As Atlantis' APUs go silent, it is time for my reflections on the Shuttle program.
Like many others who have written so eloquently their thoughts of the Shuttle program, I am too young to know the Apollo days. The Space Shuttle has been the icon of human space flight in my lifetime.
As a child, I got up one early California morning to watch the first shuttle launch on TV. A few years later, while living in Georgia, my family made repeated attempts to see a launch in person, finally succeeding with STS 61-C, Columbia's flight in January 1986, two weeks before we were to move back to California. In the midst of that move, we were driving past the oil fields of West Texas when I learned of the tragedy of Challenger over the radio. Completing a circle of sorts, my father wound up working at Edwards Air Force Base, and helped get my high school class passes to see Discovery's STS-26 Return to Flight landing at Edwards.
By then, I could drive, and as the years passed, I took every opportunity I could to see shuttles come home to Edwards. At times, my parents feared for my sanity - it was a roundtrip of 6 hours to hear two sonic booms and see the shuttle glide for a few minutes. The loss of Columbia was another shock, and I feared that the shuttles would not fly again. Thankfully, the flights resumed, and the ISS was completed. Looking back, it turns out I saw the last Edwards landing of each of the orbiters (Endeavour STS-126, Atlantis STS-125, and Discovery STS-128), and I was also lucky enough to have attended the final launches of each of the remaining orbiters.
Some vague dreams of becoming an astronaut were never realized, but I did get a pilot's license. The ability to fly, even if only at 1% of the shuttle's altitude, is one to be treasured. In large part, I have the space shuttle to thank for that.
Thanks also to Chris Bergin for setting up this incredible site. It's amazing the amount of information and resources tucked away here, especially in L2.
Thanks to all the various contributors who have made this site what it is.
Last, and certainly not least, thanks to all those in the Shuttle program who have worked through the highs and lows of the last 30 years to bring us to where we are today with the ISS.
As the orbiters move to their places of rest and display, I can only hope that they will continue to inspire the next generation of exploration, and that we as a country, and as a world united, will keep reaching for the stars.
As a way of bidding a fond farewell to our delta-winged spaceships, I thought this would be an appropriate time to retire my handle and undergo a reincarnation of sorts. I'm going to have to find a new vehicle to fanaticize about now, and I doubt it will be quite as graceful.
-- shuttlefanatic, signing off.
Words of wisdom from the MER Memory Book:
“Don’t cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.” ~Theodor Seuss Geisel, attributed
