Page 9 - Irish Examiner USA

featureexaminer 9

The Kelly Brothers Are Heroes Who IRISH

Express The Best of America’s EXAMINER

Reality Not Space Force Fantasy |

July
By Brad Balfour something so hard, so terrify- Station aboard a Russian Twin Study, which demon- further in his commitment to 29th,
hen Neil ing, so skillful, it’s hard to Soyuz spacecraft from the strated several long-lasting
A r m s t r o n g believe that two from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in changes, including alterations then-U.S. Representative
Wbecame the first same family could do it — Kazakhstan. Mark command- in DNA and cognition, when Gabby Giffords, was nearly
public service. After his wife, 2020
person to step onto the and twin brothers at that. ed the last scheduled space one twin was compared with killed in an attempted assassi-
lunar surface on July 21, That’s where the Kelly shuttle flight, STS-134, in the other. nation on January 8, 2011 -- in
1969, at 02:56 UTC, I brothers come in. Mark and February 2011. The pair According to the which six people were killed -
watched with rapt atten- Scott both qualified to be worked together in orbit Washington Post’s summa- - she and Kelly were thrust
tion. He was a real hero in astronauts and have done sev- before the shuttle returned to tion, the full results, pub- into the media spotlight for
my teenage mind; seeing eral missions in space — Earth. lished in the journal Science, this reason, a far more tragic
my sci-fi fantasies con- either in the shuttle or the But they did much more in showed that Scott Kelly expe- one. So both spent their ener-
firmed not only by “Star orbiting space station. Think space than just that. Both rienced numerous physiologi- gy fighting for gun control
Trek” and the many books of thousands, even millions of flew several successful mis- cal and chromosomal changes until Mark decided to pursue
I read, but also right there kids who aspired to be space sions but, more importantly, during his long sojourn in elected office running as the
on TV was mind-blowing. explorers; these two did and they were part of an experi- orbit, including changes in Democratic candidate for the
He was the real thing with succeeded. ment about how space alters gene expression. His immune 2020 United States Senate
the “Right Stuff.” Taking Growing up in West us physically and genetically. system went on high alert, election in Arizona. And that
on a challenge no one had Orange, N.J., these twins In November 2012, Kelly both when he went to space he is doing as of now, hoping
ever tackled before, his were obviously very close and Russian cosmonaut and upon returning to Earth. to change the tenor of the
proclamation, “One small and shared a lot. Co-captains Mikhail Kornienko made a His body acted as if it were Senate in November.
step…,” became the stuff of on their high school swim year-long mission to the ISS. under attack. Mark Kelly In addition, both Kellys
legend. team, they had the same AP Their space year began on served as the comparison sub- were successfully treated for
Now, 51 years later, much Bio class, and worked at some March 27, 2015, and they ject for the experiment. prostate cancer. The two
of the technology seen in of the same jobs. But the remained there for Both have written several Kellys have also has received
“Star Trek,” on “The Jetsons” biggest challenge they shared Expeditions 43, 44, 45, and 46. books and Scott was appoint- many awards and decorations
and many other media prop- was when they become the The mission ended on March ed United Nations Champion and continue to be exemplary
erties is available or about to first siblings in space togeth- 1, 2016, with the departure of for Space by the United examples as sons of Ireland.
be —except for FTL travel, er. Soyuz TMA-18M from the Nations Office for Outer But with all their similari-
teleportation and psychic A naval aviator, Mark flew station. Space Affairs (UNOOSA), in ties, they’ve had their differ-
powers. For all those capabil- combat missions during the Scott retired from NASA in November 2016. He released ences as well.
ities, it seems that there’s lit- Gulf War before being select- 2016 and Mark had also a his memoir, “Endurance: A Though now with the
tle advancement socially or ed as a NASA Space Shuttle retired a few years earlier. In Year in Space, a Lifetime of baseball season do truncated,
politically. pilot in 1996. Scott made it 2019, NASA reported medical Discovery.” who knows what team either
Since we are in throes of the International Space results from the Astronaut But brother Mark went brother supports. C
this pandemic, lots of notions
once held dear have come to
be questioned. Especially
about who our heroes and
who our role models should
be. Armstrong and many of
his cohorts such as John
Glenn are gone or relatively
inactive. There are few other
places to look for heroes. And
with Trump’s abrasive efforts
under scrutiny, the presiden-
cy has been greatly dimin-
ished. Divisive petty politics
have lowered the emphasis
on politicians as role models.
Nowadays, there’s lots of
heroes working on a much
smaller, less global scale —
those who take care of people
in medical centers, hospitals
and nursing facilities — but
few occupy the imagination
like an astronaut doing some-
thing that had never been
done before.
So rather than seek heroes
forged in tragedy, I wanted to
extol those who have done