Next shuttles should be named after these guys

EricPWJohnson on January 28, 2009 at 5:00 AM

The Shuttles will be retired sometime in 2010. The new Orion crew module and the booster, Aries I, will not fly for several years afterwards, around 2015.

When the explosion happenned, the teachers reaction told us something was wrong. The other Teacher next door ran into the room and the look of horror on their faces I remember to this day. They cried, some of the other kids started crying. Sad day for America. Our whole school had been so excited about a teacher being in space. Most of our lessons starting all the way back in November were based on this one event. We all felt like we had lost a personal friend that day.

I remember going home and watching with our whole family Pres. Reagan address the nation and feeling so safe and reassured. The “touch the face of God” line chokes me up to this day. That one speech by Reagan, opened my eyes to what a political leader was and how they can effect lives.

I woke up 3 hours early the day of the first Columbia launch which was a Sunday morning. I know, because that Sunday morning I was to serve as Altar Boy, and I wound up passing out in front of the entire congregation. Doesn’t help to skip breakfast, kiddies. ;-)

When the Challenger was lost, I was in middle school at the time, and all classes came to a halt. We had a TV carted into the room and we watched news footage and talked about what might have caused it. My Dad had not taped a launch for a couple years, but for some reason, he popped a BETA tape in and recorded the launch. He still has that tape.

My favorite docu-drama is “From Earth To The Moon” and tonight I’ll pop in episode 2. My favorite quote from the show is from Gus Grissom, ironically. It goes…

“If we die, we want people to accept it. We’re in a risky business and we hope if anything happens to us, it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life. Our God-given curiosity will force us to go there ourselves because in the final analysis only man can fully evaluate the moon in terms understandable to other men.“

I couldn’t see a damn thing. I was too little. My parents told me to remember this day; you saw the astronauts.

Well I didn’t see him, but I never forgot that day.

May God the Father Almighty rest their Souls and comfort their families.

Thank you.

I have lived most of my non-Navy life in FL. I have watched 5 shuttles go up but I was born 6 years after the last Saturn Rockets, I WILL be there to watch the first Ares I and Ares V go up and begin a new are of human space flight.

RIP gentlemen. Always remember, we have never lost one person in space.

When it happened I was taking one of those annual continuing ed/professional advancement classroom courses we all have to do. Course location was Concord NH, home city of Christa McAuliffe. Suddenly our course venue was over-run by satellite trucks.

I’m sure we have many tourists who visit New Hampshire during the global warming months, especially NASCAR people coming to NH International Speedway. Be sure and make a side trip to Concord and visit the Christa McAuliffe Planetarium while you are here as well.

See you guys soon enough!

It’s a bunch of unreleased footage of the Apollo program and portrays how human the engineers and pilots were. It’s great and amazingly humbling.

HIGH FLIGHT, written by RCAF Pilot Officer Gillespie Magee
Killed 11 December 1941

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds – and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,
I’ve topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

I know this because my late great Pop was a USAF navigator and pilot for 20 years, and he kept a plaque of this poem hanging at our house.

Aloha.

After Dad’s retirement, my parents enjoyed traveling to Florida to watch the first space shuttle launches. The Challenger disaster happened near the end of my father’s life and we watched it happen together on TV — one of those horrific moments forever branded into your memory.

Even here in Orange County, which owes so much of its growth to the aerospace boom, the industry has become marginalized and irrelevant. Oh, how I miss the enduring spirit of our founders and pioneers exemplified by the Apollo generation.

Unfortunately, Grissom’s son seems to be a major conspiracy theorist when it comes to the fake moon landing. I think that I came across that a year or so ago.