Tired of all the bad news

While we can't deny the difficulites for so many people at home and overseas, it's important to take account of the positives, and to spread the Good News. I don't know who said this but; "No-one ever injured their eyesight by looking on the bright side." Blessings..

Saturday 20 July 2019

The Eagle has landed...



In the last book, I wrote a piece entitled ‘I was unborn during the Moon landings’ It was a pro-life reflection on the fact that my mother was expecting me at the time. I was born on October 17th 1969. During those famous days, she had been advised by her doctor that it would be better if she rested and avoided staying up late to see the Astronauts landing on the Moon early on July 21st 1969. However, like most of the people on planet Earth, she stayed up to witness, in black-and-white, Commander Neil Armstrong and Colonel ‘Buzz’ Aldrin step off the ladder and on to the surface of the Sea of Tranquility. In that reflection, while obviously I have no memory of it, it is important for me that while I hadn’t been born, I existed. I was on the way, and I was growing towards my birth-day.

As I write, on July 17th 2019, the world is remembering those historic days. Right now, 50 years ago, Armstrong, Buzz, and Collins are flying on there way to the Moon. During the launch, the Saturn V Rocket would climb out from Kennedy Space Centre at 7 miles per second and it would take four days to get there flying at a speed of up to 25 thousand miles per hour. Over this coming weekend not just the United States of America, but the whole world, will remember the Astronauts who were the first human beings to set foot on the Moon. They will remember the huge team of experts who worked hard on the ground to support the Astronauts as they travelled to the Moon.

These days once again, the world also commemorates the history of flight and indeed the times when the human person looked up from the earth and into the heavens where only birds and winged creatures lived. They have looked out using telescopes to see the stars and the planets which we know have been named for generations. This weekend we are grateful for inventors who helped people to defy gravity and fly, like Wilbur and Orville Wright, and others like Bleriot, Alcock and Brown, Erhart, and Chares Lindbergh. The development of the Jet Engine in the 1940’s and the inventions of the Boeing 707, 747, and the Concorde, to name a few also contributed to the story of flight and space flight. In 1961, Russian, Yuri Gagarin was the first man to orbit the earth in Space. In 1962, John Glenn became the first American to fly in Space. American, Alan Shepherd flew to a height of 116 miles before Gagarin in 1961, but he didn’t orbit the earth. 

After the Apollo programme finished in the early 1970’s, NASA was working on the Space Shuttle (Space Transportation System or STS) project to develop a spacecraft that could be launched into low earth orbit from a rocket and land on a runway afterwards to be reused again. One of the big tasks of the Shuttle programme was to ferry personnel and material to build the International Space Station, now in permanent orbit around the earth. Sadly, two of the Shuttles; Challenger in 1986, and Columbia, in 2003, met with accidents during what was over all a highly successful programme. The Space Shuttle was retired after the final flight of Atlantis in July 2011.

Since then, Astronauts, and Cosmonauts have been travelling to the International Space Station (ISS) via the Russian Soyuz spacecraft and we regularly see posts to social media from Astronauts living and working high above the earth as they send stunning pictures and films as they orbit the globe.

The future is bright for space exploration and probes have sent back pictures of the other planets in our solar system; thirty, forty, and fifty years after their launch. Voyager I and II, an American programme launched in 1977, reached Interstellar Space, outside our Solar System in 2012 and 2018 respectively. This is only the tiniest distance in the bigger picture which is awesome.  The plan is to send people to Mars. Space X and Blue Origin to name two private companies are working with NASA and others to further space exploration into the future. Nasa have said they intend to go back to the Moon by 2024, build a base there, and from there, who knows?

When we lived in Rialto growing up (late 1970’s) myself and my brother, Kevin, used to pal around with the two lads next door and we would often play space-games. Star Wars was in the Cinema and Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, was on the television. We used to fly the Millennium Falcon from the gate-pillars of our houses manoeuvring between planets and stars. We also hung our Snorkel Jackets around our shoulders because we each wanted to be Superman. We were big fans of Steve Austin, the Astronaut who was almost killed in an accident during a test flight. The U.S. Government rebuilt him with Bionic components for six million dollars. He could leap forty feet in the air, run at sixty miles per hour thanks to his bionic legs, and break tree trunks, and lift cars with his bionic right arm. He could also see for miles with his bionic telescopic eye. I got a Steve Austin action man from Santa Claus in 1977. Kevin got the Johnny Jackson (Action Jackson) one.  Perhaps the ultimate space programme was Star Trek. I had a Mister Spock replica swear shirt as a kid. However, I think I was a little bit too young for Star Trek when it was on television. In emulating the technology of Gene Roddenberry, I wonder will they ever be able to develop a space craft like the NCC 1701 Starship ‘Enterprise’ with teleporters, Photon Torpedoes, and Warp Factor 9 speed?

In those forty years or so since we were going out to play on Uppercross Road, sitting into our spaceships and flying a million miles into deep space only to be back in for our dinner, real space flight progressed from Skylab, to the Space Shuttle, to the construction of the I.S.S. Un-manned probes have travelled around our solar system, and visited the planets and is going to the Sun. There have been several probes sent to Mars and are these sending back fascinating pictures from the Red Planet. The Hubble space telescope has let us look into the deepest parts of space and is allowing us to study the origins of the Universe and lately even Black Holes. Yet we are barely scratching the surface. By the time we get to send people to Mars, my generation will be elderly and those who are selected to fly as Astronauts are children, and young people now, and maybe some haven’t been born yet.

Growing up in the city, and especially growing up in Ireland, it was difficult to see the starry nights. The ambient lights of the neighbourhood make it hard to look into the night sky. With Irish weather and the clouds that often roll in from the Atlantic, I have often been disappointed when it became impossible to see celestial shows or partial eclipses of the moon or the sun. However, when its clear out in the countryside, I have been spell bound by the billions of stars and even the caster-sugary Milky Way in the night sky. We have been treated to shooting stars during these deep-dark clear nights. In early 1997, we saw Comet Hale-Bopp crossing the heavens over a short period of time both in the night sky and in the daytime. It was great sight as certainly I missed seeing Halley’s Comet in 1986 and it won’t return till 2061. I also missed Comet Hyakutake for some reason in early 1996. Hale-Bopp was the best example of a Comet I’ve seen as I remember a run of clear days and nights in the Spring of 1997. They tell us that Hale-Bopp won’t come into Earth’s orbit again till the year 4380. Maybe I’ll see it somewhere while the then interplanetary residents of planet Earth take weekend breaks on low cost flights to theme parks on Venus.

The Canticle of Brother Sun written by Saint Francis of Assisi in praise of creation, the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, and the Earth, is poignant for me as we come up to the Fiftieth Anniversary of the First Men on the Moon.

Most High, all powerful, good Lord,
Yours are the praises, the glory, the honour,
and all blessing.
To You alone, Most High, do they belong,
and no man is worthy to mention Your name.
Be praised, my Lord, through all your creatures,
especially through my lord Brother Sun,
who brings the day; and you give light through him.
And he is beautiful and radiant in all his splendour!
Of you, Most High, he bears the likeness.
Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Moon
and the stars, in heaven you formed them
clear and precious and beautiful.
Praised be You, my Lord, through Brother Wind,
and through the air, cloudy and serene,
and every kind of weather through which
You give sustenance to Your creatures.
Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Water,
which is very useful and humble and precious and chaste.
Praised be You, my Lord, through Brother Fire,
through whom you light the night and he is beautiful
and playful and robust and strong.
Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Mother Earth,
who sustains us and governs us and who produces
varied fruits with coloured flowers and herbs.
Praised be You, my Lord,
through those who give pardon for Your love,
and bear infirmity and tribulation.
Blessed are those who endure in peace
for by You, Most High, they shall be crowned.
Praised be You, my Lord,
through our Sister Bodily Death,
from whom no living man can escape.
Woe to those who die in mortal sin.
Blessed are those whom death will
find in Your most holy will,
for the second death shall do them no harm.
Praise and bless my Lord,
and give Him thanks
and serve Him with great humility.