Thursday, October 8, 2009

Writing game 4

Article based on the excerpt from The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe:


We all want to know more about the universe. What is out there? Can we make any contact with creatures of other worlds? And more importantly what would a possible cooperation with aliens mean to our daily life? For the past couple of years Civil Aeronautics Administration has been taken the first steps to answer these questions. But t is not always a glamorous story.



Ever since President Dwight D. Eisenhower started the space program everybody have been talking about what will happen when we actually get out there? And “who” we will meet? But before getting the answers, we have to figure out how to get there. Scientists have been working on that problem since the beginning for the 1950’s. The Soviet already won the race to send a satellite into space, when they in 1957 allowed Sputnik 2 to orbit the earth with the dog Laika. Now it is our turn.



Pilots have been put through extensive tests to make sure they are up to the challenge. NASA has already identified seven chosen men for the Mercury program. Now US will beat the Soviet by being the first to send people into orbit.


But this is not exclusively a sunshine story. Like all big goals, it has coasts. And today it claimed a young man – husband and father – who met his end. Some will say it is a small price to pay for the goal at hand. But the wives living with this fear every day have their doubt, especially on a day like today. “It is never easy to lose someone close to you, but we try to support each other as much as possible. Living as close to the base as we do, we quickly hear something. And there is a golden rule between us to gather when something has happened, in order to support each others in time of grief.” Said Alice Cooper married to Buck Cooper, a pilot in the space program.

2 comments:

  1. More of a piece of propaganda for the space programme than a neutral article, IMHO - was that intentional?

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  2. No it was not meant as propaganda. I tried to focus on what had happened, but still pretended to be someone that had not yet experienced it. You know a real american journalist, excited about what is going on, but still fearing the developments, and at the same time passing this on to his readers. Guess that would make it kind of propaganda!

    And very mean using the acronym, not everybody knows them by heart.

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