacturer’s fault
was the gremlin to throw a spanner into his morning.
the flying bed-post bucked as if he was on a bronco’s
back, as he hawk-hovered over the test site. always a
goddamn thruster & he fell as if an executioner had
dropped the floor from beneath a convicted man’s feet.
his muscle memory ignited the explosive bolts. circus
cannon shot, he punched out a second before his llrv
mashed the tarmac’s face. a stigmata formed on his
tongue when he landed, the best hit catastrophe could
put on. he rinsed his mouth in the toilet & went back
to his desk; he had to write up the report for jpl while
the certainty of death was still fresh inside his head.
(viii) Eagle
its dime thick panels were thin as the sheets
he hid under as a child, so scared of the dark,
the threat of aliens abducting him, so he sweated
through summer beneath them, as he did now,
inside eagle, descending to the moon’s scratched
silver-mirrored surface, as though rigged for a play.
he & buzz stood up like award recipients, looking
through kite-shaped windows; he noticed the auto-
guidance computer was gonna plunk them on the
inside of a crater’s lip like a mistimed kiss. so, he took
manual control, more than a monkey could strapped
into a missile, fly-by-wire, as buzz murmured metres
to contact in his ear. easy. her landing probes slid
into the regolith like a rapier skewering a heart.
(ix) Moon
he stepped from the ladder with all the rigmarole
of a tired house painter, white coveralls splattered
with dust. he’d just put on the finishing touches really,
with his deft gestures he’d fixed up all the splotches
when the other crews went through first. but he knew
apollo 9 or 10 could’ve taken the quote & done an
equal job, with the same amount of craftmanship.
after all, there were four hundred thousand other
talented artisans who’d formed a new arts & craft
movement in america to do up this old monument
the moon. he’d tried his hand at photography up
there; first human exhibition on another world or
just a bunch of tourist snaps? this idea wasn’t his
to process, dropping his hassy on the lunar dust.
Archaeological Inventory at Tranquility Base
20th July 1969 – a found poem
Apollo 11 Lunar Module Descent Stage
U.S. 3′ x 5′ Flag
Laser Ranging Retroreflector (LRRR)
Passive Seismic Experiment (PSE)
Neil Armstrong’s Apollo Portable Life Support System (PLSS), Model A7L
Neil Armstrong’s Apollo Space Boots, Model A7L
Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin Jr.’s Apollo Portable
Life Support System (PLSS),
Model A7L
Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin Jr.’s Apollo Space Boots, Model A7L
Empty Food Bags
A Silicon Disc Carrying Statements
from Presidents Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy,
Eisenhower, and from Leaders of 73 Other Nations.
A Gold Replica of an Olive Branch, Traditional Symbol of Peace
Mission Patch from Apollo I of Virgil I. Grissom, Edward H. White 11,
and Roger B. Chaffee.
Commemorative Plaque attached to the Lunar Module Descent
Leg. “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon. July
1969, A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.” The plaque is signed by
the Apollo 11 crew and President Richard M. Nixon.
TV Camera
Spring Scales
Tongs
Small Scoop
Scongs
Bulk Sample Scoop
Trenching Tool
Camera (Hasselblad El Data)
Armrests
Mesa Bracket
Solar Wind Composition Staff
Handle of Contingency Lunar Sample Return Container
Medals Commemorating Two Dead Cosmonauts
(Gagarin, Komarov)
Document Sample Box Seal
Storage container (empty)
Hasselblad pack
Film Magazines
Filter, Polarizing
Remote Control Unit (PLSS)
Defecation Collection Device (4)
Overshoes, Lunar
Covers, Pga Gas Connector
Kit, Electric waist, Tether
Bag Assy, Lunar Equip. conveyor & waist tether
Conveyor assy, Lunar Equipment
Bag, Deployment, Life line
Bag, Deployment, Lunar equipment conveyor
Life line, Lt. wt.
Tether, Waist, EVA
Food Assembly, LM (4-man days)
TV subsystem, Lunar
Lens, TV wide angle
Lens, TV lunar day
Cable assembly, TV (100 ft.)
Adapter, SRC/OPS
Cannister, ECS LIOH
Urine collection assembly, small (2)
Urine collection assembly, large (2)
Bag, Emesis (4)
Container assembly, Disposal
Filter, oxygen bacterial
Container, PLSS Condensate
Antenna, S-Band
Cable, S-Band antenna
Bag, Lunar Equipment TransferA
Pallet assembly #1
Central Station
Pallet Assembly #2
Primary structure assembly
Hammer
Gnomon (Excludes mount)
Tripod
Handle/cable assembly (cord for tv camera)
York mesh packing material
SWC bag (extra)
Core tube bits
SRC seal protectors
Environmental sample containers “O” rings
Apollo Lunar Surface Close-up Camera
Lunar equipment conveyor (1)
ECS canister
ESC bracket
OPS brackets
Left hand side stowage compartment
Extension Handle
Stainless steel cover (9 x 7 5/8 inches x 1/16 inch thick)
Plastic covering for Flag
8-foot aluminium tube
2 + retaining pins for flag and staff storage
Insulating blanket
Small aluminium capsule
Footprints
Future hope
A father’s love
Apollo 13
16th April 1970 – a found poem
All required equipment is contained onboard
within the Apollo 13 CM & LM.
Cover to the Apollo 13 flight plan (to cover and protect the hose entry)
2 lithium-hydroxide canisters
Roll of gray duct tape
2 LCG bags
2 hoses from the red suits
2 socks
1 bungee cord (to secure the modified filtration device to the wall of the LM)
Simulation training
A fine example of cooperation between ground & space.
Soyuz 11
6th June 1971
It is the small things that undo us.
The seal of an envelope once broken
that propels you into a new orbit against
your will. Fate’s friction keeps you from
re-entering the atmosphere; you are a stone
skipping across the lake of the earth’s tension
between space & sky, setting records for how
many times you bounce. There was pressure
over prolonged weightlessness; two years earlier
Bonny’s little heart got a flat after nine days
riding around the planet. Every time they pumped
it up, it went down overnight, the puncture too
small too fix. The tell-tale bubbles in the bucket
of water signalled his final splashdown. The heart
grew lazy in zero gravity was the analysis. Later,
one hundred & four miles up a valve under their
cushioned seat hissed its fateful curse at the three
cosmonauts. They were not wearing formal suits,
re-entry being a racy dance between the heat shield
& earth’s fiery dip. Oxygen fled like a spirit from its
Dead host. Contact was lost. Their amber call sign
went into arrest. Again, it was a small thing that undid
the world, like breaking the seal on Pandora’s Box.
Apollo 15
2nd August 1971 – a found poem
Well, in my left hand I have a feather
*(a 0.03-kg falcon feather)
& in my right hand a hammer.
*(a 1.32-kg aluminium geological hammer).
I guess one of the reasons we got here today
was because of a gentleman named Galileo;
a long time ago who made a rather significant discovery
about falling objects in gravity fields.
& we thought that, where would be a better place
to confirm his findings then, on the moon.
& so, we thought we’d try it here for ya.
& the feather happens to be appropriately, a falcon feather
for our Falcon!
& I’ll drop the two of them here *(approximately 1.6 m)
& hopefully
they’ll hit the ground at the same time.
How ‘bout that?
It seems that Mr Galileo was correct
in his findings.
*Joe Allen, NASA SP-289, Apollo 15 Preliminary Science Report, Summary of Scientific Results, p. 2-11
Apollo 17
7th-19th December 1972
you remember the first man to walk on the moon
but not the last. like everyone knows the name of
the first silver-plated b-29 to drop an atomic bomb
on hiroshima, but not the second ship’s moniker –
bockscar; or that nagasaki was only the secondary
target that morning: cloud-cover kokura’s saviour.
you were lucky cernan. the last three missions were
cancelled, the vietnam war having tripled the budget
spent on moon landings; besides you overdosed on
rocks. final mission experiment. you drew a line in
the moon’s sand; the three letters of your daughter’s
name. t.d.c. you were adamant; this never was an end.
we found fused orange glass on luna, evidence that
humans are not alone in harnessing raw power.
Skylab 3
28th July 1973
It took a long time in spider years to adapt
to something else being lighter than ourselves.
We needed to get our space legs after being on
earth all our lives. They gave us names, unusual
for arachnids – Arabella & Anita, we were females
of the species; European Garden spiders on an
American mission. Hardy spinners of our ilk, we
turned our attention to the boxy frame that stood
in for a window’s homely corner. Afterall, there was
nothing holding us down so, we had to intuit & spin
our silk. Could you imagine the scandal back in the
garden if they knew there was nothing holding us up
– no steel yarn to speak of. Arabella got going first –
but try doing anything right with your abdomen floating
upwards like a repressurising blimp. Her attempt was
half-hearted. You see windows on earth contain the sun;
its warmth we sew into each thread like water that hardens
a metal’s transformation into a sword with its abrupt cold
spell. Anyway, they knocked it down in a night-time demolition;
science provided the permit. Finally, they fed us; one house fly
& some water -prisoner’s rations! Who weaves on an empty
stomach? Arabella got stuck right in & wove the galaxy’s first
space web. Perhaps, in all the universe there was nothing to
compare it with. The ultimate weightless twine. A hundred
times stronger than steel comparatively if we lived in their
land of the giants. A unique creation in a unique creation.
For her effort she died, an eight-legged Mozart. They put
it down to dehydration, but I knew she was upset at what
they’d think of her final masterpiece. Her finer silk strands,
produced from her spinneret without gravity’s heavy tax.
Her radical improvisation of thinner & thicker thread,
like binary code thrumming through a machine language
sending out our message through her galaxy-wide web.
How to Debunk a Conspiracy Theory
3rd June 1976
We landed on the moon
to fulfil the wishes of a charismatic, dead, young president.
We landed on the moon
otherwise 400,000 people got paid to do nothing for a decade.
We landed on the moon
because ideological hatred is stronger than the power of a hoax.
We landed on the moon
because Karen, his two year old daughter died of brain cancer & Neil Armstrong did it for her.
We landed on the moon
because you can’t fake seven million pounds of thrust on a Saturn V rocket lifting-off.
We landed on the moon
or half a billion people all had a simultaneous mass hallucination.
We landed on the moon
because Aldrin, pissed at being the second man on the moon, took one photo of Armstrong on the surface.
We landed on the moon
because the last astronaut to leave, Gene Cernan, wrote his daughter’s initials in the lunar dust.
We landed on the moon
because the Mythbusters proved it by bouncing a laser beam off a retroreflector left on the surface.
We landed on the moon
because even in the vacuum of space, folded flags need to unfurl due to momentum.
We landed on the moon
because Vivian Kubrick said her father’s involvement in filming
a conspiracy is a grotesque lie!
We landed on the moon
because Richard Nixon had an obituary already written in case of a disaster.
We landed on the moon
because lunar satellites have taken pictures of the six flags, dusty footprints and landers where we left them.
We landed on the moon
because Alan Shepard waited ten years to get his chance to go back into space again.
We landed on the moon
because Grissom, Chaffee, White, and many other cosmonauts died for us to get there.
We landed on the moon
because in 2002, ‘Buzz’ Aldrin punched a conspiracy theorist in the face who said we didn’t.
We landed on the moon
because kids now have Velcro to put their rock posters up on their bedroom walls.
We landed on the moon
because the Russians would have cried foul if it really was a hoax.
We landed on the moon
& the Soviets didn’t because their giant rockets exploded & they gave up on the space race.
We landed on the moon
because the black & white video camera that filmed Armstrong stepping onto the surface, was really crap.
We landed on the moon
as the astronauts took many many many bad photographs & NASA only published the three best ones.
We landed on the moon
because the 100s of kilograms of moon rock collected could not have been formed under conditions on Earth.
We landed on the moon
because when they returned, Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins had to stay in quarantine for three weeks instead of partying.
We landed on the moon
otherwise 25.4 billion dollars ended up in someone’s pocket.
We landed on the moon
because these analogue missions created our digital future.
We landed on the moon
because Alan Shepard wasn’t teeing off at St Andrews.
We landed on the moon
because budget cut backs cancelled Apollo 18, 19 & 20 & everyone knows the pain of austerity measures.
We landed on the moon
because no one employed by NASA or any of the industries associated with the program, has ever said it was a hoax.
We landed on the moon
because Kubrick was too busy developing A Clockwork Orange for him to produce a fake moon landing.
We landed on the moon
because of pure national pride & the Cold War.
We landed on the moon
because when humans put their minds to peaceful
endeavours, anything is possible.
We landed on the moon
because we put our faith in science & not in god’s machine.
We landed on the moon
because the Vietnam War was not any type of achievement.
We landed on the moon
because nothing beats the human exploration of space.
We landed on the moon
because we are more than just a pale blue dot in the universe.
We landed on the moon
so young women can now dream of landing on Mars.
So, the next time someone says to you,
‘We never landed on the moon’
You tell them, that if we didn’t land on the moon,
then they wouldn’t have their computer,
their internet or their social media
to tell you that we didn’t…
DID U.S. ASTRONAUTS REALLY LAND ON THE MOON?
June 1977 – a found poem
on foot
was aborted
but returned to Earth safely.
from time to time
we are asked the question
lacking oxygen and water
the fact that
on television
on radio in real time
missions were not “faked.”
clearly comes from
an entirely different world
the U.S. President.
simulated-for-television
there is no visible crater
in a near-perfect vacuum.
scour the surface at a distance
dust is blown away
not a fluffy dust
wet sand or ploughed farm soil
resistant to penetration
soil mechanics.
came out in platy fragments
implanting the flagpole
achieve a soft landing
a thin film of dust
the light-coloured suits
too cohesive
to excavate a
large crater.
Skylab
11th July 1979
His mass of anticipation equalled earth’s gravitational pull.
100 tonnes of anxiety weighed him down as his fears grew
& Skylab’s path decayed. Something banged on his parent’s
Roof, kids chucking stones he thought, but the burnt black
Lumps radiated space mystery. Cutting up Milo tins he tried
To melt the edges with matches & wrapped in his lunchbox,
He took the smoky metal slices into class; his teacher binned
Them. 2,249 days he orbited through primary school & they
Never docked, those planned, unflown missions with Lorelle.
The increased heat from his face caused him to drag his feet,
Nothing could nudge their module into a higher altitude & by
1979 it was a failure. Their status declined, no launch vehicles
Were left, the technicians too busy. He tried to fix it by hand,
But some boy from Esperance had already claimed his prize.
Columbia (a)
12th April 1981
a technological taj mahal, glacier proud
the primitive bake of her white tiles gleamed
like a freshly scrubbed bathroom commercial
as the monument to the love of flight squatted
on her launch pad. an ice queen of the iceni,
she repelled budget estimates critics like romans,
the fierce pull of her abrupt culture frightening.
a ten-storey stalactite that the drip of invention
had built up over slow millennia, a mammoth’s tusk.
she was the exclamation mark at the end of skylab’s
short sentence. nothing had been launched for
five years, the Americans forced to suck up soviet
success; longest spacewalks, longest time in space.
she was renewable; crippen & young let it rip.
Columbia (b)
12th April 1981
Entranced by the colour TV set, he sat in his pseudo
Friend’s lounge as the gantry crane of solidarity parted
At the end of year seven. Columbia rose on her launch pad
White scales glistening like an albino anaconda; her size
Magnified by pulp fiction & space opera tales of inter-
Planetary craft that shone with the goodness of human
Endeavour. Star Trek pale, she lifted; a great incandescent
Flare for the computer age, validating his ecstatic faith in
The Usborne Book of the Future. This witchety grub gorging
Itself on missile fuel, bent on self- transformation into
Some sleek resistant moth; he sat & sweated as booster
Rockets fell away on cue like his early love life. Speechless
He left Thruppy’s house, his only act of companionship
Opening the front door on the icons he found reusable.
Challenger
28th January 1986
The only time his mother woke him up from
His deepest adolescent sleep; his early morning
Dreams of Sharon Jones & her maroon school
Skirt riding high up her milky tennis-drilled thighs
Scuttled. Something major had happened by her
Voice’s tone he thought, maybe Reagan had killed
Off some more of Gaddifi’s children; the hot desert
Wind enveloping his daughter’s body in a sandpaper
Shroud. But no, the genie of death had escaped
From a space shuttle’s lamp. The plume of white
Smoke on the television branching out like a jester’s
Floppy hat. Rumours abounded around him, a glove
Was found with a hand still in it. That afternoon he
Barn-danced with Sharon; held her closer than space.
Halley’s Comet
8th March 1986
In the hot springs spa pool at Lighting Ridge
He observed the cute girl in her black bikini,
His voyage of discovery checked by the comet’s
76-year cycle & his parent’s caravan park curfew.
Their mini-bus tour took him underground, but
The earth failed to yield up its secrets, the opals
Of insecurity still played their fiery lights across
The sky of his awakening. He looked on the goat
Races with new sympathy. In the cold at 2am they
Watched the smudge of ice & fire wobble across
The universe, the great irony of his quest evident;
He could see the comet better at home through a
Pair of ordinary binoculars. He took it all as a bad
Sign, desperate to flee youth’s gravitational pull.
Voyager 1 (a)
14th February 1990
carl sagan’s caramel corduroy coat turned him
into one of tolkien’s wizards – radagast the brown
perhaps, as he wielded his nature charms at nasa’s
deep space mission. in this fantasy world you couldn’t
discern between magic & science as the programmer
sent his radio-wave spell directly into voyager’s susceptible
mind. the ten-tonne nuclear flowerhead shuddered as its
analogue brain obeyed his powerful suggestion & like an
old galactic clunker, did a five-point turn to face its maker
for the final time. it caught us, six billion kilometres away,
a poor photo that a stranger takes. a pale blue dot, a tiny
carat on an orange ray of light’s finger; something to be
worn with fervour. something valuable to be cherished.
a wedding of our brief lives to the universe’s eternal love.
Pale Blue Dot
14th February 1990
By the time you read this, our pale blue dot
would’ve hopefully been the progenitor of many
more pale blue dots throughout our galaxy, the Milky
Way. Maybe you’ve changed even that name to something
far sexier. If you don’t understand the meaning of that word
then don’t fret. It’s something we used to be obsessed with
in our day when having a body meant something. You light
creatures though – might have another term for it – lighter?
Brighter? An unbearable darkness of being? Some aspect
of the spectrum where you (we) live now that conjures up
home. Your galactic condominium of colour, or if you still
have such a thing as class, perhaps, how shiny you are in your
particle penthouse. But the original pale blue dot – Earth,
as it used to be known, will by now be a dead thing from
long ago. A deflated soccer ball in the galaxy’s backyard.
Not by anything we (you) did to it really, but just dead of
natural causes. You see by now our (your) alpha sun – Sol,
ran out of fuel like an empty gas tank, (don’t worry – an early
combustible device) way before we (you) learnt how to travel
by sunbeam. Yeah, neat trick that one! When our sun died,
well in its last throes of rage it stood up like a giant beast in
a monster flick & demolished our (your) planet – scorched
the lot like a barbie (think of the smallest sun you can) that
catches on fire. Ah flicks? Why a slang term for feature films
(you like these because the ancient fossilised light captured
on celluloid are quite collectable & hang on many of your
four-dimensional walls in frames made of neutron stars.
The Earth now has the texture of a basketball, (a round thing
you loved to bounce) no life, no water, no atmosphere. Not
even worth a visit to see where it all began. But we implore
you (us) to track down those radio signals we sent out into
the Milky Way for tens of thousands of years. They’ll be
halfway across the galaxy by now, (love like light doesn’t stop
travelling) but they’ll tell you all there is to know about your
(our) earlier selves, when being made of flesh was to our dismay,
just a shadow of our (your) future selves. When all of our info
was coded in bone & marrow & cells had such a short half-life.
When life was far heavier than it is now. All of your (our)
past secreted in reams of light-waves like poems sewn
into a prison jacket’s collar & smuggled out to freedom.
Now Earth is just a brown stone stuck in the Milky Way’s
sole, a nest torn apart by the cosmic wind, a cold firepit.
Our (your) millennia of technological achievement just a
poorly manufactured flint knife that broke on its first use.
Hubble Space Telescope
24th April 1990
I am that eye in the sky.
All the billions of eyes on earth that have
ever focused & looked up at the night sky,
& wished to see more. I am that eye.
I am that eye which has seen time flow
backwards, light’s linear narrative telling me
the story of the cosmos. This I showed you.
I am that eye which has counted the rings
of the universe’s tree & given you our precise age.
I am that eye which watched a comet punch
Jupiter in the stomach & leave a dark bruise;
I am that eye which has observed the corners
of galaxies to discover nurseries where the embryos
of stars wait patiently to lie in their dusty cribs.
I am that eye which has gazed into the very
heart of dark matter, perceived that which you
can only visualise in the mirror of your heads.
I am that eye which has had five operations,
straining for thirty years to see what’s ahead of us
& behind us at the same time. I am that eye
which has gawked at deep fields of galaxies
that your untrained eye might mistake for
just a photograph of stars. I am that eye which
has stared down super massive black holes;
a standoff at the centre of every galaxy.
I am that eye which sees things expand out
then collapse back, like the human will to
understand what I have shown you.
I am that eye in the sky.
Voyager 1 (b)
17th February 1998
jimmy carter’s southern drawl, pregnant with greetings, floats
through deep space, muted, gold-plated, a copper record on its
billion-dollar turntable. magnetic rays scratching nasa’s vinyl,
like an invisible dj at a private gig for no one in the universe’s
playboy mansion. jimmy’s memo to the future, stored in his
nuclear powered time capsule; angsty, cold war consciousness
preserved in binary code, his world fears reduced to noughts &
zeros, a language something might read with a computer’s aid,
after the earth has fallen silent; a last duet with its dead moon.
these impossible eyes scanning the cipher, sniggering at his sub-
text about the russians & how they’d really love to meet them.
raising the equivalent of an eyebrow over bach & beethoven.
this metal dust speck; humanity’s most distant object cast out.
Galactic one hit wonder, chart topper in the sounds of silence.
Pioneer 10
2nd March 1972 – 22nd January 2003
You were originally hired for twenty-one months
but your career spanned thirty years. We got our
money’s worth, you got a golden handshake & we
let you go. Your work had taken you to places
beyond your wildest imagination. You said you
didn’t mind long distance travel – your enthusiasm
at the beginning was impressive; the moon in eleven
hours, mars in twelve weeks, you ate up every sale
that came your way, learning firsthand on the job.
Your first big deal was negotiating a contract with
the asteroid belt, which you secured & passed on
to a higher grade. Then you made your most famous
business decision, opening up a market that had been
closed forever, attaining the liquid assets of Jupiter.
Your heyday was almost over, but the desire never
faded. You scored deals with Pluto, secured rights
to solar wind & cosmic rays before those stocks
became fashionable. Your contract expired in 1997,
but we kept you on as a consultant, afterall no one
could replace your wealth of experience overnight.
Your job officially ended in 2003 when your billings
weakened. After 7.6 billion miles of door to door sales,
we gave you a golden plaque, so you’d remember what
the team looked like. You said you were going to retire
to the constellation of Taurus & bath in the red light
of the star Aldebaran. We thought you were joking;
you said see you in two million years.
Columbia
1st February 2003
When the news shattered through, I was knee-deep
shovelling powdered glass soaked in soft drink, the fault
of gravity that led some of the bottles lemming-like over
the conveyer belt’s brink to smash on the concrete floor.
The air was hot & rancid, sickly-sweet; the noise, engine
thrusters going off in your ear. The rats loved it as they
ran along pipes over our heads, high on sugar at the tail
end of summer. The crushed silicon built up on the factory
floor like plaque on teeth & had to be dug out routinely;
the confined space cramped as a command module. The
sound of the shovel’s blunt head as it scraped up granules
was the sudden gasp of a capcom uttering that something
had gone terribly wrong. On the train home, people kept
their distance; nosed in solitude this catastrophic event.
On the Death of Astronaut John Young
5th January 2018
My family didn’t own a colour TV set until two years
after you’d flown the first shuttle mission; & then
only because mum remarried a sorghum farmer who
kept his little Hitachi set on top of the fridge beaming
like a lustreware vase or a magnetised beer opener.
So that’s why I was over at Thruppy’s grand place;
the first two-storied house I’d ever entered, huge
as a launchpad, walls as white as a spacecraft’s tiles.
Vertigo sucked me down as I passed the threshold.
The terrible awkwardness of our fringe friendship
set aside so I could watch my first launch in colour.
Millions of pounds of thrust that would shame day.
Flames in real orange. An original blue televised sky.
NASA was one giant acronym to a boy who’d spent
half of his life without a launch. Nothing in six years
since Apollo-Soyuz, the Americans investing in reusable
ships, powerless gliders that would touch down like any
Airforce fighter running on empty. Video cams zoomed
in on the giant black cathedral bell thrusters that vented
gas; booster pheromones attracting a televised audience
in the millions. Too many things were going on at once,
so computers muttered machine language to Columbia.
These powerful artefacts that I’d never get to touch for
another decade. I thought ‘software’ a new moniker for
underwear. Prayers & butterflies; all the clichés needed
to advise me of how dangerous it was. I didn’t even ask
if Thruppy was into space, or notice if he sat beside me
on his vinyl couch, (more luxury than I was accustomed
to) or was outside on his BMX doing jumps. Trying to
get some air himself. Every time’s the first time if you’ve been
there or not. God speed John & Cripp his new set rattled off.
Emotionless countdowns hid fear of failure; what ifs?
threatened America’s main engine start after Vietnam’s
aborted mission. In the wide shot of the shuttle, with
twenty seconds to go, the Stars & Stripes appeared
faded as old graffiti on a bathroom wall. At t-minus
four seconds, the inverted magma spurt of rocket
fuel ignited Thruppy’s screen, followed by a titan’s
death rattle that gurgled from Cape Canaveral, shaking
the tinny internal speakers on their plastic mounts. I knew
that noise was the loudest we’d ever made as a species.
Talking back to god. Then, over the cumulus smokescreen
a voice, a son of Morrison urging, Come on baby! Go honey go!
Fly like an eagle! American thunder in the skies! You ascended
emptying a swimming pool of fuel per second John Young,
until some minutes later, Columbia morphed into the small
bright flare of a television set suddenly switched off.
Bitter as the cud 