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Let me tell you about Bob Ballard. Formally, he should be addressed as Dr. Robert Ballard, but that always seems weird to me. I can't claim to have ever met him, let alone to be on a first name basis with him, but he's gone out of his way to make science friendly and accessible to the public. He even started a program to teach kids about undersea exploration which culminated in their actually driving an incredibly expensive and complicated Remotely Operated Vehicle.
He's best known for having located and explored the wreck of the Titanic. This annoys him. Finding the Titanic took years of work, painstakingly searching miles and miles of area at the bottom of the ocean, at a depth of over two miles (nearly 4km). He spent summer after summer searching, and winter after winter trying to scrape together funding to go back. Just about everyone had given it up as impossible, and he was actually down to the last day of funding when he made the find. It was an incredible accomplishment. For all that, he did no more than take pictures and video, feeling that it should be preserved as it is and that taking anything more would be tantamount to grave robbing.
What he also feels is that, difficult, historically significant, and attention-getting as the find was, it's far from the most interesting or important thing that he's done, let alone that has been done in the world of oceanography. There are older and more significant wrecks that have been found. And there's a lot more to what he does than finding sunken ships. There's actual science.
Specifically, Dr. Ballard is the one who discovered chemosynthesis. Down at the bottom of the ocean, at incredible pressures, at depths where no sunlight penetrates, in places where the water is filled with toxic chemicals spewing from undersea vents (essentially small volcanoes), where life as we know it should be physically impossible, he found forms of life which were thriving. Miniature ecosystems based around strange plants which were actually managing to feed off the (otherwise highly toxic) chemicals from the vents. Plants which made food not from sunlight but from toxic chemicals. It's one of the most significant finds in the field of biology made in our lifetime, and it's that which he is most proud of. (He has a painting of that strange undersea life over his mantle.)
He's a scientist and an explorer, and when he's not doing that, he's working to help teach and encourage the next generation of scientists and explorers.
So why am I telling you about him now? Well, I'm reading a book by Curt Newport. Curt also works with submersible ROVs. Curt specializes in salvage operations. He does not have a doctorate. I don't believe he went to college. He does not seem to have much respect for the people who did. He has a sort of love-hate relationship with engineers - appreciating what they build, but sort of dismissing them as annoying ivory tower eggheads who need to be kept in their place. Curt begins his book talking about how his crew are Real Men and Tough Guys, and how sometimes you just have toss the safety manual overboard to get the job done. (Not his words, exactly, but certainly the idea they seem to convey. Later, he makes a passing reference to how hard it can also be on the poor dutiful girls who have to stay at home while the men are out working.)
In his bio on the inside of the book jacket, Curt lists among his accomplishments having been the first to broadcast live TV images from the wreck of the Titanic. Bob Ballard found it, explored it, took video of it, and then left it respectfully alone. Curt came back to broadcast it live, and he's proud of that. In the book proper, he pointedly avoids mentioning Ballard (or anything to do with him) whenever possible. The few times he's forced into it, he does so dismissively. Talking about Deep Submersible Vehicles, he mentions the record held by one from Japan, and then goes on to say that, oh yes, Alvin, which is so famous, falls into the same category. (Alvin is the submersible Ballard used to find the Titanic.) When he finally mentions the Titanic, it's to specifically say that the find drew all this media attention despite the fact that the Navy (for whom Curt sometimes works, as it happens) had done more impressive things in deeper waters.
Oh, also: his book is liberally seasoned with errors in grammar and punctuation. Words in the wrong tense or out of place, random acts of commas, and apostrophes... Oh, the apostrophes. There are times when the same word or situation will come up three times in a single paragraph, and he'll get the apostrophe wrong two times out of three. Not just wrong, but inconsistently so, within the same paragraph.
In short, Curt is kind of a jerk.
So why am I reading his book? In part because he's writing about a fascinating topic. The first half of the book is about the early days of the space program. The days when even a suborbital launch meant strapping yourself into a little capsule on the top of what was quite literally a huge repurposed ballistic missile (a design which was in turn heavily based off the German V-2 rocket) and hoping it didn't blow up. When no one really knew what would happen to a human in space. When there were people who seriously thought that going to space would be impossible because there was obviously an unbreakable barrier which was the only thing holding the atmosphere in. When computers with less memory and processing power than a modern cell phone took up entire rooms. When aircraft carriers still used sextants to help them navigate.
The book focuses mainly on Gus Grissom, test pilot turned astronaut, and only the third human to go into space. Curt loves Gus. Gus was a man's man. A daring test pilot who brooked no nonsense. Curt gleefully quotes reports about Gus, including one which notes how popular and likable he was by pointing out that, while serving in the Korean War, Gus (a married man) hung out in bars and had a reputation for never failing to spot a beautiful woman.
Curt also talks about how Gus kept the engineers in check. He wanted to launch on time, so he fought them. They would find little problems and want to take everything apart, but good ol' Gus would show them up with common sense and tell them the experimental missile about to shoot him into the unknown void didn't have to be perfect and it was just fine the way it is. Curt is wholeheartedly behind this. Never mind that the only reason Curt is writing about this at all is that, oh yeah, he's the one who fished Gus's capsule out of the bottom of the ocean 40 years after it sank due to what Curt insists was a mechanical failure (and absolutely positively not Gus's fault).
Even so, it's cool reading about those days and what went into the early efforts to launch into space. I suspect the second half of the book (which I'm just starting) will also be fascinating, as it goes into ocean exploration and salvage and how the capsule was recovered.
That said, you may be wondering why I picked up this book in the first place. It's because a little while ago there was an auction of space-related things. Posters from the early days, pictures taken on the moon and signed by astronauts, an early space suit, and all sorts of neat stuff. I submitted a few bids online and actually won a couple of items, including a bolt from Gus's capsule. A genuine piece of space history. A part that has been up into space and down to the bottom of the ocean. Mounted in a lucite plaque with a picture of the capsule. And it came with a copy of Curt's book. Which makes it even more fascinating to read the capsule's history.
All of which happens to be even more appropriate to post about today, as today was the last ever space shuttle launch. A bittersweet event. But the shuttle fleet was old. In need of replacement. I'm a little sorry that NASA won't be doing that directly, but they will be working with the private sector to develop the next generation of spaceships. And they're turning their focus to other things, like exploring the solar system through unmanned probes, developing the replacement for the Hubble (which just this week took its one millionth image of the universe), and figuring out how to get us further than we've been. Even as I learn about how we started it, it's time to start a new era of our space program.
He's best known for having located and explored the wreck of the Titanic. This annoys him. Finding the Titanic took years of work, painstakingly searching miles and miles of area at the bottom of the ocean, at a depth of over two miles (nearly 4km). He spent summer after summer searching, and winter after winter trying to scrape together funding to go back. Just about everyone had given it up as impossible, and he was actually down to the last day of funding when he made the find. It was an incredible accomplishment. For all that, he did no more than take pictures and video, feeling that it should be preserved as it is and that taking anything more would be tantamount to grave robbing.
What he also feels is that, difficult, historically significant, and attention-getting as the find was, it's far from the most interesting or important thing that he's done, let alone that has been done in the world of oceanography. There are older and more significant wrecks that have been found. And there's a lot more to what he does than finding sunken ships. There's actual science.
Specifically, Dr. Ballard is the one who discovered chemosynthesis. Down at the bottom of the ocean, at incredible pressures, at depths where no sunlight penetrates, in places where the water is filled with toxic chemicals spewing from undersea vents (essentially small volcanoes), where life as we know it should be physically impossible, he found forms of life which were thriving. Miniature ecosystems based around strange plants which were actually managing to feed off the (otherwise highly toxic) chemicals from the vents. Plants which made food not from sunlight but from toxic chemicals. It's one of the most significant finds in the field of biology made in our lifetime, and it's that which he is most proud of. (He has a painting of that strange undersea life over his mantle.)
He's a scientist and an explorer, and when he's not doing that, he's working to help teach and encourage the next generation of scientists and explorers.
So why am I telling you about him now? Well, I'm reading a book by Curt Newport. Curt also works with submersible ROVs. Curt specializes in salvage operations. He does not have a doctorate. I don't believe he went to college. He does not seem to have much respect for the people who did. He has a sort of love-hate relationship with engineers - appreciating what they build, but sort of dismissing them as annoying ivory tower eggheads who need to be kept in their place. Curt begins his book talking about how his crew are Real Men and Tough Guys, and how sometimes you just have toss the safety manual overboard to get the job done. (Not his words, exactly, but certainly the idea they seem to convey. Later, he makes a passing reference to how hard it can also be on the poor dutiful girls who have to stay at home while the men are out working.)
In his bio on the inside of the book jacket, Curt lists among his accomplishments having been the first to broadcast live TV images from the wreck of the Titanic. Bob Ballard found it, explored it, took video of it, and then left it respectfully alone. Curt came back to broadcast it live, and he's proud of that. In the book proper, he pointedly avoids mentioning Ballard (or anything to do with him) whenever possible. The few times he's forced into it, he does so dismissively. Talking about Deep Submersible Vehicles, he mentions the record held by one from Japan, and then goes on to say that, oh yes, Alvin, which is so famous, falls into the same category. (Alvin is the submersible Ballard used to find the Titanic.) When he finally mentions the Titanic, it's to specifically say that the find drew all this media attention despite the fact that the Navy (for whom Curt sometimes works, as it happens) had done more impressive things in deeper waters.
Oh, also: his book is liberally seasoned with errors in grammar and punctuation. Words in the wrong tense or out of place, random acts of commas, and apostrophes... Oh, the apostrophes. There are times when the same word or situation will come up three times in a single paragraph, and he'll get the apostrophe wrong two times out of three. Not just wrong, but inconsistently so, within the same paragraph.
In short, Curt is kind of a jerk.
So why am I reading his book? In part because he's writing about a fascinating topic. The first half of the book is about the early days of the space program. The days when even a suborbital launch meant strapping yourself into a little capsule on the top of what was quite literally a huge repurposed ballistic missile (a design which was in turn heavily based off the German V-2 rocket) and hoping it didn't blow up. When no one really knew what would happen to a human in space. When there were people who seriously thought that going to space would be impossible because there was obviously an unbreakable barrier which was the only thing holding the atmosphere in. When computers with less memory and processing power than a modern cell phone took up entire rooms. When aircraft carriers still used sextants to help them navigate.
The book focuses mainly on Gus Grissom, test pilot turned astronaut, and only the third human to go into space. Curt loves Gus. Gus was a man's man. A daring test pilot who brooked no nonsense. Curt gleefully quotes reports about Gus, including one which notes how popular and likable he was by pointing out that, while serving in the Korean War, Gus (a married man) hung out in bars and had a reputation for never failing to spot a beautiful woman.
Curt also talks about how Gus kept the engineers in check. He wanted to launch on time, so he fought them. They would find little problems and want to take everything apart, but good ol' Gus would show them up with common sense and tell them the experimental missile about to shoot him into the unknown void didn't have to be perfect and it was just fine the way it is. Curt is wholeheartedly behind this. Never mind that the only reason Curt is writing about this at all is that, oh yeah, he's the one who fished Gus's capsule out of the bottom of the ocean 40 years after it sank due to what Curt insists was a mechanical failure (and absolutely positively not Gus's fault).
Even so, it's cool reading about those days and what went into the early efforts to launch into space. I suspect the second half of the book (which I'm just starting) will also be fascinating, as it goes into ocean exploration and salvage and how the capsule was recovered.
That said, you may be wondering why I picked up this book in the first place. It's because a little while ago there was an auction of space-related things. Posters from the early days, pictures taken on the moon and signed by astronauts, an early space suit, and all sorts of neat stuff. I submitted a few bids online and actually won a couple of items, including a bolt from Gus's capsule. A genuine piece of space history. A part that has been up into space and down to the bottom of the ocean. Mounted in a lucite plaque with a picture of the capsule. And it came with a copy of Curt's book. Which makes it even more fascinating to read the capsule's history.
All of which happens to be even more appropriate to post about today, as today was the last ever space shuttle launch. A bittersweet event. But the shuttle fleet was old. In need of replacement. I'm a little sorry that NASA won't be doing that directly, but they will be working with the private sector to develop the next generation of spaceships. And they're turning their focus to other things, like exploring the solar system through unmanned probes, developing the replacement for the Hubble (which just this week took its one millionth image of the universe), and figuring out how to get us further than we've been. Even as I learn about how we started it, it's time to start a new era of our space program.
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