brainrow

It’s been a while since George Lucas has had much worth saying, I think. But I’ve read about a scene in the new Star Wars movie: the Galactic Senate cheers when the Emperor declares the end of the Galactic Republic, “for a safe and secure society.”

Senator Amidala says, “This is how liberty dies. With thunderous applause.”

Rats. I wasn’t going to see the movie. Now I’ve gotta.

Thirty-five years ago this evening, a spherical oxygen tank in the Apollo 13 spacecraft exploded, with a loud bang that rocked the spacecraft.

Flight controllers on the ground didn’t hear the bang, but they noticed sudden changes in numbers displayed on the computer terminals where they monitored the many systems that made up the spacecraft.

The controllers talk to each other with headsets wired into a communications channel called the loop. Many of the controllers are listening to two loops: the main flight controller loop, and a second loop connecting specialists in a particular mission sub-system. Thirty-five years ago tonight, the real action was on the EECOM loop, where the experts monitoring the environmental and electrical systems of the spacecraft’s command and service modules worked to understand the most serious problem America had yet faced in space.

Astronaut Swigert: Okay, Houston, we’ve had a problem here.

Unidentified voice #1: What’s the matter with the data, EECOM?

Unidentified voice #2: We’ve got more than a problem.

EECOM: Okay, listen, listen, you guys. We’ve lost fuel cell one and two pressure.

Unidentified voice #2: We lost O₂ tank two pressure. And temperature.

Astronaut Lovell: Uh, Houston, we’ve had a problem.

EECOM: Okay.

Unidentified voice #2: Standby, they’ve got a problem.

Astronaut Lovell: Main B bus undervolt.

Capcom: Roger, main B undervolt.

Later, EECOM Sy Liebergot realized, with dread, exactly what had happened:

Unidentified voice #3: I want to psych out what those fuel cells are doing here. We might have a pressure problem in the fuel cells, it looks like.

EECOM: Yeah, I see the N₂…

Unidentified voice #3: Two fuel cells simultaneously.

EECOM: That can’t be.

Unidentified voice #3: I can’t believe that, right off the bat, but — but they’re not feeding current.

EECOM: Yeah, if you believe that N₂ pressure, we blew a sphere.

Apollo 13’s lunar landing mission was doomed from the moment the oxygen tank exploded. Through the heroic efforts of the astronauts and the ground crew, the three astronauts were returned safely to earth.

For years, NASA considered the Apollo 13 mission a failure, and tried to sweep it under the rug. It took years to understand that Apollo 13 was not a failure. It was the most severe test imaginable of the people and the processes of the Apollo program; they passed the test. The other Apollo missions were engineering triumphs. Apollo 13 was more than that. The safe splashdown of the Apollo 13 command module was the greatest moment of the entire Apollo program.

Years later, Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell wrote a book about the experience, called Lost Moon. Hollywood turned the book into the blockbuster movie Apollo 13, and Lovell’s book was renamed Apollo 13 to take advantage of the publicity. The book is well worth reading. (The movie is entertaining, but overly melodramatic.)

The best book about Apollo 13 is 13: The Flight That Failed, by Henry S. F. Cooper. I think I’ve read it five times. It’s never taken me much more than a day to read it, because I just can’t put it down once I start reading. If you have any interest in the Apollo program, Cooper’s book is the best place to start reading.

Via Hetty Litjens: here is Dubya, the Movie.

Only one actor can play him.

You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. Then you’ll really cry, when you realize that this is our president.

More on the censors and Saving Private Ryan:

From The Journal News:

“Ryan” is an hours-long treatise on selflessness — which is to say that it stands apart from the television chiefs who Thursday decided to buck ABC network plans to run the film. Without a shot being fired, more than a dozen stations across the nation buckled under financial pressure — the mere hint of fines — and decided to air something else. They might as well have run and hid at Omaha Beach.

Ellis Henican in Newsday:

viewers in Dallas, Atlanta, Phoenix, Orlando and a bunch of other American cities got to fill their evenings with socially uplifting fare like “The Apprentice” (NBC) and “Survivor: Vanuatu – Islands of Fire” (CBS). Instead of experiencing this gripping film about courage, loss and humanity, they were snickering at some pushy moron getting fired by Donald Trump or watching some dimwit being dismissed from the tribe.

This is protecting us from … what?

Ken Schram from KOMO TV:

I honestly don’t know who’s more at fault for this stupidity.

The FCC?

…

How about those simpering, whimpering broadcasters?

They regularly air crap that doesn’t tweak what conscience they might have, but an honest depiction of war leaves them legally queasy.

…

for all the veterans who fought and died preserving freedom; for all those who are fighting and dying today, I wish Private Ryan could have been saved for you.

Instead, we’re becoming a nation of the self-righteous and self-absorbed who’d better start looking to save ourselves.

At long last, the FCC’s new anti-obscenity drive is achieving the intended “chilling effect.” A number of ABC affiliate TV stations are refusing to carry the network’s broadcast of “Saving Private Ryan.”

“Would the FCC conclude that the movie has sufficient social, artistic, literary, historical or other kinds of value that would protect us from breaking the law?” WOI-TV President Raymond Cole said in a statement appearing on its Web site. “With the current FCC, we just don’t know.”

An FCC spokewoman said the agency wouldn’t tell stations whether the program would run afoul of indecency rules “because that would be censorship.” She added, without irony, “If we get a complaint, we’ll act on it.”

Among the balking stations are Sinclair Broadcasting’s six ABC affiliates (including the ABC affiliate here in Columbus, Ohio). This seems to fit right in with Sinclair’s decision earlier this year to ban Nightline’s tribute to fallen U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

Take that, Janet Jackson!

Every year, on Memorial Day, multiplex theaters across the United States should dedicate their biggest screen and their best sound system to showings of Saving Private Ryan.

No other film I’ve seen shows the terrible face of war nearly as well as this one. Everyone old enough to vote should see it. It’s an education for those fortunate enough never to have served in battle themselves.

No television can do this movie justice. This is what the big screen was made for.

It would be a fine Memorial Day tradition to try, year after year, to understand the sacrifices that have been made to safeguard our country and our liberty.

The New Yorker considers Unconventional War. The short piece covers a little of the history of the Geneva Conventions, and the Bush administration’s decision to ignore them.

[T]he Geneva Conventions have been surprisingly successful, given that the activity they regulate is in many ways inherently lawless. The reason is not just that gentlemen prefer to slaughter each other in the most ethical way possible. To the extent that the Conventions have been observed, they have been observed mainly because it was in the interest, mutual or individual, of warring entities to observe them. If you took their soldiers prisoner, they might take yours; and if you tortured theirs they might torture yours. If you made a habit of torturing and killing enemy prisoners, then enemy soldiers and enemy units would be reluctant to surrender. As long as the other side was still strong enough to fight, mistreatment of prisoners was, in theory, deterrable; once the other side was too weak to carry on, it was pointless.

I’ve just watched A Man for All Seasons. I recommend it highly. The following scene between Sir Thomas More and hot-headed Will Roper sent a shiver of recognition down my spine:

Roper: So, now you give the Devil benefit of law!

More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

Roper: Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!

More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?

This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast — man’s laws, not God’s — and if you cut them down (and you’re just the man to do it!), do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?

Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!

Michael Moore is a documentarian in about the same way that Rush Limbaugh is a journalist.

They’re comedians. Just like documentarians and journalists, they work with facts. But Moore and Limbaugh each have a target market. Facts are something to be carefully selected, pruned, clipped, twisted and distorted, if necessary, to make that target audience laugh, clap, cheer, and feel good about themselves and their prejudices. Neither is interested in getting to the bottom of things. Neither wants to dig out the real truth. It’s just not their job.

Still, I’m sorry to see the Walt Disney Co. blocking the release of Moore’s new film, Fahrenheit 9/11. Coming right on the heels of Sinclair Broadcast Group’s blackout of ABC News’ Nightline program last week, I’m starting to worry about giant corporations playing nanny, and deciding which facts or ideas we’re permitted to hear.

It worries me. Even if Michael Moore is a clown.