Conscious Choice: Faux Heroes, Nationalistic Spectacles?

March 2003

Faux Heroes, Nationalistic Spectacles?

Rethinking the Shuttle Disaster

by Cecil Bothwell

In the span of two weeks in late January and early February, two accidents occurred involving United States aircraft. In both cases Americans were killed. In both cases the deceased were serving their country. One case instantly became larger than life while the other case was largely ignored. ¶ I am referring, of course, to the military helicopter that went down in Afghanistan and the space shuttle Columbia disaster. If you missed the first incident, it is no surprise. The crash, which killed four, barely made the news. But — unless you’ve been hermetically insulated from the media, you could not have missed the second (which killed all seven astronauts).

What is interesting about the disparity in coverage of the two deadly incidents is that it is entirely political. If helicopter crashes seem more common than space shuttle crashes, it is only because there are so very many more helicopters in use. With two of four shuttles destroyed, the odds of flying in a doomed craft stand at fifty-fifty. Helicopters, even military helicopters in wartime, are far safer.

Yet the astronauts are being lauded as heroes. Flowers were piled high at Cape Kennedy. Former governor Bush flew to Texas for a memorial service. The future of NASA and human space flight are suddenly the subject of debate ("Do we need to send people into space?"). And we are assured that every effort will be made to determine the cause of Columbia’s disintegration.

Meanwhile, the wrecked helicopter went down in the news faster than it went down in real life. Outside of hometown coverage, the soldiers killed remain unidentified. Questions about the crash are not being asked. The future of the U.S. armed services and military flight are not subject to serious debate. ("Do we need to send people to Afghanistan?") The government is publicly uninterested in the cause of the helicopter crash.

What, exactly, is the difference here?

I would submit that the difference reflects the long history of using the space effort to create faux heroism and nationalistic spectacle. While performing a very limited amount of scientific research (which most scientists seem to agree could be done just as effectively and far more cheaply without sending people up), the space effort has been a great distraction from the real world and a bona fide publicity coup. The fact that we quit going to the moon after we proved we could get there is a pretty clear indication that there wasn’t a whole lot to go there for in the first place. It proved to be a lot like climbing Everest: a lot of people try, a few people make it, nobody stays.

The biggest lie following the Columbia’s demise came (no surprise) from Dubya who gravely intoned, "They went in peace for all mankind." Huh? This from the man who wants to jump-start Star Wars antimissile plans? Who supports a program that routinely conducts top-secret missions for the Pentagon? And concerns himself with a space agency that always and foremost was about building bigger rockets, testing space hardware, becoming the most threatening military power the world has known?

Sorry, George. The shuttle program is a subsidiary of the war machine. The International Space Station may presently be a research laboratory for all humankind. It could also, easily, be a launch platform for warfare from space — readily controlled by whomever can send vehicles and weapons there. For an administration that has declared a policy of preemptive warfare against anyone it decides to attack, the little matter of controlling an orbiting base is less than miniscule.

And, on the other side of the publicity coin, making overmuch of the dead soldiers in the helicopter really won’t do when war is on the agenda. It is a reminder of all of the sons and daughters who are apt to die in Dubya’s battle for oil. There will be a lot of soldiers riding in a lot of helicopters if the Bush gang has its way — and many will die.

Better by far to direct American eyes to the blue skies over Texas, shed a tear for the cameras, and belabor the search for wayward tiles. Inspectors in the desert can be relied upon to discern the truth — oh, about the shuttle, I mean...not Saddam.

Cecil Bothwell is author of The Icarus Glitch: Another Duck Soup Reader and managing editor of Asheville’s weekly Mountain Xpress.

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