Exploring space may mean more to my generation

The second of a pair of Mars rovers has landed and the pictures, again are spectacular. I think this space venture has to mean more to my generation than to others. Why? We grew up during the infancy of space exploration.

When I think of the space program, I think of transistor radios, because that was the primary way I experienced the events of the Mercury and Gemini programs.

Dad had a six-transistor radio. He bought it at our local Western Tire Store. It was red and black and came with a soft plastic case and a white earphone.

I tried to find a transistor radio recently. The only one I could find was on sale for $5 at Wal-Mart. It wasn’t the same. It had a built-in speaker, but it was also weather proof with big rubber-looking knob covers.

Dad’s radio had an on-off volume control on the right end and a tuner wheel on the left. It only tuned AM radio. But the design was elegant.
Back in the 1960s, FM radio wasn’t popular in our part of the country. In fact, it wasn’t until the late 1960s when our town, Niles, Mich., got its FM station.

The reason the Plym family built the FM station was not to bring long-hair music to Michiana (back then, longhair referred to classical music), but it meant that our high school football games could be broadcast live on Friday nights.

Our AM station had to leave the air at dusk. The owners received special permission to sign on before dawn most months, at 6 a.m., but in southwest Michigan, where I lived, we were on daylight savings time and that meant that during Winter months, dusk and sign-off came shortly after 5 p.m.

Dad’s radio was just like the one his Uncle Brownie owned. Dad saw it on a trip to their home in Gary, Ind., one summer. Dad wanted a radio that would be loud enough he could hear it over the sound of the powerful diesel train engines where he worked in the engine as fireman. Instead, he quickly found out the little radio, beautiful as it was, had a very small speaker and was better enjoyed in a very quiet setting.

So, the radio stayed home when Dad was on the road.

My friend and classmate Greg Hansmeier brought his transistor radio to school during one of the first Mercury launches. He had permission from our teacher to listen with the earphone and she called on him periodically for updates through the school day.

I thought that was so cool! He showed it to me at recess. It had stand on the back that folded out so he could set it upright on his night stand and listen to WLS after he went to bed.

So, I went home that day for lunch and told Mom all about Greg’s radio. Then I asked if I could take Dad’s radio to school.

I should have asked him, but I knew if Mom said it was OK, she would square it with him.

Dad slept during the day a lot of time. Most of my memories of Dad was him dragging downstairs with no shirt, headed for the coffee pot in the kitchen. I was always warned to “Be quiet, your Dad is upstairs asleep.”

So, while most people identify Walter Cronkite with the early space shots, because he covered them for television from the back of a station wagon, I better remember the voices of CBS radio from the South Bend affiliate, WSBT (and Greg Hansmeier’s reports, of course.)

All of those memories came back to me last summer when my wife, Linda, and I toured the NASA complex in Florida.

We paused on our tour long enough to watch the second Mars rover, the one that landed on the red planet Saturday night, take off.

As I reported in The Times, I was most amazed by the copper-colored rocket flame. It was the same color as a brand new penny, much different than the yellow, almost white color we see on the TV broadcasts.

I was also amazed by the immensity of the building where spacecraft are built and refurbished. It is so large, it defies description.

By comparison, the small room where scientists monitored the 1969 moon shot is almost too small. The computer equipment looks clumsy compared to the personal computer I sit at to write this column. The bleachers outside the building, where VIPs have sat to watch manned rockets climb above the clouds, is smaller than any I have seen at the smallest high school football fields in Illinois. (Illinois high schools seem to place much less emphasis on football than do either Illinois or Michigan.)

Just watching the Mars rover blast off (and paying taxes) makes me feel a part of what is happening on Mars today, for the space program and transistor radios are so much a part of my generation.

What wonders await us and succeedintg generations!