Small Step for ManKind..

In 1969, Neil Armstrong placed the first ever human foot on the Moon and uttered these words: "That's one small step for man but one giant leap for mankind." It was only one step taken by a normal man called Armstrong.. but where, how, and when he took that step; is the most important fact that has changed Human history today! The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA was established in 1958 under President Eisenhower. It was 'initially' put across as a fitting response to the Soviet Union's first artificial sattellite launch. From then on, thousands of specialists, astronauts, scientists,technicians and many more have been working in and around the world for about 45 years now to answer the simple basic question of "what is out there in space". As every mission of NASA is technically very complicated to comprehend, the facts tell us that what lies beneath the surface of complicated equations and calculations is far far more simple.

In September,1999 NASA lost a $125 million Mars orbiter because of a simple mismatch of measurement units. "Lockheed Martin Engineering team used English units, while the agency's team used the conventional metric system for a key spacecraft operation. The Units mismatch prevented navigation information from transferring between the Mars Climate Orbiter space team in at Lockheed Martin in Denver and the flight team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California." -- quotes CNN. Who would have thought that simple metric conversions that we learnt as kids in primary school would come handy in such a high-priced expensive complicated mission?

Coming to a recent historicaly tragic moment for many countries including US, Israel and even India.. for the loss of Seven priceless astronauts who perished aboard the space shuttle Columbia when it disintegrated nearly 40 miles above the Earth. The shuttle's remains and human remains were found in fields in Texas on Feb 1,2003. Such a great catastrophe could occur only due to some majorly huge technical mishap. But, when NASA sent an investigation team in search of something that is similar to 'black-box', although not with the efficient iron covering, the chances seemed quite grim for it to survive(even though it was a relatively small 40 mile fall). After a tiresome hunt, it was finally found intact(with the help of an estimation of the place where it most likely must have fallen with the help of the already recovered pieces around Texas region) in a small opening in one of the fields in Texas. Yet, NASA investigation team named it a pure "miracle" and a "boon" for the investigation to carry on as per plan. It was here that they circumfaced the actual cause of a gross failure of perfect entry into the Earth's orbit. They detected an intense heating in the left wing which intensified over the few minutes of entry into the orbit as gases entered a supposed "leak" in the surface of the shuttle.

By now, it had become evident that the supposed "leak" was caused prior to the entry into the Earth's orbit, which brought the focus back to the "launch" video. One of the videos placed detected a piece of foam falling over the wing edge during launch. This was a very common occurrence and was not considered to be great enough to create potential damage to the space shuttle. Still, followed by this clue, the investigation team set up a small demo of the actual 'left wing' parts and aimed at a likely 6th iron plate. The effect was only mild scratch. Not to be defeated, they further calculated and found the 'exact' location of the hit by the foam which was found to be in the 8th plate. A similar test was again done, with the foam piece (of about 1.7 pounds) hitting the 8th plate at the right angle..and lo behold! A huge 25 cms wide hole was created. It came as a huge shock...

Sometimes, I wonder.. if those seven astronauts' lives... including Kalpana Chawla...could have been saved. If it had been the sixth plate, the damage was only a scratch.. but as fate would have it.. it had to be the eight plate that caused death and huge loss. But who can argue with the Laws of Physics. Just like we can't argue with the probability of human err to be 0.1.. leaving 1% to chance. Reminds me of the time when an AeroPeru Boeing 757 crashed few minutes after take-off resulting in the death of sixty-one passengers and all nine crew members aboard on October 2, 1996. This Lima-Santiago flight took off and shortly enough was reported to be receiving contradictory emergency messages like overspeed, underspeed, flying too low etc. When the Pilot decided to descend, the plane hit the waters..and although there were survivors on board at that point, they invariably drowned. When investigation started, it was to everyone's suprise a simple err on the maintenance crew cleaner. While cleaning the aircraft, he is required to mask a tape on the the static ports and remove them after cleaning. Consequently, the removal bit was forgotten and even though 4 different people including the Captain did their routine-check up.. a simple usage of silvery duct tape resulted in an overlook so major.

Every person's life in today's world has become very competitive. We often look over simple matters like switching off the gas rightaway, or using a clean towel, eating healthier food, regular medicine intakes, condom usage, routine-check ups etc. These don't have direct effect perhaps.. but on the long run..it will hit upon you one day.. that ur small 1 second or 1 minute act changed ur future forever... Life's problems often seem like NASA missions to us.. and some of us fail to believe in the importance of simplest of things because of the huge burden of a bigger thing hovering over the head. Life's ambitions are big endeavors..but everything starts small. Everyone urges you to see the world from the hollistic view. Look at the world as a whole... look at the bigger perspective. Is bigger the better always? The bigger view encompases millions of smaller views. Every small view is unique and no matter how minute they are.. they "do matter". That is my conclusion for the day and I hope to tell you that even the biggest space institute in this world called NASA, which teaches man to look at this earth from the 'bigger perspective', needs the smaller things for its survival...