Thank you NASA
When the space shuttle Atlantis lifted off for the last time, I sat alone in my living room watching the lift off and I cried. I have been a public shuttle groupie for a long time and that was just an emotional moment.
My personal reasons for being a shuttle groupie are just that but I have spent the last 4 years of my life chasing a shuttle launch in person and failed. I have been at the Kennedy Space Center 8 times when a launch was cancelled. I have had tickets to a launch that we decided wouldn’t go and headed home only to watch the launch on NASA video from my iPad driving through South Carolina on the trip home. I have used my desire to see a launch to keep one of my kids interest in aerospace high enough to get him focused there in college. I have used that same drive to get some of his friends there, too. I have driven to one of our Great Harvest conventions in Florida and timed my drive to where I could pull off of the road and watch a launch I couldn’t get tickets to and had one of the most wonderful moments of my life watching the shuttle go up and into the clouds.
I can tell you exactly where I was when Challenger blew up and what I felt. I can’t tell you where I was when either Kennedy was killed. I can tell you exactly where I was when we landed on the moon and what I felt. I can’t tell you where I was when Nixon resigned. I can tell you exactly where I was when Columbia blew up and what I felt. I can’t tell you where I was or anything I felt about the internet bubble implosion.
There are only three remaining Saturn V rockets. I have seen all three of them. There is currently only one shuttle that has been in space available for public viewing and I have seen it.
Why? Yes, I am a groupie but, still, why? To me, NASA is the best of the best of the best, sir. It embodies going where no one has gone before and I respect that and love it. I admire the men and women that risk their lives to be modern day explorers in the vein of Columbus and Magellan and I am jealous that I can’t be one of them. I wish them and all of the people that follow in their footsteps love, peace and happiness. I will go to my grave in awe of the successful failure that was Apollo 13.
As I write this Atlantis is in deorbit for the final touchdown of space exploration as we have known it. I have heard the description of where we are in space exploration today compared to flight in the late 1920’s. The golden age of space. A time where we move from government funded programs to commercial success in space just as the airline world moved from all government driven Air Mail in the 20’s to the airline world we see today. A guy can dream….
Godspeed Atlantis.
