I'm convinced
that the failure of the American space program can be blamed directly on
Walter Cronkite's retirement from CBS. Sure, you nasa.gov types can blather
on about O-rings and linkage cluster grommet malfunctions and other things
that sound like UNIX error messages.
But we know better.And what does this have to do with romance?
Everything, gentle reader.
Remember
those first spectacular rocket launches? Now before we go any further with
this, forget all those 
lame Saturday Night Live skits about phallic rocket ships, and
the old locomotive-in-the-tunnel stuff. This is real science.After the rocket left the ground, assuming
it wasn't one of those grainy, old films of Yugo rockets that fell apart
ten feet in the air, the pictures were spectacular. A camera operator chosen
especially for his or her particular kind of palsy would attempt to follow
the rocket as it progressed downrange.At some point, probably when the people
in Mission Control started getting bored, they pushed the button that ignited
the second stage. We rocket-watchers were warned by Walter that this was
a dangerous time because of G-forces and X-rays and I-don't-know what else.It strikes me that relationships are made
of much the same stuff. There is a Titan rocket that gets things off the
ground, then someone in Mission Control, usually the mother or a close,
meddling friend of one of the astronauts, will say something like, "Well
when the HORMONES die down, WHAT THEN?". Second stage. Danger, Will
Robinson! G-spots and X-forces and V-rays and other icky stuff will conspire
to separate the couple, and jettison them back to earth.
Why?
Why can't things survive beyond that boost that gets love off of the launchpad?
If people can find separate interests sufficient to make them grow apart,
why can't they find common interests to make them want to discover what
is new in each other, and perhaps even more lovable?I can't believe that we are so bound by
inertia and gravity that what goes up must go down. I can't believe that
freed from the gravity of getting to know one another, discovering where
the ticklish spots and the sore spots are, and what flavor Tang our capsule-mates
favor that a kick from the second stage rockets can't keep us in orbit.It is not inevitable that people grow apart.
It is inevitable that people grow. The course of that growth is a matter
of free will. And if two people choose to do so, there is no force in nature
or of man's construction that can make them fall from the sky.But for some reason we've started to trust
the empiricists. We must have proof, things must progress according to the
blueprints and computer projections and operate according to the laws of
physics and logic and other science, none of which is worth any more than
the belief we have in it.So people grow apart when the hormones
get tired. And sad pictures are etched in our memories of spaceships flaring
into oblivion. Shoddy workmanship? Maybe.
But I think it has more to do with belief
than with bolts.When Walter Cronkite told us about space
in our dewy innocence, we believed,
and there are footprints on the moon.
Just imagine what we could do with that faith invested in each other.
