May - Going to Space

As my time in New Mexico draws to a close, I am gripped by a fierce desire to get to The Space History Museum in Alamogordo. I haven’t gone before this because it’s located 187 miles south of where I am. Now, with only one weekend left, I wonder when will I be this close again?

I’ve been mildly obsessed with Space for as long as I can remember. I used to say, “In my next life I’ll be an astronaut.” I figured that’d be better since astronauting takes mathematical skills that I was not magically given by fairy godmothers at my christening.

Weighing the pros and cons, adding up the hours, scanning over my remaining days, I decide to go for it.

Kindly, I’m loaned a car for the day. I’ve already checked to make sure the museum is open on Sunday—and it is, from 12:00 to 5:00. When talking New Mexico things, I’d heard from two sources that Cloudcroft is an amazing place and worth a visit. And I’d also been urged by a third source to visit White Sands. Both places are within about 20 miles of the museum so I put together my Clipboard of Fun (which is what one of my friends and her family used to call their colonel father’s trip planning itinerary) and make my preparations.

On Sunday morning, I get up early, pack my snacks, and hit the road.

As I drive out of town, I sing silly ditties like my grandfather used to do all the time, giddy as a kid just let out of school for the summer. There’s nothing like a road trip for a last-minute adventure. There’s nothing like the freedom of the road to elate me.

The route south is landscape painting perfect. The mountains vary from red to blue to green to stark rock in paletted earth tones. Wildflowers dot the desert floor, spots of color against the gray, brown, red. The clouds layer the sky with contrast. The full ends of the grass, like fuzzy rattles, waver in unison under the influence of the wind. I can’t hear what sounds they make with the car windows rolled up. Soft sounds, brushing sounds maybe.

I couldn’t have ordered a better day.

The miles pass by, and by and by and by. I wish I could stop to photograph everything. That mountain there to the left. The rock formation over there to the right. The vast expanse of open land probably replete with rattlesnakes. The expressive sky above me.

About three and half hours later, I’m driving up the mountain toward Cloudcroft. There used to be an excursion train that took passengers from Alamogordo to Cloudcroft. They called it the Balley-Claire and it was apparently greatly loved. For some reason or another, the last trip over this part of railroad was made in 1947 and never resumed. I pull over at the Mexican Canyon Trestle lookout point and get out of the car. From my vantage point above them, I watch a couple walking on the trestle. I’m on a tight time schedule myself, but even so, I’m not sure I’d want to walk out on that open bridge. It looks terrifying.

Leaving behind rail-less bridges and dalliances with fear, I take myself up to Cloudcroft. It’s a charming little town. I drive down the main street, get out for a brief walk, think about having a cup of coffee somewhere but decide I’ve brought all the drinks and snacks I need and so I pack myself back in the car and rattle down the mountain (stopping a time or two to take some photographs which do the views absolutely no justice at all) and along the highway to White Sands.

Before heading off for Cloudcroft, as I’d neared Alamogordo, off to my right the distant ground had glinted white. That must be the white sands, I’d thought. A finite stretch of white, glinting under the clouds, almost glowing. I’d thought of the standing stones I’d seen last year in Avebury, England and how some had speculated that they had been painted white along with the sloped sides of the sacred site and how blinding and amazing that must have been as the pilgrims, visitors, and whomever approached. This is a little like that. But this is natural.

An ancient sea used to cover at least this part of New Mexico. When the sea went its way, it left behind deep layers of gypsum. Over thousands of years, wind, water, snow, rain, melting glaciers made this area what it is today. Which is an astounding display of white sand dunes with no sea to match up with it.

I get out and walk the Interdune Boardwalk. Then I walk up a dune. From that place, I gaze around. The clouds show a hint of blue, a bit of gray, a taste of white that’s less pink than the white sand’s color. Heat radiates from the sand, swirls in the air, presses against my exposed skin. It’s desert hot. 

There are other dunes to climb. Other paths to follow, but my heart is being called by The Space History Museum. It’s already been open for over an hour and each second ticks closer to closing time. I don’t want to be rushed in my rushedness, clicking off items on my Clipboard of Fun. And yet, I am rushed. For my heart is being called on. Even so, I wish I had a day or half a day or two days to spend here. For this place is strange and beautiful. I want to walk the dunes and then sit somewhere and feel the sand, listen to the past whisper through the wind, to remember the sea that once lived here. This day, I don’t. Instead, I clamber back in the car and drive, more or less the speed limit, to The Space History Museum.

It’s set up at the top of a hill with mountains as its backdrop. The building itself glints gold. A rocket sticks its nose straight up toward the heavens. Some kind of fighter plane rests at the foot of the site. Flags fly in the wind. It makes an impressive first impression.

I’ve made it!

I buy my ticket with an added planetarium show on Black Holes. Then as instructed, I take the elevator to the 4^th floor and begin my tour. Keeping track of the time, I fly like the wind over gypsum from exhibition to exhibition, taking pictures as I go.

The cool things I see include: a replica of the Russian satellite Sputnik (the first artificial satellite launched by humans). A moon rock. A to-scale replica of the one-human Mercury Capsule in which I go sit inside and play with the replica switches. Random objects that flew into space with various missions (like a football helmet chin strap which Wally Schirra wore in place of the standard-issue chin strap which he didn’t like, an inflight exerciser, a checklist used on a Gemini mission). Samples of space food (none of which looks very appetizing. Current space food is much more appealing than before and they even send up fresh(ish) food these days rather than just freeze-dried cubes). A dinosaur fossil which was flown in space by Mike Mullane aboard the Shuttle Atlantis in 1988. A hygiene kit (which doesn’t specify if it flew in space or not) with a hair brush with hair in it! I want to know whose hair it is. An astronaut’s? A cosmonaut’s? One of the museum staff? But the placard on the case does not tell me that information.

At the allotted time, I make it to the Planetarium—to get there I have to walk out of the museum and across two parking lots—to see Black Holes narrated by Liam Neeson. For the briefest moments, with my head tilted up, I feel as if I’m flying through space and exploring the bizarre natures of black holes. I still don’t really understand black holes except that they’re a bend in space time or gravity or something. No, I still don’t really understand, but they’re cool. When the film is over, I recross the two parking lots and head over to the flagpoles.   

The most touching part of the museum, I’m almost surprised to find, is Ham’s grave. Located by the flagpoles, the memorial is a little cement block with a dark plaque. Almost miss-able. Almost like an afterthought. Here Lies Ham. Ham was an astrochimp and the first hominid launched into space (the Russians sent dogs, we sent chimps). The marker says: Ham Proved That Mankind Could Live and Work in Space.

I have this vague memory of reading something that said there was some controversy about whether Ham should have a memorial or not. Something to do with man vs. chimp. You know. And this memorial is barely enough. Actually, it’s not enough. It wasn’t right to send animals up as experiments. I get it, I get why humans sent animals first. I understand why the Russians sent their dogs and why we sent lab-chimps. I get it, but I don’t think it’s right.

Feeling this wrongness, I reach down and touch the hard face of Ham’s memorial. What do you say to a chimp who flew in space, paving the way for other living creatures to go up as well? Thanks? Sorry?

In that same vague reading memory, I think I read that Jane Goodall said that Ham’s face when he was retrieved from his space capsule held a look of upmost terror, the most terror she’d ever seen on an animal’s face.

To us, the un-chimp initiated, it looked like Ham was grinning. Like he’d just had the ride of his life. Which he had, but not by his own will.

From there, I cross the walkway and go to the Astronaut Memorial Garden which has an obelisk dedicated to the memory of the astronauts who died in the Apollo 1 launch pad fire, on the Space Shuttle Challenger, and the Space Shuttle Columbia. A total of 17 people. I touch their names on the dark plaques and sit on one of the benches for a moment. Better to have flown and been lost than never to have flown at all?

I stand for another moment and think about Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov who in 1967, due to a series of system malfunctions, wasn’t able to align his craft for atmospheric reentry. He knew he wouldn’t make it. He knew he was going to die. An article titled The Tragedy of Soyuz 1 in a special 50^th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing in Parade Magazine states that Komarov had enough time to call his wife and to be told by the Soviet Premier that he was a hero. It also says, and this broke my heart, “The spacecraft, its parachutes tangled, plunged to the ground at 400 miles per hour, with Komarov crying out in rage before he died.”*

It’s the rage that saddens me. Better to have flown? Or not? What could I say to Komarov? Thanks? Sorry? For every great achievement there are those who made the way possible?

And for space travel that means fruit flies, monkeys, rats, mice, dogs, chimps, turtles, astronauts, cosmonauts, and more. (The French sent a cat to space in 1963.) Do I say thanks to some and thanks and sorry to others?

Mortal thoughts strong, I check my watch. I’ll have to think this all through later, maybe on the long drive home. For now, with some time before closing, I rush back to the museum’s 4^th floor and make my way through the whole thing again.

On the last floor, there’s a backdrop of the moon with lunar rover and all. There’s spacesuits and helmets and gloves. So, of course, I suit up. For a moment, at The Space History Museum, I get to be an astronaut. Well, I get to dress up like one long enough for a picture. I get to be an astronaut for a moment without all the grueling training. I get to pretend the romance of space travel without the intricate and uncomfortable reality of space suits, pressure suits, elimination controls, and all that. It’s great fun.

I leave the museum at closing.

As the day draws to an end, as the sun sets casting color across the sky, I drive the 187 miles back with a sense of exhausted satisfaction. What else can I say but thanks for the day.

*(page 62 of The Moon Landing & the American Space Story by Parade Magazine)