Discovery’s Final Launch: The Space Race is Over

Bragg, Billy – The Space Race Is Over The Space Race is Over – Billy Bragg (press to play)

Today at 4:50 p.m. EST (2150 GMT), the space shuttle Discovery is scheduled to make its final launch. During the 11-day mission, Discovery will bring supplies to the International Space Station, including Robonaut 2, a humanoid robot (I missed Robonaut 1 apparently). Since Discovery’s first flight in 1984, the shuttle has traveled 143 million miles and carried 246 humans into space.

I remember watching the first Discovery flight. It was an exciting time for the space program. I was lucky to grow up with exciting changes in the space program, including seeing Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. The new space shuttles promised an even more exciting era. Many years before the shuttle’s first launch into space, I had a plastic space shuttle model that I glued together, and I would have guessed that by the time I was as old as I am now, we would have regular trips to the moon and robot servants.

But it did not happen that fast. Science takes time, and some of the greatest advances are not necessarily the most exciting initially. I understand the debates about how money should be spent, but we cannot ignore science if we want a good future for us earthlings. And the International Space Station is pretty cool, and at least they will have a robot servant.

Billy Bragg is an English singer-songwriter who has songs ranging from punk to folk. He is also active in left political causes, and in the 1990s Woody Guthrie’s daughter chose him to write music for some of Guthrie’s lyrics that were without music. The result was the excellent 1998 Mermaid Avenue album that he recorded with Wilco (along with Mermaid Avenue, Vol. II two years later). But Bragg probably is more known for writing excellent lyrics.

One of Bragg’s songs from his Must I Paint You A Picture?: The Essential Billy Bragg, “The Space Race is Over” captures the nostalgia for the space adventures and perfectly captures how one might feel about the Discovery’s final mission. He remembers back to being a kid and telling his mom, “We’ll walk on the moon someday” because “Armstrong and Aldrin spoke to me/ From Houston and Cape Kennedy.”

The song tells about his dream of someday traveling in space “On the high tide of technology. / But the dreams had all been taken / And the window seat’s taken too.”

Now that the space race is over
It’s been and it’s gone
And I’ll never get to the moon.
Now that the space race is over
And I can’t help but feel
That we’ve all grown up too soon.

It is possible Bragg is being critical of the waste of resources, but I do not think that is the main point of the song. His son does ask, “”Why did they ever go,” and the song concludes, “Now that the space race is over/And I can’t help but feel/That we’re all just goin’ nowhere.” But the nostalgia is genuine. The song’s invocation of his mother and his son point toward him intending the mixed emotions in the song.

“The Space Race is Over” appears on Billy Bragg’s album William Bloke, which Bragg released in 1996 after taking some time off from music to raise his son. In that context, the song’s reference to his son evokes some loss that future generations are not getting the excitement from science and the space program that we “older folks” did. Even if a computer did win on Jeopardy recently, it is not as exciting as getting humans to the moon. And “don’t offer me a place out in cyberspace / ’cause where in the hell’s that at?”

Will I be watching the final launch of Discovery today? As an adult, I have other plans and will be traveling on the subway around the time of the launch, so I will miss it. Oh well. Godspeed Robonaut 2.

Now that the space race is over
And I can’t help but feel
That we’ve all grown up too soon.

Bonus Live Version Video: A live video of Billy Bragg performing “The Space Race is Over” is on YouTube.

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Author: chimesfreedom

Editor-in-chief, New York. View all posts by chimesfreedom