Lucky Peanuts
Shel Silverstein, in his poem describes about a King crazy about Peanut Butter Sandwiches. Well, we have all gone past those school days, and 14 years after the death of the writer, it was this morning that I got to hear a similar phrase- Lucky Peanuts.
Luck is now a matter of belief or rather disbelief. Since ages unknown, people across myriad cultures, economic spheres and civilizations have adorned numerous stones, metals, held precious and even weird items considering them as Lucky charm. This went further to involve the influence of the luck of other persons in one's life coining idioms as Lady Luck and so on.
The word caught my attention as India was on the final stages of countdown to launch the Mars Orbiter, being only the Sixth nation in the world to do so. The message wishing all the luck came from Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at NASA with a view to pass peanuts before the launch as they are considered ‘lucky’
Scientists at NASA have a trend to pass on Peanuts before a launch or an important mission.
I am bit reluctant to accept the peanuts as lucky, because when I look at the sheer numbers of NASA space missions have failed compared to ones being successful. The peanut tradition goes back to 1960's with the very first missions that NASA sent to the moon. There were seven unsuccessful missions before the eighth one was a eureka, was it simply because they passed on the peanuts out of the control room? Only Luck Knows.
It is the legacy of Ranger 7 which was the lucky among the others to successfully transmit close images of moon's surface back to earth making it a tradition to eat peanuts before a launch or
and whenever they do anything important like land on Mars".
With the funding for the Mars mission taking away 80 Million Dollars from the economy, not considering the even more expensive PSLV launch (Mind well, the launch is not insured because of premium costs being too high) taking heavy criticism and with urgent issues seeking attention, the questions have always popped up if India really needs to divert the funds towards such research.
We are all to wait and watch if luck to finding life on the Mars, even without landing on the surface of the red planet, and looking at the prospect of civilizing the Mangal is hidden in the guarded shell of time, and not the lucky peanut.
And for the fun, I would be on a personal hunt to meet the person who was caught eating peanuts at JPL in those space race days of 1960's and try to get some more methods to ease the pressure off the Scientific fraternity.
