Theater of the Soul

I was born almost one year after Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the moon. I was too young to really pay much attention to the Apollo missions and the building of Skylab. My first, my only encounters with the space program have only ever included the space shuttles. I saw Star Wars when I was 7 years old, was a huge fan of Star Trek and, by the time Columbia was first unveiled, I was a budding space geek. I vividly remember the first flight of Columbia. And the goosebumps…good God did I have goosebumps when I saw that thing take off on tv. I thought that was just the shiznit, let me tell ya.

During the first 10 years of my life, my father was dealing with diabetes and slowly going blind. I was blissfully ignorant of the trauma that this was causing my parents. I knew it was happening and it was explained to me in a very matter of fact manner, but I can now look back on that period of my life and realize just how clueless I really was. Anyways, when I was 11 years old, my mom took me on a vacation to Florida. She had booked one of those package deals, which had included a day pass to Kennedy Space Center. We had hoped to be lucky enough to catch an actual launch, but we had just missed one the previous week. It didn’t matter though…I had died and gone to heaven. I ran around that complex like a kid in a candy store, taking it all in.

We went back to Florida two years later in 1983, after my father had died. It had been a long two years for both my mother and I. I had lost my daddy, and she had lost her husband and her daughter, as I was a typical hormonal teenage girl. And I was mad as hell about it. ALL OF IT. She dragged my ass out of school for two weeks in the hopes of getting me to snap out of it. We half hoped that we’d catch a shuttle launch, but we knew it wasn’t likely.

We totally lucked out.

Our flight home was cancelled because of a snowstorm back home and that extra day spent in Florida was the day NASA was finally able to launch Columbia.

If you’ve never experienced a space shuttle launch, you are truly missing out on something spectacular. It is the ultimate in ’shock and awe’. When you see those rockets light up, it’s awesome. But you don’t just see it take off…you FEEL it… and it’s like every 4th of July fireworks display all rolled into one. The noise and vibration are phenomenal…even at the viewing area, which is miles from the launchpad. For a few minutes, nothing else in the world matters except that ship and her crew and her cargo getting up there…to a place that is SO much bigger than any one person or petty problems. Of course, I wasn’t capable of profound thought at that age, so I squealed like a little girl. And I was happy.

And, for a few minutes at least, my mother had her little girl back.

Since then, I’ve followed the space program as much as I could. I was in a classroom watching the first teacher in space launch on Challenger in 1986 when it all went horribly wrong. When Columbia went down in 2003, it felt like losing a member of my own family. Like many others, Columbia had been THE space shuttle for me…the mothership.

The upcoming launch marks the beginning of the end of the space shuttle program. In 5 years, Endeavor, Discovery and Atlantis will be retired. I doubt that I’ll ever get to see another shuttle launch in person, but if YOU ever get a chance, go for it.

It’s an experience you’ll never forget.