Paul Allen, one of four billionaires who’ve launched space programs, is less known than Elon Musk, Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos. Bill Whittle argues he should be celebrated more than the others combined, not for how high he’s flown, but for how deep he’s probed to recover the memory of our treasured heroes.
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14 replies on “New Low for American Billionaires? Probe Earth’s Darkest Depths with a Space Pioneer”
I served. But, I’m 180 degrees out on Bill and Steve and, I dunno, about 120 out on Scott. My sentiments were – and are – if I buy the farm, leave me where I dropped. Let the enemy deal with the stink of my rotting corpse. Do NOT waste ANY effort or risk the life of ANY of my fellows to retrieve the useless husk which once housed that which is me.
I understand that the list of missing ships is getting short, thanks in large part to RV Petrel. They do fine work.
I like to think that they might eventually turn their attention to finding MH-370. Bring some closure to those families, as well.
Also, SpaceEx’s Falcon1 Flight Two. Find Jimmy Doohan’s cremains (and all the others, as well) and get Scotty back into space where he belongs!
What really made me sick was when they raised the ship’s bell from the Edmond Fitzgerald. To a seaman, that’s the soul of the ship and should have remained in place. Even the families of the lost men thought that and they made it worse when they installed a smaller replacement one on the wreck.
Based on this segment, we can expect that some decades or a few centuries from now, there will be a RV Petrel-2, a space craft probing the near (and maybe far) cosmos for lost space craft moored on asteroids, various moons, Mars, or floating* in space.
At least we can hope that humanity will still be human and humane enough to undertake such an endeavor if/when deemed necessary.
*Why do we call it “floating” when there is nothing upon which to float? I gather I should have said “flying” or even “resting”, but floating still seems to be the better, or at least more expressive, word.
Floating is fine, but drifting may be better. Given the vacuum of space, any momentum it had still has it going until some gravity catches it and causes it to crash, change trajectory or go into orbit.around something.
Bill, I believe the word that you seek is “closure”.
It’s one of the great things that we do, go look for the missing, and when we find one that is not missing anymore says more about who we are than mounts of words could ever say. The Russians have some 4.5 million listed as MIA and the Grand and Great Grand Kids spend their summers looking for their Grand and Great Grand Fathers. They do it for the same reasons that we do it. The greatest thing a living person can do for another is to tell that person that a loved one is not missing any longer. I would like to know where the Japanese Carriers lie after Midway, and I am sure there are Japanese that would like to know where their loved ones sleep too. Paul Allen was one of those rare individuals who do things of great importance almost unnoticed. He matters, and finding the ship’s matter and finding the missing matters.
The comment about the wearing of the hats…
God, it has to be twenty years ago at this point. Some friends and I met for breakfast at a diner in Jersey. All wargamers and avid amateur historians, one of us noticed an older gentleman sitting at a nearby table wearing a hat with Taffy 3 on it. My friend Michael asked him if he was in Taffy 3 at Leyte Gulf. He nodded, and for he next ten minutes we asked him basically whatever he was willing to answer. He was there with his wife, and after a bit he was pretty choked up and it was clear he wasn’t going to say much more. His wife was also choked up, but while he had a look of almost loss on his face, she had one of gratitude. We thanked him for his service and his time. (And, of course, paid for their breakfast).
Retrieving the dead is worth it. Honoring them is the least any of us can do.
How lucky for you to get to talk to a fellow that was there. Soon they will all be gone and we will only know of it by what they have said or wrote. If you know any WW-II veterans talk to them now if you can.
Agreed. In high school I worked at the A&P. There was a fellow working there, Ralphie. He was our receiver, meaning he stayed in the back and took in truckloads of groceries, checking the bills of lading etc. He was a bit of a goof ball, in his sixties at the time. For the longest time, everybody just called him “yeah yeah yeah”, because that was pretty much his response to everyone and everything. “Hey, Ralphie”, “Yeah yeah yeah” Most of the store was staffed with high school kids, with a core of full timers. A lot of the kids thought Ralphie was a big loser… sixty years old, his job being counting pallets on trucks and making sure the seals on the doors matched the listing on the paperwork. One day, the store manager, hearing people mocking him, told us he had been a Marine pioneer in World War II, and deserved a bit more respect. I spoke with him, and for maybe the only time since he worked there (according to the store manager, anyway), he talked about what he saw during the war. He landed on Saipan, and among other things, was charged with neutralizing the large naval shells the Japanese had set into the beach along one bay to act as mines. Across this bay were the cliffs that anybody who knows anything about Saipan knows is where Japanese civilians, being told that the marines were going to kill them most horribly, were throwing their children off the cliff to prevent the marines from killing them. His unit saw it, but could not get across the bay to save the kids. He started sobbing. This sixteen year old never mocked Ralphie again.
Well sorry about the late reply I kind of forget that I can come here. As far as Mr. Ralph is concerned it speaks well of you. You got to talk to another that was there. Saipan was a gut-wrenching mess for the Marines with regard to the Civil population and having to watch that and there was not a damn thing you could do to put a stop to it.
When I went to a meeting about supplemental prescription coverage plans for Medicare, I was wearing my “USS Wasp” hat and saw a man with his daughter. He was wearing a “Normandy Survivor” hat so after the meeting was over, I approached him to thank him for his service. During the discussion we had he broke down and started to get very upset. I asked him what was bothering him and he said he didn’t feel he had done his part because all he had done was unload ships. I told him he should feel proud for doing that part because it was important to supporting the troops who had gone over the beaches. He thought about that for a minute and got very bright-eyed and smiled at me saying “Thanks. That means a lot to me.”
After that, while we were walking out, his daughter leaned over and whispered to me “You are very kind! That’s the first time in many years I’ve seen him smile!” I told her he deserves to be proud of what he’d done since without those supplies, many men may have died.
My one grandfather served in the Pacific as an anti aircraft gunner guarding rear echelon ports. Never had to fire at a Japanese aircraft. My other grandfather was an ironworker before the war, and became a Seabee who never left the states, but helped build pretty much every naval base on both coasts. At the height of the war, I think we had sixteen million men under arms. Most did not hit the beach. But every one of them was necessary.
I’m sure you’ve heard the saying “An Army travels on its stomach.” My wife’s father was the mess sergeant at one of the training camps in WWII. She does not remember which. To fight well you have to train them. You have to feed them to train them. So he did his part. My father was a medic in WWII for a while until he gave someone penicillin and they died from the allergy. No one knew. Was in the second wave at Normandy, and was behind enemy lines during the Battle of the Bulge. Didn’t talk much about it.