The Space Truck and The Bomb: Space Shuttle Discovery and the Enola Gay

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Discovery_on_display_at_Udvar-Hazy.JPG

We recently returned from a trip to the DC area where we had a chance to go to the Smithsonian Institute's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center (which is a separate facility of the National Air and Space Museum). The main reason for the trip was to the the Discovery and it was Amazing! Our guide was incredible. Though I am tired of hearing the shuttles referred to as "space trucks," I can understand the colloquial appeal this probably has for many visitors.

The Discover seemed simultaneously large and small. It was physically smaller than I thought it would be (I did not see the Enterprise when it was in the same location) but sort of emotionally large. The shuttle was really my generation's space program. We read about it at school and at home. We watched flight tests of the Enterprise live on TV in school. We grew up with it and even watched as people died in two shuttle crashes (Challenger OV-099, in 1986 and Columbia OV-102 in 2003). A piece of Columbia was found near my home in Texas.

I guess the whole feeling of standing there was sort of epic. I actually could not look at it for very long without feeling very emotional and sad. It had never really occurred to me how much death and destruction is associated with going into space. And part of me was guiltily thinking "We should have gone to Mars instead."

Kubrick certainly got the juncture of eros and thanatos in space explorations right. I realized this as my wife and I looked about at all the rockets and missiles and bombs in the Shuttle hanger and, later, at all the planes from two world wars and innumerable other conflicts. The tour officially ended with the Enola Gay. Yes, that one. The real one. My wife could barely look at it and had to walk away.

"She get bored?" The tour guide joked a little nervously.
"Nah," I replied. "She doesn't do nuclear bombs."
"Ah. She doesn't do nuclear bombs." He was an OK guy--a retired marine. He thought the Enola Gay was great. And I must admit the old girl is pretty impressive. She's very shiny. "That is the original hand-painted name right there. 'Enola Gay' named after his mother."

Courtesy of Wikipedia.

OK, what? I had forgotten that bit. So his mother's name is forever connected to the history of nuclear destruction. There is something so Freudian in that as to be downright scary. Colonel Paul Tibbets named his specially deigned B-29 after his mother to blow the crap out of Japan.

That is certainly on the "think it over" list.

In other news: unfortunately, I was not able to see the model of the Enterprise at the National Air and Space Museum on the D.C. mall, but I have that planned for the next trip this Fall, so I hope to have a new profile pic with the model soon!