letter

Dear NASA,

Happy birthday! Perhaps you didn’t know, but we’re the same age. In the first week of October 1958, you were born of the National Aeronautics and Space Act as a civilian space agency, while I was born of my mother in the East Bronx. So the yearlong celebration of our golden anniversaries, which begins the day after we both turn forty-nine, provides me a unique occasion to reflect on our past, present and future.

I was three years old when John Glenn first orbited Earth. I was seven when you lost astronauts Grissom, Chaffee, and White in that tragic fire of their Apollo 1 capsule on the launch pad. I was ten when you landed Armstrong and Aldrin on the Moon. And I was fourteen when you stopped going to the Moon altogether. Over that time I was excited for you and for America. But the vicarious thrill of the journey, so prevalent in the hearts and minds of others, was absent from my emotions. I was obviously too young to be an astronaut. But I also knew that my skin color was much too dark for you to picture me as part of this epic adventure. Not only that, even though you are a civilian agency, your most celebrated astronauts were military pilots, at a time when war was becoming less and less popular.

During the 1960s, the Civil Rights movement was more real to me than it surely was to you. In fact it took a directive from Vice President Johnson in 1963 to force you to hire black engineers at your prestigious Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. I found the correspondence in your archives. Do you remember? James Webb, then head of NASA, wrote to German rocket pioneer Wernher von Braun, who headed the Center and who was the chief engineer of the entire manned space program. The letter boldly and bluntly directs von Braun to address the lack of equal employment opportunity for Negroes in the region, and to collaborate with the area colleges Alabama A&M and Tuskegee Institute to identify, train, and recruit qualified Negro engineers into the NASA Huntsville family.

In 1964, you and I had not yet turned six when I saw picketers outside the newly built apartment complex of our choice, in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. They were protesting to prevent Negro families, mine included, from moving there. I’m glad their efforts failed. These buildings were called, perhaps prophetically, the Skyview Apartments on whose roof, 22-stories over the Bronx, I would later train my telescope on the universe.

My father was active in the Civil Rights movement, working under New York City’s Mayor Lindsay to create job opportunities for youth in the Ghetto—as the inner city was called back then. Year after year, the forces operating against this effort were huge: poor schools, bad teachers, meager resources, abject racism, and assassinated leaders. So while you were celebrating your monthly advances in space exploration from Mercury to Gemini to Apollo, I was watching America do all it could to marginalize who I was and what I wanted to become in life.

I looked to you for guidance, for a vision statement that I could adopt that would fuel my ambitions. But you weren’t there for me. Of course, I shouldn’t blame you for society’s woes. Your conduct was a symptom of America’s habits not a cause. I knew this. But you should nonetheless know that among my colleagues, I am the only one in my generation who became an astrophysicist in spite of your achievements in space rather than because of them. For my inspiration, I instead turned to libraries, remaindered books on the cosmos from bookstores, my rooftop telescope, and the Hayden Planetarium. After some fits and starts through my years in school, where becoming an astrophysicist seemed at times to be the path of most resistance through an unwelcoming society, I became a professional scientist. I became an astrophysicist.

Over the decades that followed you’ve come a long way. Including, most recently, a Presidentially initiated, Congressionally endorsed vision statement that finally gets us back out of low-earth orbit. Whoever does not yet recognize the value of this adventure to our Nation’s future, soon will, as the rest of the developed and developing world passes us by in every measure of technological and economic strength. Not only that, today you look much more like America—from your senior-level managers to your most decorated astronauts. Congratulations. You now belong to the entire citizenry. Examples of this abound, but I especially remember when the public took ownership of the Hubble Telescope, your most beloved unmanned mission. They all spoke loudly back in 2004, ultimately reversing the threat that the Telescope might not be serviced a fourth time, extending its life for another decade. Hubble’s transcendent images of the cosmos had spoken to us all, as did the personal profiles of the Space Shuttle astronauts who deployed and serviced the telescope, and the scientists who benefited from its data stream.

Not only that, I’ve even joined the ranks of your most trusted, as I serve dutifully on your prestigious Advisory Council. I came to recognize that when you’re at your best, nothing in this world can inspire the dreams of a Nation the way you can—dreams fueled by a pipeline of ambitious students, eager to become scientists, engineers, and technologists in the service of the greatest quest there ever was. You have come to represent a fundamental part of America’s identity, not only to itself but to the world.

So as we both turn forty-nine, and begin our fiftieth trip around the Sun, I want you to know that I feel your pains and share your joys. And I look forward to seeing you back on the Moon. But don’t stop there. Mars beckons, as do destinations beyond.

Birthday buddy, even if I have not always been, I am now your humble servant,

My entire family is safe. We evacuated our lower-Manhattan residence at about noon yesterday and migrated north on foot to Grand Central Terminal (about three miles) where we took Metro North to the home of my parents in Westchester, from where I write this message.

We live four blocks from the World Trade Center, in view of both Towers, City Hall, and City Hall Park. I happened to be working at home yesterday. My wife went to work at 8:20AM. I left at the same time to vote in NYC's Mayoral Primary. My 9-month old son was at home with our nanny. My 5-year old daughter was attending her second day of Kindergarten at PS-234, three blocks from World Trade Center. Lineup time in the yard was 8:40AM in full view of WTC 1.

When the first plane hit at 8:50, they evacuated the school without incident. I noticed WTC 1 on fire in a high floor upon returning from voting, about 8:55AM. Large crowds of onlookers were gathering along the base of City Hall Park as countless fire engines, police cars, and ambulances screamed past.

I went home, grabbed my camcorder, went out to the street and started filming. I consider myself to be emotionally strong. What I bore witness to, however, was especially upsetting, with indelible images of horror that will not soon leave my mind.

1) I first see WTC 1 on fire at a high floor. Not just flames coming out of some windows, but four or five entire floors on fire with smoke penetrating floors still higher.

Upsetting enough, but then...

2) Among the papers and melted steel fragments fluttering to the ground, I notice that some debris was falling distinctly differently. These weren't parts of the building that were falling. These were people, jumping from the windows, their bodies tumbling in rapid descent from the eightieth floor. I noticed about ten such falls, morbidly capturing three of them on tape.

Upsetting enough, but then...

3) A fiery explosion burst forth from a corner of WTC 2 about two thirds of the way up, perhaps the 60th floor. The fireball created an intense radiative impulse of heat from which we all had to turn our heads. From my vantage point, I could not see the plane that caused it, which hit 180 degrees on the other side of the building. Nor did I know at the time that a plane caused it. I first thought it was a bomb, but the explosion was not accompanied by the tell-tale acoustic shockwave that rattles windows. This was simply a low frequency rumble.

As it burst from the building's corner, the fireball was so large that it extended all the way across to WTC 1. The fact the building's corner exploded tells me that the ignited jet fuel got focused by the sides of the floor into which the second plane flew, meeting at the corner with increased explosive pressure. The flames were accompanied by countless thousands of sheets of paper that burst forth, fluttering to the ground as though every filing cabinet on multiple floors was emptied.

The fact that the second tower was now on fire made it clear to us all on the street that the first fire was no accident and that the WTC complex was under terrorist attack. Morbidly, I have the explosion on tape and the sounds from the horrified crowd surrounding me. At this point I stopped filming, and went back inside my apartment.

Upsetting enough, but then...

4) As more and more and more and more and more emergency vehicles descended on the World Trade Center, I hear a second explosion in WTC 2, then a loud, low-frequency rumble that precipitates the unthinkable—a collapse of all the floors above the point of explosion. First the top surface, containing the helipad, tips sideways in full view. Then the upper floors fall straight down in a demolition-style implosion, taking all lower floors with it, even those below the point of the explosion. A dense, thick dust cloud rises up in its place, which rapidly pours through the warren of streets that cross lower Manhattan.

I close all our windows and blinds. As the dust cloud engulfs my building, an eerie darkness surrounded us—the kind of darkness you experience before a severe thunderstorm. I look out the window and can see no more than about 12 inches away.

Upsetting enough, but then...

5) Outside my window, after about 15 minutes, visibility grows to about 100-yards, and I notice about an inch white dust everywhere outside my window. That's when I realize that every single rescue vehicle that had parked itself at the base of the World Trade Center must now be buried under 110 collapsed floors of tangled debris, and multiple feet of dust. This collapse took out the entire first round of rescue efforts including what were surely hundreds of police officers, firefighters, and medics.

As visibility increased and I could now see the blue sky, there was blue sky where WTC 2 used to be.

Upsetting enough, but then...

6) I decide it's time to get my daughter, who was taken by the parents of a friend of hers to a small office building, six blocks farther from the WTC than my apartment. As I dress for survival: boots, flashlight, wet towels, swimming goggles, bicycle helmet, gloves, I hear another explosion followed by a now all-too familiar rumble that signaled the collapse of WTC 1, the first of the two towers to have been hit. I saw the iconic antenna on this building descend straight down in an implosion twinning the first.

This dust cloud was darker, thicker and faster-moving than the first. When this round of dust reached my apartment, fifteen seconds after collapse, the sky turned dark as night, with visibility of no more than about a centimeter. It was getting harder to breathe in the apartment, but we were stable.

At this point I offer no hope of survival for any of the rescue personnel who were on the scene.

Upsetting enough, but then...

7) The cloud settles once again, now leaving a total of about three inches of dust outside my window. Another dark cloud of smoke now occupies the area where two 110-story buildings once stood. This cloud, however, was not the settling kind. It was smoke from ground-level fires. At this time the air in the apartment is getting harder and harder to breathe and it becomes clear that we should evacuate—especially with the likelihood of underground gas leaks. I load up my largest backpack with survival items, put my son in our most nimble stroller and leave with our nanny, who then walks across the Brooklyn Bridge toward her home.

I go to where my daughter was held, which was upwind from all debris on a quiet street. She is in good spirits, but clearly upset. I have a crayon drawing of hers, sketched while waiting for me to arrive, which shows the Twin Towers with smoke and fire coming from them, as only a 5-year old could draw. Daddy, why do you think the pilot drove his plane into the World Trade Center? Daddy, I wish this was all just a dream. Daddy, if we can't return home tonight because of all the smoke, will my stuffed animals be okay?

Upsetting enough, but then...

8) From the calm of an upholstered couch in the office where my daughter was kept, with my son under one arm and my daughter under the other, I realize that, fully loaded, each tower of the WTC holds 10,000 people. From what I witnessed, I have no reason to believe that any of them survived. In fact, I would not be surprised if the death toll reached 25-30,000. Beneath the Towers is an entire universe of six subterraneous levels containing scores of subway platforms, plus a hundred or so shops and restaurants. The Towers simply collapsed into this hole—a hole large enough to have supplied the landfill for the World Financial Center across the West Side highway from the World Trade Center.

Upsetting enough, but then...

9) I realize that if the death toll is as high as I suspect, this incident is much, much worse than Pearl Harbor, where several thousand people died. It's more spectacularly tragic than the Titanic, the Hindenburg, Oklahoma City, car bombs, and airplane hijackings. The number of deaths in one four-hour period will be nearly half of the American death toll in all of Vietnam.

I reconnected with my wife by 4PM, meeting her just north of Union Square Park, before we hiked another mile north to Grand Central Terminal for our ride to Westchester, above New York City.

I will never be the same after yesterday, in ways that I cannot foresee. I suppose that my generation now joins the ranks of those who lived through unspeakable horrors and survived to tell about it. How naive I was to believe that the world is fundamentally different from that of our ancestors, whose lives were changed by bearing witness to the 20th century's vilest acts of war.

Peace to you all

Dear Family, Friends, and Colleagues,

Now, three months after the double Boeing 767 attacks on the World Trade Center, my family is physically healthy and emotionally stable. A detailed update follows, but it took me 1700 words to convey. Please forgive the length. It was part communication and part catharsis.

Bearing eye-witness to an event that makes world headlines and carries a nation into battle is a heavy burden to carry. My family spent twelve days in Westchester as war refugees from lower Manhattan. For each of the first ten days, I slept fourteen hours, which is two and a half times my nightly average. For the next several days, I spent most of my waking hours in a kind of stunned silence. For the two months that followed, sirens (which, to a city dweller, are a form of acoustic wall-paper) actually rustled my nerves; they, having been continually immersed in the sounds of rescue vehicles for nearly two hours—until the collapse of the south Tower, when the air went morbidly silent.

For those same two months, the mere sight of Park Avenue South (the concourse up which I walked while pushing my son in his stroller and carrying my daughter on my arm) would cause my muscles to twitch, in silent, yet autonomic remembrance of my expended energy escaping three miles to Grand Central Terminal, northward to my parent's quiet home in Westchester.

I remain fearless of airplanes. I write this as I sit on a Boeing 767 en route to Los Angeles. But I can't keep my mind from drifting: What's the largest piece of this airplane that could crash into the World Trade Center, explode out the other side, and survive in tact? The landing gear? My computer battery? My belt buckle? My wedding ring? How quickly would I die? One second? A tenth of a second? As a varsity wrestler in college at 190lbs and as an amateur martial artist, how many terrorists could I wrestle to the ground?

Based on what I have read, I suppose these are all symptoms of a form of shell-shock that are only slowly in ebb. After September 11th, I am different in several ways. My emotional mind has been somewhat separated from my rational mind. They were formerly interwoven with a careful balance of the two, but where my emotions would never override decisions that required the benefit of rational thought. For a while, my emotions went unchecked. I was irrationally angry with the endless parade of tourists, cameras swaying from their necks, filing past my window asking area residents, Which way is Ground Zero? They would utter these words while covering their mouths, not wanting to breath the smoky air that I must breathe every day. Although it's a warren of streets primarily associated with finance and business, downtown Manhattan remains the neighborhood of fifty thousand people. I was not alone in my sentiments.

My sister, who knew and loved the World Trade Center from the time she worked for the City as a Mounted Urban Park Ranger, made the arresting comment, I find it easier to believe the Towers were never there than to believe that they are now gone.

The picture-taking tourists were generally respectful of the makeshift shrines along the streets near Ground Zero. They are silenced by the force of reverence as they pass the vistas of the tangled wreckage. What had I done my first day back in the neighborhood? Walk the route and quietly take pictures. Realizing the hypocrisy, my rational mind slowly overcame my feelings of resentment. When asked, I now direct tourists to the best viewing sites of the wreckage. I do this because it's the right thing to do. Ground zero belongs to America. Ground zero belongs to the World. Ground zero is the hallowed graveyard for 3,000 souls. It just happens to lie in my back yard.

There are other changes within me. I leave work a little earlier. I hug my children more often. I am more likely to talk to strangers. I am more easily saddened by sad things. And, as it true for so many, I have become intolerant of intolerance. Police have changed too. The two-dozen officers stationed in view of my living room window have become genuinely helpful and friendly. They smile and pose for pictures with passersby. To a New Yorker, this is an extraordinary sight. Beautiful moments. We need these now.

Lest you think all is well, our local fire department, two blocks away, lost six men. They lost only six because they were the first on the scene, assisting escapees from the north Tower. Rescue workers who came later went to the South Tower after it was hit. But the south Tower was the first to collapse, burying all at its base. Fire stations farther away in Manhattan, from where it took longer to reach the site, lost upwards of a dozen men. The sidewalks outside of these fire stations continue to spill forth with candles and flowers. Another shrine lies along the Hudson River, near mid-town. An adjacent pier contains a morgue and a makeshift forensic lab that continues to identify the remains of the dead that are shuttled from Ground Zero. You can't walk more than a half dozen blocks without an encounter with one of these quiet reminders that something very, very bad has happened.

My September 12th account of escaping lower Manhattan received a wide e-mail distribution, after I had distributed it only to a small circle of family, friends, and colleagues. Among the thousand responses that I received was from a man who mailed two cuddly stuffed animals. He did this after reading of my daughter's sadness that her stuffed animals would have dust all over them and that we would not soon return to the apartment; sometimes little gestures are big gestures. At one year old, my son is too young to know or remember anything that has happened. He still cries when he is hungry and laughs at peek-a-boo. My five-year old daughter occasionally talks about the tragedy, but in a way that tell me she's just fine. Daddy, if the bad men on the airplane are dead, how did the newspapers get a picture of them? Daddy, if the World Trade Center were across the street, where the City Hall fountain is, then the people who fell from the windows might have fallen in the water and lived. Daddy, even though the World Trade Center is gone, the Word Financial Center is still there. Maybe when they clear away the dust, we can go back to its park and play.

By two weeks after September 11th, we moved back to our downtown apartment, less than a quarter mile from ground zero. But this was only after the 1/8-inch layer of World Trade Center dust was removed from every surface in our 1700 sq. ft. apartment. This was a four-day job, with two of those days employing six people who wielded brooms, micro-fiber sponges, and HEPA vacuums. This dust layer, a mixture of pulverized concrete, wallboard, other silicates, and traces of asbestos, is what flowed through the panes of our closed windows. The dust cloud had been so thick and dense that many of our neighbors, those who had left their windows open on that beautiful end-of-summer day, are only now moving back into their apartments. At least one of our neighbors had to discard every drape, every sheet, and every item of clothing that was left behind.

While the media and Congress were marshalling feelings of anger and patriotism, I had no such luxury of thought. We were just trying to conduct our lives in what was a war zone. Military vehicles had blocked most of our local streets. Many still do. The emergency power line that supplies the New York Stock Exchange has police guards at every node. This line was swiftly laid, above ground, enabling the Exchange to open just one week after September 11th. My daughter's elementary school, PS 234, was closed and she is currently in her second building. Being so near ground zero, the school was used for the support and rescue efforts of emergency personnel. Depending on which way the wind blows, the Ground Zero fires, which still burn, bring a smoky, dusty smell to all of lower Manhattan that I now think of as the blood of the Towers. For every hunk of metal the cranes and tractors extract, fires break out below. At night, with the brilliant construction lights illuminating the wreckage, you can see plumes of smoke rising fifty stories high from our dining room window. Of course, the smoke rises right where the Towers used to stand in view. Street cleaning trucks have stopped sweeping. Now, they just wet-down the streets, keeping the kicked up dust to a minimum. Meanwhile, large, flat-bed dump trucks haul away ton after ton of debris from Ground Zero, twenty four hours per day. At a recent PTA meeting for PS 234, we voted to stay in the temporary building, two miles north, until the FDNY declares that all fires are extinguished, and the indoor and outdoor air quality passes a strict measure of purity. At home, we do not open our apartment windows while we run two high volume HEPA air filters, cycling the apartment's volume of air four times per hour.

Before we moved back, I had a mid-town lab analyze dust samples from our window pane. Its content was consistent with later EPA tests of dust in the area. But I also noticed very tiny flakes of black carbon. While it was probably charred office paper, I could not help think that some percent of it was the wind-blown remains of immolated victims in the pre-collapse fires—a furnace hot enough to render molten the steel cores of the World Trade Center towers. Before my apartment was cleaned, I swept up a vial's-worth to keep as a kind of reliquary—in remembrance of a tragic portal through which we have all passed and in the expectation that a Phoenix will one day rise from the ashes.

Continued peace to you all.