Space Cowboys

Mechanical things are designed and built with a purpose in mind. They have expectations set for them, and they are built to work best when performing to those expectations.

Advanced mechanical things are a culmination of many mechanical things, each built to their own set of expectations. When you have one of these advanced mechanical things, like a car, or aircraft, or space ship - you have many smaller parts making up a whole - each individual part adding it's expected operating range to the mix. When operating these machines, you can feel when everything is going well, when every part is doing what it was designed to do. You can also feel when the opposite is happening, when the situation is such that only some parts are able to do their job well, and overall performance of the whole system suffers.

Cars, airplanes, spacecraft, and the like are all very advanced mechanical things. And while they are not advanced enough to be sentient, or have a conscious, they do have emotions. Some say they have a soul. Cars like to be driven, they overheat when stopped, they rot when left sitting too long. In addition to that, different cars like different speeds, and different types of driving. It all depends on the sum of the expectations the parts were designed for.

Most American cars are very modular. An engine is taken from one platform, a body and electronics from another, and some new headlights are added and we now have a new model. The parts were not designed and built with this particular application in mind - but they happen to fit, so they are used. As such the resulting car is never really happy, because the engine wants to be pulling a larger load, the transmission was geared for a different purpose only to have the final drive changed to match the new model's tire size, and the suspension parts have been pulled from another car which was never outfitted with the new model's wheel. There's never a time where everything comes together, never a time where every part is performing at it's best.

In contrast, most European cars are built with a specific vision in mind- there are expectations from the car as a whole from which the expectations for each part are derived. This is why European cars have a speed they seem to want to cruise at, a certain amount of steering input which seems to make the chassis set, a confidence under braking which you simply don't find in American cars. European cars are happy, American cars are always conflicted.

Airplanes take the above behavior and magnify it significantly. An airplane on the ground is like a race car in stop-and-go traffic, in the rain. No airplane is happy on the ground. Nothing is performing at it's best. They are hard to steer, hard to stop, heck, hard to see out of, on the ground. Once in the air, they have climb and descent rates they like, bank angles that they will settle into, even mixture and prop settings which just make the engine sound better.

The change in emotion in an aircraft when turning on to a runway and starting a takeoff roll is one of the biggest emotion swings one can experience coming from a mechanical device. It goes from not wanting to move to smooth happiness and pure optimism in about 30 seconds.

The movie "Space Cowboys" summed it up in one line, spoken by an ex SR-71 pilot sitting under one of the retired blackbirds:

"SR-71. This is what a plane's supposed to be. She's ugly on the ground, leaks like a sieve. But up around mach one, her seals all expand, she dries up and leans into the wind and goes like hell."

Most people who love to fly are very in touch with their aircraft. Their plane, being happy, makes them happy. Those who never develop this connection typically stop training while still student pilots- and if they don't, they take much longer to finish.

I've been lucky enough to be able to listen to machines most of my life. I care about them, and in many cases, they care back. The emotion, the commitment to performance designed into good machines- it's not something that I just respect, it's something that talks to me, and adds a level of understanding that allows me to operate those machines very, very well.

I go to the Air and Space Museum whenever I can. Not because I need to learn about Air and Space history- I know every exhibit there. I go because the emotions I feel in that building are indescribable.

Today we lost Michael Jackson. That's a shame, the music he produced spoke volumes to billions of people. Today we're also faced with the likely loss of Space Shuttle Atlantis, due to a very silly, but probably uncorrectable, problem found on the inspection after it's most recent mission.

I love music. I certainly don't like death. I downright like a lot of what MJ has created over the years. And despite all the accusations, bad press, and overall creepiness of the guy, I really don't feel he was a bad person. Losing him is a sad thing. A very sad thing. But at the same time it was time for him to go. He was done, he had completed the work he was built to do. He had changed the world, and decided to stop doing live shows about a year ago. It's sad to see him go, but from a purely logical standpoint it's ok. It was time.

I'm sad about Michael.

I'm sadder about Atlantis.

The emotion wrapped up in the shuttle program, and even that particular spacecraft, is amazing. It changed my life. Yes, it changed my life more than Music. Yes. Airplanes, cars, spaceships, and other engineering feats evoke far more emotion and attachment in me than Music.

Next time I tell you that I can't drive a Honda Fit, or that I feel paying $700 per month for the rest of my natural life for the flight training I've done is the best money I've ever spent, or that driving on track is exactly like painting a picture- and you look at me funny - I want you to imagine the void that you would have in your life if suddenly all Music in your life disappeared.

That's what *it* is for me- working with complex systems and making them work at their very best, and having them share their happiness with me. It doesn't matter if it's a car, or an airplane, or something I've built on a computer or out of lego. It's the joy of seeing it all come together and not just work, but work well.

A side effect of this is the deep appreciation of the systems themselves, hence the sadness over Atlantis. It's a very storied spacecraft, but it wasn't done writing stories yet. It wasn't done with it's work, it had more to do- one more mission this year, and then one or perhaps two next year. More times where things would all come together and Atlantis would get some truly amazing things done. Those times likely won't come now. More from Space Cowboys:

"She's only happy up there, goin' fast. She's not meant to be sitting on the ground. That's a lousy way to die. Sitting around, waiting..."

I wish I could finish this with a positive spin.