Last One

rdbrewer noted it already, and STS-133 Discovery made it's successful launch today.

Well and good. But bittersweet, at least for me.

I'm the old man around here, but I also have ties to NASA that go back to my childhood.

My dad was a communications engineer, who worked on the Gemini and Apollo programs. I was a tow-headed kid who watched a Mercury shot from my back yard in '63, a couple of miles south from Cape Canaveral.

Later we moved to Huntsville Alabama, and dad joined up with Werner Von Braun's "Brown Engineering". He was in the thick of those heady days and I was just a kid pushing the tabs A and B into those paper models you could get from Texaco with a fillup. I met astronauts, real men who went into space. Heroes to me. I was in awe.

Those were the days. I still remember being allowed to stay up late when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon, in July of 1969. A month later we moved to Texas, and all that closeness faded away. Just like the space program began to fade away. It was all so amazing, at one time.

I can't help but feel sad tonight, even at this successful launch, and Godspeed Discovery. It just feels like that window of wonder closed as I got older.

Probably just me. Probably the years. I still want my flying cars too.

Godspeed Discovery.

posted by Dave In Texas at 09:28 PM

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