Hard to believe that something so much a part of my life is now over. It's hard to imagine life without the space shuttle. I remember being a young kid six or seven years old and wondering why they had placed this space ship onto the back of a 747 airplane. Back in those days, we didn't have cable TV and a 24/7 news channel. They broke into regular scheduled programming to show these things.
We used to watch the early launches in school. By the time I was 15, a freshman in high school, the excitement of a launch was over, even with a teacher going up in space. Bored in my English class, I asked Mrs. Peterson to go to library. I watched Challenger break apart and rushed back to the classroom frantically telling my class the space shuttle blew up. Mrs. Peterson wasn't laughing and nearly sent me to the principal's office as if I was playing some cruel hoax. I begged her to come to the library, she did, and watched in disbelief with other teachers and students.
Now the final space shuttle has landed, and America has exited the space race. It's a sad day in America.
No comments:
Post a Comment