By Joseph N. Tatarewicz, Associate Professor of History
When John Fritz asked me to give a talk in the TLT Brown Bag series, I thought about the book I've been re-reading while preparing to teach History of Science Since 1700 again. Historian Russell McCormach's Night Thoughts of a Classical Physicist is a masterful account of the pit-of-the-stomach anxiety felt by physicists at the turn of the century, when their most fundamental notions of space, time, matter, energy and causality were shape-shifting from classical physics to quantum mechanics and relativity theory.
"Night Sweats of a Geek Humanist Professor" seemed an appropriate theme for my Brown Bag talk, since our classical world of research, teaching and service is itself shape-shifting, from bricks-and-mortar classrooms and offices with face-to-face lecture and seminar, to other, more virtual forms. As a humanist who studies science and technology throughout history, and an unapologetic gadgeteer, I wanted to learn how my colleagues were faring in our own time full of promise and anxiety.
But, what I heard on NASA TV Saturday morning as I pondered these questions intruded. Houston told Columbia that they, too, saw the tire pressure readings blank out, and a voice from Columbia said, "Roger" -- and then a garbled word cut off, followed by silence, followed a few seconds later by clicking and static, like a microphone keying on-and-off. The trajectory plot on NASA TV stopped moving, 16 minutes to landing. I threw tapes into the VCRs, while that Groundhog Day for Historians feeling came over me.
Seventeen years ago, as a young curator at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, I had been hip-deep in research, exhibits, and artifacts about space science, and what would become the Hubble Space Telescope. STS-51L was then off my radar screen, and I didn't even watch the launch, but was pulled out of a meeting to the NASA live feed to see multiple white streamers against a perfectly blue sky. Watching the remains of Challenger flutter down and splash into the ocean for hours, and then the remains of Columbia scattered over East Texas, I had that same, mournful, sickening feeling.
As historians we are trained to resist "going native," getting too chummy with our sources and losing the critical edge. I have had plenty critical to say about various parts of NASA at various times in history, and plenty to say that is deservedly lauditory. These times test our professionalism. Milt Heflin, chief of the flight directors, was in mission control for 12 horrific hours before he appeared at the first press conference Saturday. Choking back tears, Heflin sucked it up and gave the briefing -- all the facts he knew, right from his hand-written logbook, with grim professionalism, and honestly articulating his pain and his faith in the technology and the team.
In the early '90s I had been in Milt's little cubicle at the Johnson Space Center, interviewing him about the first Hubble Space Telescope Repair mission, for which he had been lead flight director. He talked just as honestly then about designing the mission, training, turf wars among NASA centers and even dealing with some members' distrust of anybody "badged headquarters." Gleaming and enthusiastic, he opened what seems to be a standard-issue "NASA Briefcase," festooned with stickers and pins from all the missions he'd worked, pulling out his Hubble logbooks and notes. Now Milt must lead all of Building 30, which includes several flight control rooms and even an entire school for flight directors, through very tough times.
Ted Foster, assistant dean of engineering, and I teach a regular segment of the Human Context of Science and Technology introductory course on the Challenger accident. As Ted, a career aerospace engineer and leader of research teams, and I have gone through the voluminous Challenger material, I am struck by how dedicated, thorough, and just plain smart the engineers, managers, and astronauts are. Every one of them could make much more money and enjoy infinitely better working conditions in industry (I was shocked the first time I gained entry to the inner sanctum-the astronaut "offices" at Houston-standard government issue grey desks, awful cubicle dividers, crammed in like sardines). They work in the space program because they have the fire and the faith. Of course, there has always been greed, corner-cutting, politics, and everything else associated with huge, expensive, programs. But, overwhelmingly, the bench and line workers are good, professional and dedicated.
Technological disasters happen, even when everybody does the best that they can with the resources available to them. No system can be known completely; no predictions of behavior or performance can be certain; it's always a game of odds in a climate of ambiguity. Shuttle Program Manager Ron Dittemore, his face grim with resolve while his eyes teared, could barely get the words out: "We missed something-I missed something-but I guarantee you we're going to fix it."
In the old, comfortable, classical Newtonian physics there were a few laws and, a whole lot of variables and complexity, but in principle one could predict with confidence. The better you knew the system, the better would be your predictions, even if you had to make do in the world of limited resources. What gave the classical physicist "night thoughts" was the new prospect that uncertainty and subjectivity were at the very heart of reality, and no Herculean calculation of whatever scope could ever beat that.
Physicists have had to learn to live with anxiety, and push on nonetheless. Rocket scientists have known this all along, but somewhere up the line of managers, politicians, and citizens that kind of honesty becomes program suicide. We need to face up. Like the popular CDW Commercials, featuring "Fred" the beleaguered IT Manager, say: "Dealing with Technology is hard."
Tatarewicz kicks off the spring TLT Brown Bag Series on Thursday, February 13 at noon in The Commons, room 318. The title of his talk is "Night Sweats of a Geek Humanist Professor: Liberal Arts, Technology and Labor." Read more about it in this month's Tech Watch.
