Orbital perspective

The other night while I was doing my little dinner-making shuffle in the kitchen, the sound of organ music blasting through the radio next to the stove snapped me out of my cooking trance. In the few seconds before Robert Siegel queued up the story that accompanied the music, I surrendered to a sound that, even though it's been nearly absent from my life for two decades, gets me like no other.

Even through the acoustics of a clock radio, the music sounded like home, and it was: they were playing a recording of the memorial service at the National Cathedral for Neil Armstrong.

My school-age life was conducted during the final decade of the cathedral's hundred-year construction; its evolution from half-finished towers to finial-capped majesty happened alongside my own far more awkward transformation — first kisses under the flying buttresses, first (only?) physical fight on its impeccable lawn. 

http://www.cathedral.org/

After his Apollo mission, Neil Armstrong, who studied at the cathedral's boys' school, donated a small rock from the moon, which eventually became the centerpiece of the #1 greatest hit of stained glass:

The space window

 


What would it have been like to be the first man to make it to the moon? Even now, what would it be like to be one of just a handful of people with 'orbital perspective'. ("When astronauts describe the feeling of sailing around space, looking at our planet from hundreds of miles above, they often invoke the phrase "orbital perspective," a shorthand for the emotional, psychological, and intellectual effects of seeing "the Earth hanging in the blackness of space," the Atlantic explains here.)


In the same Atlantic article, which ran earlier this month, the writer explores the experience of the only American not on Earth on 9/11, astronaut Frank Culberton.

Here's an excerpt, in the astronaut's own words:
I had just finished a number of tasks this morning, the most time-consuming being the physical exams of all crew members. In a private conversation following that, the flight surgeon told me they were having a very bad day on the ground. I had no idea...

He described the situation to me as best he knew it at ~0900 CDT. I was flabbergasted, then horrified. My first thought was that this wasn't a real conversation, that I was still listening to one of my Tom Clancy tapes. It just didn't seem possible on this scale in our country. I couldn't even imagine the particulars, even before the news of further destruction began coming in.

Vladimir came over pretty quickly, sensing that something very serious was being discussed. I waved Michael into the module as well. They were also amazed and stunned. After we signed off, I tried to explain to Vladimir and Michael as best I could the potential magnitude of this act of terror in downtown Manhattan and at the Pentagon. They clearly understood and were very sympathetic.

I glanced at the World Map on the computer to see where over the world we were and noticed that we were coming southeast out of Canada and would be passing over New England in a few minutes. I zipped around the station until I found a window that would give me a view of NYC and grabbed the nearest camera. It happened to be a video camera, and I was looking south from the window of Michael's cabin.

The smoke seemed to have an odd bloom to it at the base of the column that was streaming south of the city. After reading one of the news articles we just received, I believe we were looking at NY around the time of, or shortly after, the collapse of the second tower.

From the Atlantic article

 As he signed off, [with ground control] Culbertson reflected, "I miss all of you very much."