You may be a big fan of Bruce Boxleitner, but odds are that Bruce Boxleitner is an even bigger fan of the space program. The veteran actor can name every astronaut who flew on every Apollo mission. He has an extensive collection of astronaut memorabilia. He's frustrated that he hasn't managed to acquire a book signed by Neil Armstrong. And he recalls where he was on July 20, 1969, when humans first walked on the Moon.
"I remember running out that night in July, running out and looking up at the Moon," he says. "I remember it was a hot summer night and I was with my girlfriend in Peoria, Illinois. We were at her parents' house, lying on the porch in this very Norman Rockwell type of pose, looking up and there was the future.
"It was reading Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff in 1979 that piqued my interest. I've had an ongoing collection of astronaut autographs, pictures, a full set of the Apollo program signed pictures from the Moon, signed editions of all the various autobiographies by the astronauts. I've got everything Buzz Aldrin ever wrote signed to me. I can't get Neil Armstrong for the life of me. Every time I've tried at auction, it's been taken before I can get to it."
Five years later, Boxleitner tried out for the role of Gordo Cooper in The Right Stuff, but he was "way too tall. Astronauts then had to be, what, 5'11" tall at most? Tom Stafford was the only six-footer in the first three programs. Pete Conrad is just this bandy guy."
Which launches Boxleitner into another astronaut anecdote. "God, he's hilarious," he says. "I got to know Pete Conrad over dinner, he and his wife Nancy. He's one of the greatest raconteurs of that era, the jokester, he and Wally Schirra. A friend of ours had us all over for dinner. The most beautiful full moon rose up behind the Verdugo Hills. Pete was sitting right there and I said, 'I know this is the most stupid question, you've heard this a thousand and five times, but what do you see when you look up there?' And with that typical swagger he has, he said, 'Aw, been there, done it.'
"I think it was really cool when Tom Hanks, who had the power to do it, championed these guys with his movie Apollo 13. It's given these guys their due that's been long forgotten. The first seven [Mercury missions], Gemini and then Apollo, they're being lost. The young kids don't know who they were. These were the real explorers. Screw Columbus! He was nothing but an exploiter and a massacrer of Indians. These guys were the greatest explorers in human history. They're being lost, and it's a shame.
"I remember being at a dinner and a guy going, 'Oh, I saw that Apollo 13. They had to do something where we f***ed up, huh?' And I said, 'Man, you missed the point, didn't you? It wasn't getting there, it was the journey, what was learned from it, and the heroism that came from that failure. That's where human beings rose to their finest.'"
Boxleitner has been approached by space advocacy movements to be a spokesman for the cause. What would he say to persuade skeptics who think that tax dollars can be better spend elsewhere?
"I think we should look back and re-inspire ourselves," he replies. "In the 21st Century, we alone have the capability of being the spacefaring nation. America has always prided itself on leading the way. We're doing that, but we're still so concerned with looking at our feet here on the ground, not realizing the benefits of space travel for our very lives on the ground. I don't think the common everyday citizen yet realizes the importance of the Shuttle program. I didn't, until I started to listen and read.
"I'm not so much worried about the young ones. I think they're going to be very much into it. It's this interim generation of bureaucrats and people that are so concerned with saving humanity. It sounds cynical, but humanity is going to do what it does. It always has. We're never going to end hunger. We're never going to end war. All we can do is try. But that doesn't mean that Man's need to explore beyond this realm is going to go away either. So we need to do it. It's going to help our lives.
"One day we're going to have to leave here. It's a fact. It won't be in our lifetimes, or in our children's. But one day, that ol' Sun is going to burn out like many suns have done before. Anything we were will be lost, unless we get off this planet and colonize somewhere else."
At a 1996 convention, Boxleitner met astronaut John M. Grunsfeld, who was scheduled to be a Mission Specialist on the Atlantis STS-81 mission set to rendezvous with Mir in this past January. "I'm sitting there talking with him about what it's like to be on the space shuttle," says Boxleitner, "and he's sitting there talking about what it's like to be on Babylon 5!
"'This is imitation. This is work,' I said. 'You guys are doing the real thing.'
"'But you don't understand,' he said. 'Without you guys doing that, we wouldn't be doing what we're doing. It all works together.' [B5] inspires people in the space program like Star Trek certainly did. It inspires you to reach beyond. that's what classic science fiction does."
Which leads to a hypothesis: with all the blockbuster science fiction films released in the post-Star Wars era, has American culture become jaded with the space program? Why get excited over a shuttle launch when the Millennium Falcon flies in a galaxy far, far away?
"I think we run the risk of that," he answers. "But Jim Lovell said it - there's nothing routine about going to the Moon. We may make it look like it's an everyday bus trip, but we are in danger of boring them. That's why I say we need to look back and get re-inspired again: dramatize it, whatever.
"We've always been interested in our pioneers. Look at the stories of the Westward Expansion. It's our great mythology that carried us into space. The Space Shuttle is nothing but our Conestoga wagon."
So in Boxleitner's view, how is science fiction doing these days?
"I watch Deep Space Nine sometimes," he says. "I watch all the other shows just to see what they're doing. Not to compare us to them, but just to see how the genre is doing.
"I hadn't read science fiction in years and years. I started reading more since I started doing this. Joe Straczynski has given me some recommendations once n a while. He handed me Lord of the Rings and said, 'Read this.' Holy God, it took me the whole hiatus because I had some other things to do, but he wanted me to know that's where we were. We're a saga with a direct parallel to its heroic myth. This isn't hard science. Even our technobabble is relatively simple stuff. We're more based in the great mythologies.
"That's what I like about Babylon 5. It's so much larger than life. Things that are being done on television today are either the gritty reality one-hour dramas, or the situation comedies. They dominate television. Only in science fiction do you get to do heroic themes that Shakespeare dealt with, universal themes that Joe deals with.
"For the actors, we really have to use those theatrical skills because we're imagining things for the audience. We have to do that often on the show, look at nothing and imagine. I remember in my first season having to come out and look at a Vorlon ship. I was told that I could actually see it move -- but all I had was a marker on a wall. In our faces, in our eyes, we had to create a look of wonderment. Sheridan always has a childlike wonderment about new things, new frontiers, new planets, new races. They don't do that on ER."
When it comes to space, it's that sense of wonderment that Boxleitner shares with Sheridan.
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