Second Breakfast

Now that the old-guard airlines have completely screwed themselves into oblivion, we can enjoy all of the wonderful comforts of the new, Ultra-Low Cost Carrier (ULCC) airlines, such as Spirit. With Spirit you get such perks such as:

• The inability to check in online if you book through another travel web site.
• The lack of useful information on spiritair.com to know that this isn’t possible.
• The privilege of waiting 45 minutes to speak with a “customer service” representative who will be surprised that you would actually attempt to do so.
• The privilege of paying for a sip of water to wet your parched throat.
• The joy of flying with pilots who seem unsure of how the aircraft should be operated (”clear air turbulence”, my ass).
• The privilege of paying $5 per bag -OR- the joy of trying to find a place to stuff your bag (good luck!) if you carry it on.
• The privilege of having them lose your bag.
• The joy of waiting an hour to find out they’ve lost your bag, while yesterday’s spilled latte congeals on the floor of the baggage claim area.

I’d rather spend the extra thirty bucks per ticket on an airline that considers air travel to be something more than a flying bus.

I picked up this and “A Man on the Moon” to read during my convalescence, which turned out to be a lot shorter than I had anticipated.

This is an account of the goings-on at NASA Mission Control during the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo manned spaceflight programs.  Kranz has an impressive career spanning Navy pilot, joining the Space Task Group, and quickly establishing himself in the emerging Mission Control organization.  Ultimately he would come to play a pivotal role in the almost-disastrous Apollo 13 mission, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Nixon.

While many of the reviews of this book are quite positive and enthusiastic, I find Kranz’ account, while obviously informed and very authentic, to feel a little bit too autobiographical at times, and the accounts of the organizational minutiae and interpersonal dynamics aren’t terribly interesting.  What I was hoping for is a detailed account of the technical and engineering challenges that were overcome as part of the Apollo effort.  Instead Kranz is much more focused on the operational and ground support aspects, and the development of the processes, organizational structures, and methods to successfully run a manned spaceflight program. I will finish this out of curiosity and respect, but for me at least its kind of “hard slogging”.

I’ve always dug the space program, and am always happy to tune into “Apollo 13″ whenever it is on cable, and really enjoyed the HBO series “From the Earth to the Moon”. Both were produced by Tom Hanks, and are really excellent dramatizations of arguably the most historic accomplishment of the previous century.

Chaikin’s book includes a forward by Hanks, and is the result of an extensive series of interviews with the major players in the Apollo program, including the astronauts and the senior folks at mission control. The result is a very readable account of the manned Apollo missions, including a lot of insights in the character of the astronauts, the tensions that emerged, and the external pressures on the program.

I can’t say I necessarily learned a lot of new information, but it seems like a very accurate portrayal of the program — what happened, who did what, what was important and not.

I think most folks feel particularly disillusioned with the space program as it exists today versus the promise that it held after the moon missions. But even as Armstrong and Aldrin were taking their first steps on the lunar surface, questions about the continued viability of the program were already being asked, and it wasn’t long afterwards that the later planned lunar surface missions were canceled, and the program became mostly an excuse to use up the hardware already built for the purpose. Given the fear and likelihood of another catastrophic failure and loss of life, the sense was to “quit while we’re ahead”.

Chaikin makes an excellent defense of NASA in his closing comments. He says (my paraphrase) “If NASA can be accused of not knowing its purpose, it is because didn’t give it one”. The moon landings were the result of a number of important and simultaneous factors and pressures — the cold war and the prestige game with the Soviets, Kennedy’s assassination, and to some extent the Vietnam war. They came together to create a sense of national will and purpose that evaporated once we got there, and I think with the disillusionment that Nixon’s two terms engendered only served to fuel that feeling.

What struck me also was how quickly the spaceflights became routine. No one pays much attention to a shuttle liftoff today (America’s Space Truck™), but even after Apollo 11, the later missions got less and less TV coverage, so that by the final mission, very little prime time coverage was given to the events on the lunar surface. NASA got really good at sending people to the moon, and as a result people stopped paying attention. This is a normal tendency in our bad-news-is-the-only-real-news mentality, but it surprised me how quickly the manned flights became passe.

Regardless of where the space program is today (Wired has a great piece this month on the burgeoning private space industry), it is still incredibly important I think to remember “we are now a spacefaring species”. Hopefully someday soon we will boldly go back to where we’ve already gone before, and beyond.

I had my gallbladder removed yesterday. Despite my apprehension, the procedure was rather painless.

Arrived at Chelsea Community Hospital Surgery Center at 8am (CCH is across the street from my house, so very convenient). Checked in, filled out paperwork, sat in the waiting room for a few minutes, and then they came to get me.

Had to undress, get comfortable on the bed, and get fitted with an IV. That was probably the worst part, as I’m not terribly vascularized, particularly on my left arm, and the nurse missed on the first try. I started to sweat and get pale, and was relieved when she found a site on the back of my hand that worked. My elbows are the best places to put IVs, and I’ve never had one in my hand. That said, this is the third time I’ve had an IV, and the second time I’ve been to the hospital for myself, so its not like I have a lot of experience with these things.

A visit from the anesthesiologist helped put me at ease — he told me how they would put me to sleep, and indicated that my doctor was the guy, bar none, that he would want to have doing any sort of procedure like mine. Chelsea Community Hospital is affiliated both with the University of Michigan Hospital and St. Joseph’s Hospital, so the docs are experienced and up to date.

Alan came back, took my glasses and wedding ring (its titanium and gold, so if I had some major swelling on my hands could be a real problem getting off), and they wheeled me back to the OR. I remember looking around, chatting with folks for a minute, and then found myself back in the recovery room. It was really as if no time had passed, and I have no memory at all of any of the intervening two hours. I was most apprehensive about that part — would I wake up, feel something bad, get sick, etc. But they have a good cocktail of drugs to knock you out, painkillers for when you wake up, and to prevent nausea from the gas.

Alan came back in a little while and told me things went very well, although the procedure took a little longer as my gallbladder was “very inflamed” (probably due to secondary infection from the stones and it was good that we had it removed). I was discharged a little while later, and was back at home by 12:30.

I napped on the couch for a while, and woke up feeling pretty good. I was expecting to feel wiped out from the general anesthesia, but felt pretty normal, and was hungry enough to have soup, and some more substantial dinner a little while later. Surprisingly I wasn’t especially tired last night, and was mildly uncomfortable, both from the warmth of the weather and the soreness in my belly.

Actually the worst part is the big smooth patch on my tummy, which is somewhat incongruous given my otherwise hirsuteness.

I’ve been warned not to overdo it too quickly, but I am surprised at in general how well I feel.

I’m very thankful to live in a time and place that provides such good health care, and to have the privilege of having access to such care. For most times and places in the world this would not be the case.

This small volume is essentially another piece of “The History of Middle Earth”, which is the collection of annotated material that has been released since Tolkien’s death by his son Christopher, beginning with the publishing of “The Silmarillion”.

Tolkien conceived of much of the mythological and historical background to “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” decades before he began those two works, and in some respects he probably viewed those more narrative works as distractions from his true aim, which was to create a body of invented myth and legend “native” to Britian, and rooted in the invented languages which were his true love.

“The Tale of the Children of Hurin” (or Narn i Chîn Húrin in the Elvish) is the third of the Great Tales that were the centerpiece of Tolkien’s writing on what he came to call the Elder Days, or First Age of Middle Earth, and was considered by Tolkien to contain some of his most important ideas on myth and storytelling. In assembling this volume, Christopher Tolkien’s aim was to redress deficiencies and inconsistencies in the versions that were told in The Silmarillion and in The Book of Lost Tales. The volume is gorgeously illustrated by Alan Lee, whose concept drawings were uses as the basis for the visuals in the Peter Jackson films.

The story is quite dark and tragic, and like most of Tolkien’s heroes, those here are deeply-flawed.

Despite the fact that this material has been presented in part elsewhere, I don’t see this as a purely commercial effort. If one carefully reads the introduction and appendices one gets a good sense of what the editors are trying to do here. I enjoyed this revisiting of stories that I treasured in my youth.