Scott Crossfield, 84, test pilot, engineer and once “fastest man alive,” died last Wednesday after flying his Cessna 210 into a severe storm. Crossfield, glamorized in Tom Wolfe’s “The Right Stuff,” was the first man to fly faster than Mach 2, or twice the speed of sound. He participated in many other programs, including the X-15-still the fastest manned aircraft ever flown.
Test pilots like Crossfield were fundamental in extending human knowledge and creating the aerospace technologies-jetliners, satellite launchers, etc.-that we benefit from today. Crossfield, for one, viewed test flying as part of his job as an engineer. Aviation Week quotes him: “I am an aeronautical engineer, an aerodynamicist and a designer. My flying was only primarily because I felt that it was essential to designing and building better airplanes for pilots to fly.”
Advancing technology, venturing into the unknown and learning how to protect and save lives, requires taking risks-including risking human lives. Crossfield and his contemporaries flew every day knowing that their flights could be their last. Of the first five people to break Mach 1, only Chuck Yeager didn’t later die in a flying accident. Yet still they flew because the risks were necessary to achieve their goals.
Today, though, the agency continuing Crossfield and Yeager’s work of pushing the technological envelope-NASA-is hamstrung by a fear of taking risks. For instance, NASA canceled the Space Shuttle mission to service the valuable Hubble Space Telescope after the Colombia failed because it is too far from the perceived safety of the International Space Station.
Of course, the shuttle is much less useful if it does not stray far from the station, preventing NASA from actually achieving its purpose of advancing air and space science and technology. To paraphrase Gene Kranz, NASA flight director and leader of the team that saved Apollo 13, how can we go to the moon and Mars if we are too scared to go to Hubble?
NASA’s fear of taking risks is the direct result of attitudes prevalent in America today. The agency must struggle for funding doled out by a Congress and American people who are becoming increasingly obsessed with being “safe,” regardless of the potential benefits of taking risks. Since NASA’s job is to push the frontiers of science and engineering, the people’s unwillingness to take risks prevents the agency from doing its job.
NASA’s fear of risk is a reflection of the attitudes endemic in today’s society. We have deceived ourselves into believing that we can somehow be truly safe from harm, and react negatively to anything we perceive as reducing that safety.
We will gladly ignore and trample others’ rights, ideas and viewpoints so long as we can feel safer-be it banning smoking in bars in Starkville or imprisoning detainees at Guantanamo without charge. We will give up our own freedoms and values just to feel safe. Comedy Central refuses to show even a picture of the Muslim prophet Mohammad, not out of respect for religion-they lampoon Jesus Christ constantly-but out of fear of retribution from terrorists.
Regardless of our attempts, we cannot be completely safe. Everything from laying in bed to driving to school or work involves some risk. Usually, we do not even know how much risk is involved. After the World Trade Center attacks, people avoided the airlines, despite them being even less risky, and instead drove on the highways, where tens of thousands die yearly.
By placing safety above all else, we act as if the purpose of life is merely to go on living. Knowledge, love, freedom and the pursuit of happiness become “not worth the risk.” Of course, without those, the life we are so vehemently protecting is no longer worth living. Instead of abandoning our goals and dreams because they are unsafe, we should accept the risks necessary to achieve them. Unnecessary risks, of course, should be avoided, but it may be hard to distinguish between the two. Ultimately, that should be up to the judgment of the people taking the risks.
Those who are afraid to take any risks are deceiving themselves. Furthermore, in an obsessive quest for safety, they handicap themselves and others. Freedom, love and knowledge come only with risk. Being free to live life as you choose risks others choosing to harm you. Only those you love can break your heart. Knowledge comes from experience, and the first experience-necessarily without knowledge of what will happen-is risky.
Facing risk is frightening, but necessary to truly live life. People like Scott Crossfield and NASA’s astronauts who go the extra mile and risk their lives so that we all may gain the knowledge to improve our world are heroes. The best way to honor their legacy is to have the courage and stamina to continue to push the frontiers of human experience, regardless of the risk.