“Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,
A great-sized monster of ingratitudes:
Those scraps are good deeds past; which are devour'd
As fast as they are made, forgot as soon
As done: perseverance, dear my lord,
Keeps honour bright”
This past Saturday evening, while under a tornado watch here in Dixie Alley, I watched an almost unthinkable deed of shared human greatness unfold 250 miles above the surface of the stormy Earth.
Watching the Endurance craft silently sail through the oblivion of space, I could hear the potentially tornadic winds outside my house whipping against the windows and walls. That’s when I prayed, not for my safety, but that the power would stay on long enough for me to fully behold the event unfolding live before my eyes.
SpaceX Crew-10 — made up of two American astronauts, Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, as well as Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi and Russian cosmonaut Kirill Peskov — would soon dock with the International Space Station (ISS).
20 meters … 10 meters … five meters … two meters … beep!
“Dragon contact and soft capture complete,” came the call from ground control.
That announcement marked the SpaceX Crew Dragon program’s 13th successful docking with the International Space Station in just under five years.
Though Crew-10 and their Dragon Crew Endurance craft plan to remain on station through September 2025, their arrival marks the beginning of the end of an unexpectedly long stay for American astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore.
Both former naval test pilots, Williams and Wilmore were stranded on the ISS after what was meant to be a short test flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. Once it was determined that the Starliner had suffered propulsion issues and helium leaks — and thus was unsafe for Williams and Wilmore’s to use for the journey home — their stay at the International Space Station was extended nine months.
With Crew-10’s successful arrival late Saturday evening, Williams and Wilmore will finally be able to return home with SpaceX’s Crew-9 aboard the Dragon Crew Freedom craft, planned for Tuesday, March 18, 2025.
“That is such an amazing journey. You can hardly put it into words,” said Crew-10 Commander Anne McClain, soon after docking with the ISS:
The ride up on the Falcon-9, orbiting the Earth for the last couple of days, it’s been absolutely incredible, and it is something none of us can do by ourselves. As we’ve said before, you cannot be great without the greatness of others, and I tell you the greatness of the ground control teams have really shined through getting us up here safely. Thank you very, very much.
I repeat the commander’s words: You cannot be great without the greatness of others.
Indeed, the greatness of seeing the return of manned-American space flight is truly to the credit of all who made it possible over the last decade.
But who are the leaders and visionaries at the highest levels who first foresaw this return to greatness and made it possible for all?
Elon Musk, the founder and owner of SpaceX, is the most obvious answer — though a strangely controversial one in today’s tornadic winds of political propaganda. To credit Musk with his share of greatness only seems to summon a great-sized monster of ingratitude.
Now that Musk has teamed up with President Trump, millions of people (mostly Democrats) seem to have somehow been trained like dogs to bellow and bare their teeth at the mere mention of Musk, conditioned to forget his good deeds as soon as they are done.
But, again, Musk and his team couldn’t have done it alone. Not only does NASA continue to play an important role in present and future crewed missions, but SpaceX may have never gotten off the ground with astronauts at the helm, if not for one man – President Barack Obama.
In 2010, Obama canceled NASA’s Constellation rocket program, the planned successor to the shuttered Space Shuttle program. The Constellation program had been relying on traditional cost-plus contracts to the Lockheed-Boeing United Launch Alliance. Despite ULA’s perfect launch record, Obama was convinced to try a different approach: let the private sector compete in the development of crewed rockets.
Of course, this approach had plenty of naysayers in NASA and Congress, including Alabama’s own U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby,
“Shelby did his best to hold back SpaceX,” Musk would tweet on Jan. 3, 2023, the day Shelby finally left office.
As detailed by Walter Isaacson in his biography of Elon Musk:
Obama canceled NASA’s Constellation program after his science advisor and budget director said that it was ‘over budget, behind schedule, off course, and unexecutable.’ NASA traditionalists, including the revered astronaut Neil Armstrong, denounced the decision.
‘The president’s proposed NASA budget begins the death march for the future of U.S. human spaceflight,’ said Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama.
Former NASA administrator Michael Griffin, who had traveled with Musk to Russia seven years earlier, charged, ‘Essentially the U.S. has decided that they’re not going to be a significant player in human space flight.’
They were wrong. Over the next decade, relying mainly on SpaceX, the U.S. would send more astronauts, satellites, and cargo to space than any other country.
Thank God Obama was right and Shelby was wrong about Musk and the future of human spaceflight.
Of course, Musk and SpaceX’s good deeds will soon be forgotten if they do not continue delivering day after day, month after month, year after year. Perseverance is the only way to keep humanity’s shared greatness fresh and honors bright before time stows away all our deeds to be forgotten.
If the planned Artemis III mission to return Americans to the moon is to succeed, then NASA, SpaceX, United Launch Alliance, and many other players have their roles to fulfill. No matter the tornadic political winds or the baying mobs of conditioned men, I pray that American spaceflight will continue apace. I especially look forward to seeing those two stranded astronauts, Williams and Wilmore, finally return home to Earth this week.
Joey Clark is a native Alabamian and is currently the host of the radio program News and Views on News Talk 93.1 FM WACV out of Montgomery, AL M-F 12 p.m. - 3 p.m. His column appears every Tuesday in 1819 News. To contact Joey for media or speaking appearances as well as any feedback, please email [email protected]. Follow him on X @TheJoeyClark or watch the radio show livestream.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News. To comment, please send an email with your name and contact information to [email protected].
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