4 - Sunday, December 1, 1991 - North Shore News Lost in space: An image for our times I HAVE been looking for years for a single image that would capture our times, something that would say it all in one potent mental picture. STRICTLY PERSONAL I think I’ve found it. It was in the pages of this month's Omni magazine, a story about Sovict cosmonaut Sergey Krikalev, the flight engineer on board the space station Mir. When we look up in the night skies, very few of us think about cosmonaut Krikalev. [I'll bet a lot of us have even forgotten that Mi itself is up there. The launching cf the space sta- tion a few years ago was the last great achievement of the once- _ mighty Soviet space program. It _ came at a time when American - plans for getting a space station into orbit were bogging down badly in Congress. ‘ . The launch of Mir (Russian for “*Peace’’) gave U.S. hawks a boost, since they always saw their own space station as having a “non-civilian component,” just like the shuttle prograin. (Military ** Postulate No. | — grab the high ground.) The idea has been thrown around freely that space travel “was somehow humanity’s deepest dream since back in the cave- person days. But the concept of space itself. . didn't enter art, literature or : ‘religion — that is to say, didn’t enter human consciousness — un- | til virtually the last generation. Until now, there is no evidence of a great human urge to venture _off-world, except by dying. If space itself was beyond imag- .- ination, space travel was doubly unthinkable. In the television age, the whole ’ situation is reversed. ‘Not only has space travel become a majer feature of our mental landscape, we have grown so accustomed to images of Earth, as seen from space — and nowa- _ days computer-enhanced animated close-ups of the surface of Venus — that it is as though we really have become seasoned spacefarers. Oh hum, another hitherto unex- plored planetary surface below... Yet the ambitious space pro- grams of the past are just that — things of the past. The space program of the USSR was probably even more para- noia-driven than the equivalent high-paying foreign *‘cosmonauts’* on board various orbital flights for external political reasons, and bureaucrats plunking non-paying representatives of restive republics on board for in- ternal political reasons. . Cosmonaut Krikalev kissed his bride goodbye last May, expecting to see her by October, only to learn last month that in order to appease independentist sentiments in the Kazakh republic, his bosses had allowed a Kazakh ‘‘guest’’ to ride up to the space station in the place of Krikalev’s scheduled replacement. - The political guest, of course, got to ride back down after a couple of exciting weightless days. Krikalev stayed behind — and will remain in orbit until at least next March. The thrill of weightlessness, we may guess, has largely worn off for the stoic cosmonaut. Let us hope that if it becomes a matter of life or death, a rocket would be !aunched by the Ameri- cans, if the Soviets couldn't af- ford it, to rescue him. It is hardly his fault that Gor- dachev and Yeltsin alike have been foes of the ‘“‘luxury’’ of a space program at a time when the Motherland below was falling back into a pre-industrial condi- tion. Tough fuck for cosmonaut Krikalev that several of the leaders of the aborted coup in Moscow were influential in the rocket in- dustry. When their heads rolled, their favorite programs were decapitated along with them. The Mir space station has never been completed. Its oldest sections are already wearing out even though the final sections haven’t gotten up into orbit. I thought things didn’t wear out Conventics Center Westlake Center ® Fiskerman’s e Terminal e Opera House e in space. Apparently, they do. Maybe myths wear out too. The myth — however recently devised — that we are a space- bound species might just have been the last gasp of a Judaeo- Christian ethic separating godliness from planetary citizen- ship, communism — and ultimate- ly the Mir space station — being a mere spin on the original distor- tion. The whole romantic notion of heading off to other worlds to find our paradises has, I think, been thoroughly replaced by the tealization that we either find paradise here on Earth or perish. And thus cosmonaut Sergey Krikalev orbits a planet that has almost entirely forgotten him, leaving him marooned on a crumbling space station, vhile tides of revolution and war sweep back and forth below. Even if he was to he brought back to the surface tomorrow, he would be a kind of modern-day Rip Van Winkle. If we leave him up much longer, he'll be like a liv- ing Ice Man when he comes down. That’s how fast things are changing. Make your move. Discover the many faces of Birks For a watch of remarkable versatility and superior quality rake a look at our exclusive Birks watch collection. You will find everything from classic and luxurious to sporty and rugged. . 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