View From the Phlipside – Space Window

My name is Jay Phillippi and I’ve spent my life in and around the media.  TV, Radio, the movies and more.  I love ’em and I hate ’em and I always have an opinion.  Call this The View From the Phlipside.

Please excuse me while I take just a moment to go all fanboy geeky here on the show.  But it was one of the  most amazing intersections of real life and fantasy you could ever possibly imagine.

You may remember that on the last shuttle flight there was a mention that one of the additions to the international space station was an “obersvation deck” or window.  The idea was that the unlike previous modules to the space station and all previous space craft the astronauts would actually get a full time window out onto the face of the universe just we always see in the movies.  I mean let’s face it for those of us who dream of things like this that’s part of the dream.  To be floating in outer space, doing some kind of cool things and being able to look out at Planet Earth or the Moon or the stars through a big, old plate glass window.

In reality dealing with pressure issues and engineering problems made that a whole lot more difficult than the movies would make it appear.  But they finally figured a way out to give pretty much that same effect.  So on the last shuttle they took the largest window ever put into space up there and I thought that was cool.  Till I saw a photo of the window itself.  And then I realized that it had launched way past cool.  Beyond incredible.  Beyond even awesome.  There may not be a word for it.  You may simply have to sit and stare in wonder.

Because the window on the international space station looks just like the inside window on a TIE fighter from the movie Star Wars.  Oh yes it does.  Now we have the amazing collision between fantasy and reality.  Is it possible that the design was chosen strictly on engineering needs?  That this just happens to be THE most efficient way of creating such a window?  Sure.  But don’t forget that the generation of engineers who have been working on the space station design are my age and younger by and large.  And Star Wars is, well, Star Wars.  A cultural touchstone for all us space geeks.

Now I REALLY want to get a ticket to visit the space station.  Just so I can stand in that window and try to feel the Force.

Call that The View From the Phlipside.

“The View From the Phlipside” airs on WRFA-LP Jamestown NY.  You can listen to WRFA online HERE
Copyright – Jay Phillippi 2010