STS-133

T-minus 1:21:21 to STS-133 Launch. T-minus 10:02 until my launch to see the last flight of Space Shuttle Discovery. It's amazing how far we've come since the Mercury missions; a bittersweet ending to an era that once captivated national pride in the goals we could achieve "not because it's easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills..."

I'm overwhelmingly excited to be able to go and join Steve in FL to watch this launch on Thursday! But, it really does make me sad to see the coming of the end of the Space Shuttle era. I've always said that if I could go back and chose to live through any one particular part of time, I would decidedly choose to live through the late 50s and 60s - to be a part of putting man into space and onto the moon. I still get a shiver every time I think about what was accomplished in those days - pure innovation, pure math, physics, and pure hope, imagination, and determination - to achieve a goal that seemed too big to be possible.

Much of the new and shiny had already worn off of the space program by the time I came around, but I vividly remember ushering in the Space Shuttle, and NASA news was a staple of our elementary Weekly Reader Newspaper. Much like people remember where they were when the got the news that JFK had been shot, I remember exactly where I was when the Challenger exploded (snow day, home from school and watching the launch on our old oak-encased TV). I also remember where I was when Columbia broke apart on re-entry. I, at least, was one who still felt that there was a shared sense of solidarity and national pride in the space program, and was emotionally involved in its glory and in its losses.

Now, we're coming to the end of "my era" of the Space Program. I suppose it was inevitable that it would eventually find its way into the hands of the private sector. And, I'm sure that there will be some good come from this shift. But, it sure does make me sad that this kind of passion; the goal to explore, to learn, is no longer something that we, as a country will embark upon together.

I'll wrap it up with my favorite lines from a speech everyone knows:

"We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say that we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.

There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."

President John F. Kennedy - September 12, 1962