Astronomical Apathy
By Sean McVeigh
As a society, we’ve been through a lot lately. These past few years have been one curveball after the next. Many people did not have global pandemic on their bingo cards. I bet a few weirdos had Canadian wildfires turning NYC orange, though. I think all this constant panicking—one crisis after another—has dulled our internal alarm bells a bit.
How do I know this? Well, you might have heard that there are currently two astronauts who are, for lack of a better term, STUCK IN SPACE! Yet, here we are, going about our daily lives with no one seeming to care at all. Every once in a while, we catch a glimpse of the two marooned voyagers in videos released by NASA. There does not appear to be any panic on their end. In fact, all the videos make it seem like they are having a blast up there. The only real talking point I’ve heard is Astronaut Suni Williams’ hair in zero gravity giving her a bit of a bride-of-Frankenstein look. Zero gravity and zero worries!
But why should their calmness stop our consternation? It never has in the past. This is the stuff movies are made of, people! What happened to the daily press conferences of old? Where are the countdown clocks in the bottom corner of every news broadcast? Why aren’t we hearing about an elaborate rescue mission with a cool name like Operation Solar Salvage? Maybe we’ve matured a little bit. Or maybe we’ve just lost interest.
OK, OK, they are not in any immediate danger per se. Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are currently safely onboard the International Space Station. Their Boeing-manufactured Starliner, which was the aerospace company’s first astronaut-manned mission into space on behalf of NASA, was marred by thruster failures and helium leaks after its launch and while en route to the ISS, leading NASA to deem the return trip too risky. NASA has now turned to Tony Stark Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, who has already successfully completed nine of these trips to the ISS for NASA, to prepare a ship to bring them home.
Even though their situation is not extremely perilous, there are still two United States citizens who just took a rocket ship into space and the ship returned without them. In more normal times, I think that would usually pique the interest of the general public more than it currently has. I guess maybe it’s like the “Fast & Furious” movies. The first couple were watchable. Some, not me, but some might have even enjoyed them. But we are now in double digits, and I can’t imagine who is still watching these movies. People have had enough. Come up with something else. We are not as easily impressed these days — in regard to movies and crises.
I marvel that we live in a world where American citizens can be STUCK IN SPACE, you know, the last frontier of vast, unexplored, silent darkness, and mostly everyone, including, apparently, the two stranded astronauts, doesn’t seem to be too distressed.
Obviously, I hope they get home safely. Everyone does. The timeline is looking like their SpaceX return flight will be reaching them, if all goes to plan, by early next year in February 2025. Luckily for Wilmore and Williams, the next chapter in the epic cinematic saga, “Fast & Furious 11,” is not expected to be released until 2026. Maybe if that date was a little closer, the world would worry a little bit more about getting these two back to our planet as soon as possible.
