Shuttle at the crossroads

Abstract

Native to the lands of the Americas, the Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus) is a medium-sized migratory woodpecker, with a particular penchant for constant, noisy drumming on trees or metallic objects as a means of communicating or declaring territory. Grey-capped, beige-faced, and with yellow-gold splashes on their tails, underwings and primaries, they are one of many hundreds of species that populate the expansive wildlife refuge of NASA’s John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC) on Merritt Island in Florida. Since the dawn of the Space Age, more than five decades ago, this region of the Atlantic coast has resounded to the roar of rocket engines, carrying humans and our mechanised emissaries into the heavens. Over Memorial Day Weekend in late May 1995, it resounded also to the jack-hammering of the Northern Flicker, which mistook the Space Shuttle’s giant, brown-hued External Tank (ET) … for a tree.