It wasn’t too long ago that I found myself standing in the Las Cruces, New Mexico desert. It’s the second largest city in New Mexico, though you’d never really guess that from the largely deserted landscape (no pun intended). It’s not exactly a ghost town, but it has a serene old-school western feel to it that I haven’t really seen duplicated by many cities, especially those claiming to be large. To its credit, the city has a few Starbucks, a Wal-Mart, a Home Depot, a university – all the things you’d expect in any fair sized city. But standing out there on the airfield at the Las Cruces International Airport watching experimental rockets float on the horizon, I couldn’t help but think I was on some other planet.
I left that world behind a few months ago to pursue my music passion, but over the past few days I’ve had a chance to revisit that excitement and fervor, watching the 2009 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge webcasts. I’m not going to toot my own horn too much here, I know what I accomplished while I was at X PRIZE and I’m proud of it. But more than that, I’m proud of the efforts of the entire team that has pulled this off for yet another great year. The buzz, energy, and rabid fan behavior is something that is rarely seen for such an event. Such fanaticism is typically reserved for significantly more popular events, like sports or concerts or the Oscars.
Anyone who has ever watched a rocket fly (light that candle!) will tell you that there is nothing that can possibly prepare you for its brilliance. Sure, we watch planes take off daily. There’s a helicopter floating over my neighborhood on a nightly basis. But a rocket… now that’s a horse of a different color. What sets a rocket apart from an airplane takeoff is the frequency at which it happens, and the regularity with with we view these things.
What I think we’re seeing here, for perhaps the first time, is the rapid adoption of interest in an otherwise unpopular scientific endeavor, based solely on its accessibility. NASA TV deserves some credit for giving it a good go. The channel has been available through cable for an awful long time. I admit I’ve been victim to countless hours of slowly beeping nearly static shots of spacecraft orbiting the Earth. But the general public never really got excited about it. This has all changed, very, very rapidly.
The launches of Armadillo Aerospace, Masten Space Systems, and Unreasonable Rocket are not only a true testament to the ability of man to overcome the limitations of this planet, but a testament to the ability of the web to tap an otherwise underinformed and undermotivated public. A generation of couch potatoes in front of a television never really caught on to the wonders of aerospace engineering, but I can watch as hundreds and thousands of people gather to see a couple of guys launch a rocket they built in their garage with just a little elbow grease and a dream. It may not be the audience of a space shuttle launch, but it warms my heart to know that we’ll have something to cheer for when those finally end.
Although very few things can compare to seeing a rocket take off in person, I’m happy to enjoy it from the comfort of my own home. I’m happy to follow the Twitter updates directly from the teams launching. And I’m happy to see the countless people chattering in rapt anticipation, white knucled with nails chewed clean. I wish everyone involved the best of luck. And to all those watching at home, from a former evangelist, keep fighting the good fight. Your interest makes all the difference.
