Today is Flag Day, celebrating a star-spangled banner that appears at everyday events — sports contests, political rallies, court trials and parades — but also has made a number of appearances in unusual and faraway places.
Old Glory has seen grim victories in distant locations with strange names — at Belleau Wood, Mt. Suribachi, Bastogne and Flamborough Head. In war or in peace, when Americans forgo home and comfort for a cause, we always seem to carry the Stars and Stripes.
When Congress adopted the first flag resolution, lawmakers spoke of the stars representing a new constellation among the nations of the world. They probably could not have imagined that just 200 years later, in 1977, two American spacecraft sharing the name Voyager would be launched that today are leaving the solar system — and are the most distant objects humanity has ever sent forth from Earth. John Casani, the Voyagers' project manager, said he placed an American flag inside the thermal blankets aboard the spacecraft because sending a flag with our spacecraft was standard practice.
Voyager 1 is more than 117 astronomical units from the sun and Voyager 2 is about 95.5 AU from the sun, Casani said. One AU is the average distance from the sun to Earth. The missions' goals were visits to Jupiter (5 AU distant) and Saturn (10 AU away).
"We knew that we could do more than that, and go by Uranus and Neptune," Casani said. "We didn't think much beyond that. We're more than delighted that both of these things are still working so darn well."
While unmanned exploration continues, manned space exploration still hasn't reached beyond the moon, but only one nation's flags have been placed on that heavenly body by its citizens.
Capt. Gene Cernan, a Chicago-area native and onetime delivery boy for the Chicago Tribune (and several rival newspapers), commanded the last Apollo mission to visit the moon. As done on each moon landing, Apollo 17's Cernan and Harrison Schmitt planted an American flag at their landing site at Taurus-Littrow near the Challenger lunar module, while Ronald Evans remained in lunar orbit aboard command module America.
"The flags that we flew there still fly there today. How long will they be there? They'll be there forever, however long forever is," Cernan said. "The flag that we flew there at Taurus-Littrow is the same flag that flew in Mission Control when Apollo 11 landed on the moon. It's now at the last landing site on the moon. We brought another flag with us (to the moon and back). That flag then flew in Mission Control (replacing the one they left on the moon).
"When we went there, we didn't go as a conquest of territory. We went for all mankind," Cernan said. "The flags were left in recognition for the American people we needed to get there, to honor the people of our country who made it possible."
Back on Earth, the Challenger Deep in the Marianas Trench, about 300 miles south-southwest of Guam in the Pacific Ocean, is about as deep as you can get into "inner space," at about 36,000 feet below the ocean's surface. If you went there now, you would find the Stars and Stripes.
Only two men have visited the Deep, Swiss oceanographer Jacques Piccard and U.S. Navy Capt. Don Walsh, who was a lieutenant at the time. Their dive in the bathyscaphe Trieste, co-designed by Piccard with his father Auguste, spent just 20 minutes on the bottom, where the intense pressure cracked the submersible's window.
"We had expected before the dive that it wouldn't be long before someone else went to the deepest places," Walsh said. He explained that the mission went off with very little fanfare or media attention. "What it was, was a 'proof of concept' mission. We were trying to show that we could operate at that depth."
Because the Trieste didn't have robotic arms to plant a flag, a U.S. flag encapsulated in Plexiglas and stainless steel was dropped onto the dive site from the surface after the mission. "It wasn't to claim the territory or anything," Walsh said. "It was a little graffiti to show we were there."
When it comes to remote territory on Earth, few know it better than the solo sailors of the around-the-world Velux 5 Oceans race that passes "Point Nemo" — the farthest spot from land anywhere on Earth. Each sailboat carried a flag, but only American sailor Brad Van Liew, swept all five legs to win the race last month.
"We only had one competitor from each country represented in the race," Van Liew said, "so we did have a little bit of a national competition."
Van Liew is one of fewer than 200 people who have sailed around the world alone — more people have been in space. As he and his 60-foot sailboat, Le Pingouin, returned to La Rochelle, France, where the race began last October, they completed his third racing circumnavigation and the second for Le Pingouin.
At the finish, Van Liew wrapped an American flag around his shoulders. "It's the same flag that I had carried since the start. There were times it was up and times when it wasn't, depending on the weather. It has a small tear in it, but it's the one that went around the world."
As you spend Tuesday in the land of the free and the home of the brave, take a moment to reflect on Old Glory, and consider where it's been, and how far it still can go.
Old Glory has seen grim victories in distant locations with strange names — at Belleau Wood, Mt. Suribachi, Bastogne and Flamborough Head. In war or in peace, when Americans forgo home and comfort for a cause, we always seem to carry the Stars and Stripes.
When Congress adopted the first flag resolution, lawmakers spoke of the stars representing a new constellation among the nations of the world. They probably could not have imagined that just 200 years later, in 1977, two American spacecraft sharing the name Voyager would be launched that today are leaving the solar system — and are the most distant objects humanity has ever sent forth from Earth. John Casani, the Voyagers' project manager, said he placed an American flag inside the thermal blankets aboard the spacecraft because sending a flag with our spacecraft was standard practice.
Voyager 1 is more than 117 astronomical units from the sun and Voyager 2 is about 95.5 AU from the sun, Casani said. One AU is the average distance from the sun to Earth. The missions' goals were visits to Jupiter (5 AU distant) and Saturn (10 AU away).
"We knew that we could do more than that, and go by Uranus and Neptune," Casani said. "We didn't think much beyond that. We're more than delighted that both of these things are still working so darn well."
While unmanned exploration continues, manned space exploration still hasn't reached beyond the moon, but only one nation's flags have been placed on that heavenly body by its citizens.
Capt. Gene Cernan, a Chicago-area native and onetime delivery boy for the Chicago Tribune (and several rival newspapers), commanded the last Apollo mission to visit the moon. As done on each moon landing, Apollo 17's Cernan and Harrison Schmitt planted an American flag at their landing site at Taurus-Littrow near the Challenger lunar module, while Ronald Evans remained in lunar orbit aboard command module America.
"The flags that we flew there still fly there today. How long will they be there? They'll be there forever, however long forever is," Cernan said. "The flag that we flew there at Taurus-Littrow is the same flag that flew in Mission Control when Apollo 11 landed on the moon. It's now at the last landing site on the moon. We brought another flag with us (to the moon and back). That flag then flew in Mission Control (replacing the one they left on the moon).
Back on Earth, the Challenger Deep in the Marianas Trench, about 300 miles south-southwest of Guam in the Pacific Ocean, is about as deep as you can get into "inner space," at about 36,000 feet below the ocean's surface. If you went there now, you would find the Stars and Stripes.
Only two men have visited the Deep, Swiss oceanographer Jacques Piccard and U.S. Navy Capt. Don Walsh, who was a lieutenant at the time. Their dive in the bathyscaphe Trieste, co-designed by Piccard with his father Auguste, spent just 20 minutes on the bottom, where the intense pressure cracked the submersible's window.
"We had expected before the dive that it wouldn't be long before someone else went to the deepest places," Walsh said. He explained that the mission went off with very little fanfare or media attention. "What it was, was a 'proof of concept' mission. We were trying to show that we could operate at that depth."
Because the Trieste didn't have robotic arms to plant a flag, a U.S. flag encapsulated in Plexiglas and stainless steel was dropped onto the dive site from the surface after the mission. "It wasn't to claim the territory or anything," Walsh said. "It was a little graffiti to show we were there."
When it comes to remote territory on Earth, few know it better than the solo sailors of the around-the-world Velux 5 Oceans race that passes "Point Nemo" — the farthest spot from land anywhere on Earth. Each sailboat carried a flag, but only American sailor Brad Van Liew, swept all five legs to win the race last month.
"We only had one competitor from each country represented in the race," Van Liew said, "so we did have a little bit of a national competition."
Van Liew is one of fewer than 200 people who have sailed around the world alone — more people have been in space. As he and his 60-foot sailboat, Le Pingouin, returned to La Rochelle, France, where the race began last October, they completed his third racing circumnavigation and the second for Le Pingouin.
At the finish, Van Liew wrapped an American flag around his shoulders. "It's the same flag that I had carried since the start. There were times it was up and times when it wasn't, depending on the weather. It has a small tear in it, but it's the one that went around the world."
As you spend Tuesday in the land of the free and the home of the brave, take a moment to reflect on Old Glory, and consider where it's been, and how far it still can go.
