For someone like me – fat, lazy, unmotivated, cowardly – there are any number of ways to feel worse about my self-imposed lot in life, but none more effective than a visit to one of America’s hallowed halls of heroism. Fortunately, there was just such a spot on our latest venture into the nation’s farm belt, tucked ever-so-gently into the unassuming town of Hutchinson, Kansas. No, I’m not talking about the justly famous Salt Museum (we’ve covered that, remember?), but rather the town’s other attraction, the Kansas Cosmosphere & Space Center. Here, in a complex designated as a “Smithsonian Institution Affiliations Program,” a visitor – any visitor, including the weak and retreating – can become fully immersed in the 20th century’s most lasting achievement: the evolution from primitive rocketry to landing on the moon.
It’s a journey of science, logic, and brain power, and as it’s also located in one of the country’s most reactionary outhouses, ever the more impossible. For here, in Kansas of all places, sits one of the finer tributes to the men and women of the space program ever built, and one worthy of your time, effort, and hard-earned dollars. For a mere $12 a ticket, one can enter the Hall of Space Museum (the IMAX film and some kid-friendly lab are extra), stand agog, and feel that much more worthless about one’s relative lack of achievement. It’s a place where ego goes to die, reducing someone of my ilk to a staring contest with the uber-macho Buzz Aldrin where, quickly flinching, I acknowledged that yes, while I can recite every Best Picture winner or inhale a half-dozen Hot Pockets in one sitting, he, among other things, walked on the fucking moon. And didn’t shit his pants! At least not out of fear.
I knew we were in for an intimidating afternoon when the kid at the ticket booth – I say “kid”, but everyone appears younger to my decaying heap – looked up just long enough for me to notice that he was reading (for pleasure, apparently), the most complicated book I had ever seen. I assume it was calculus, or something similar that made me feel retarded inside of two seconds, but whatever it was, he didn’t appear shocked and confused by the material. I felt like leaving right then and there because, although I consider myself a reasonably intelligent person, I’m not fond of being humiliated, especially when I’m paying for the privilege. Tickets secured, we passed the massive IMAX reels (as well as a cafeteria, where they no doubt themed everything from burritos to ice cream with a clever space moniker) and made our descent into the museum. Would we emerge flabbergasted? Dumber than when we entered?
Admittedly, while the immediate sight of a Swastika was not exactly unexpected in Kansas, it did seem odd in a respectable museum; at least until I realized that any journey through space must begin with the Nazis. We might not want to admit it, but many of the technological advancements of the Cold War period are due to Hitler’s scientific team (Wernher von Braun chief among them), and without the pursuit of “wonder weapons” (V-1 and V-2 rockets, primarily), one wonders if we’d still be in pursuit of our first moon shot. Sure, over 100,000 forced laborers died during the making of these weapons (shockingly, Hitler took some time off from the Holocaust and used mainly Soviet, French, and Polish “workers”), but all was in pursuit of the greater goal: reducing the whole of Europe to an ash heap. Thankfully, Nazi Germany failed in its quest for world domination, but the resulting weaponry – and scientific minds – helped usher in an unprecedented era of achievement and danger.
Within a few rooms, one can immediately sense that chief among the museum’s virtues is its commitment to detail. One will not want for facts and figures at the Cosmosphere, though instead of dry, dull lectures, the panels and displays add to a sense of wonder, at least for anyone who gives two shits about the latter half of the 20th century. If anything, those years – culturally and politically – were defined by the ever-present threat of mass death, and how the weapons of war also contributed to our greater understanding of the universe itself. The museum moves delicately through the post-WWII years and into the Cold War, all with objective detachment, choosing the historical record over any rank agenda. Sure, this is Kansas, and with Kansas you get Boeing, but if it’s propaganda, it’s the kind any rational person could believe in. At the very least – and it’s more than evident as the museum works through the test pilot era into the more overtly “nuclear age” – we see quite clearly that whatever the Cold War was, it brought out our competitive fire. We are, it seems, at our best when we have something “evil” against which to measure ourselves. Sure, this also leads to blacklists and paranoia, but at least our kids were majoring in physics and not dead-end uselessness like Communications or, ahem, Sociology.
The test pilot era, complete with the breaking of the sound barrier, never fails to send me into a tailspin of emasculation, for this was when men were truly men, and tough sumbitches like Chuck Yeager defied the odds and risked death for no other reason than the call of progress. Admittedly, men like Yeager also beat their wives, ignored their children, and drank away the better years of their lives with regret and disillusionment, but it all seemed worth it when we had something big to believe in. These men appealed to the better angels of our nature, and for once, they produced a patriotism that didn’t feel divisive and soaked in Republican party talking points. Again, this was science, and Jesus didn’t have much to say in the face of quadratic equations and elliptical orbits. I'm guessing he still doesn't. From there, the displays hit Sputnik, the moon race, and eventually, the missile era. Curiously, the Soviet Union received a fair amount of press, including a rather large room with the standard Russian music piped in. It felt glum, like standing in a bread line, but kudos to any American institution that gives credit where credit is due. Even to godless Communists.
At last, the museum moves full tilt into the easy applause line – the men and machines of the moon years – and from every corner, we see space suits, capsules, and even the Apollo 13 command module, Odyssey. There are replicas, sure, but most of what we see is the real deal, including an Apollo white room that was one of three in existence. Much is on loan from the Smithsonian, and I’ll be damned if they didn’t have a gen-u-ine moon rock, now and forever the most valuable substance on (though not of) planet Earth. And who knew they called astronaut diapers “fecal management subsystems,” though the name is less troubling than trying to imagine someone like Neil Armstrong chipping a lunar golf ball while up to his mid-back in excrement. There are also astronaut cameras, a Saturn I-B rocket fin, and the expected assortment of astronaut chow, none of which looks any worse than my average fast food lunch. A particular treat is the display housing the actual Liberty Bell 7 capsule, recovered in July 1999 after being lost at sea in 1962. The story of LB7, as tragic as it was for astronaut Gus Grissom’s ego (the hatch blew early, causing the destruction of one expensive piece of equipment), becomes even more depressing in light of Grissom’s ultimate fate in the Apollo 1 fire.
Everything ends with the space shuttle, appropriately enough, though there was a perfunctory display regarding the space accomplishments of private enterprise. The possibility of civilians flying in outer space is exciting, but far less so when one realizes that as with most in this life, only the very rich will ever get a taste. This is why the achievements that came before that wacky Branson guy mean much more on their face – these were national goals with a national purpose, and thanks to tax dollars, we were all, in some way, part of the process. Private space accounts read more like eccentric ego boosts; more about profit and headlines than anything tangible and lasting. And the Cosmosphere never falters in that respect, tipping its cap to the bravery and sacrifice involved, but never forgetting the failures and vast public resources necessary to produce those inspiring successes. We had goals and did all we could to achieve them. In our current era of ennui and pointless wanderings, it’s a lesson we could stand to learn all over again. Even if I'm destined for a diaper that won't see outer space.
