The last Shuttle flight...

Well, an era is over.  If all goes well tomorrow the last Space Shuttle mission will launch and the program will end upon it's landing.  It will all start, if the weather in Florida holds, at about 11:30am today (July 8).  It also means that one of my earliest career aspirations will likely end with it.  Looks like going into space and being an astronaut is going to get crossed off my list.

I am a space geek.  I admit it.  I watch replays of launches, splashdowns and landings on YouTube, and I even ditched school when I was in middle school to watch a launch.  Toured the NASA Centers in Alabama and in Houston, played video games and all that geeky stuff.  Yes kids, they actually marketed a video game that had you fly a Shuttle.  It was named, oddly enough, "Space Shuttle" and it was made for the old Atari 2600 system.  I got it for Christmas one year.  It was awesome.

With all those triumphs, there were the tragedies.  I was 17 years old and nursing a severly bruised nose when my Phys Ed coach requested that I confirm a rumor that the Space Shuttle Challenger had exploded on launch.  It was January 1986 and I was a junior in high school.  I won't forget coming into Coach Johnson's office and telling him that it was true.  In 2003 I was staying with a girlfriend at her apartment in Bartlesville and we woke up to pictures of the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrating on landing over Texas.  I was 35 years old then.

Unlike the first part of the space program, which took place when my parents were younger, I grew up through my teenage years knowing that the Shuttle was going up and doing what they did in space.  It became somewhat routine to hear about it and gradually, over time, the earthbound responsibilities overwhelmed my desire to pursue the dream of becoming an astronaut took hold. 

It will be odd to know that unless some kind of economic boom takes place in 10 years today's flight is going to be it for the space program.  Very strange indeed.  Americans will fly into space again, but not aboard American spacecraft.  It will be left to private companies to take up the space race now and that saddens me too as it will be hard to imagine something like AMERICAN AIRLINES flying towards an outpost in space.

The fact that I am not going to be an astronaut is not that devastating in the end because I also didn't get to fly the Goodyear blimp, (I wanted to do that when I was in 3rd grade), a cowboy (lost intrerest in that once I moved to Oklahoma when I was 5), or a famous athlete (I used to only run when chased, now not at all).  I am just going to miss the sense of wonder that I had 30 years ago when the Columbia with John Young and Robert Crippen rocketed off the launch pad on April 12, 1981.  After today, it's a wrap.

Ah well...