Columbia
It seems, in memory, that I was always looking upwards. Up to a passing plane:
what was it? where was it going? what was it doing? Up to the moon, to the
stars. Eventually I could tell just from the sound what sort of plane was flying
overhead: Bonanza, Aero Commander, Aeronca - each had its own distinct sound. As
I grew older my favorite smell was the burnt coffee that seems to be a part of
every airport's line shack or pilot's waiting room.
My heroes were the test pilots. My favorite was Scott Crossfield because he flew
the neatest plane - the X-2 - which was bright white and by far the fastest. It
looked a lot neater with its elegant swept-back wings than the stubby wings of
the X-1.
I instantly knew all the original seven astronauts and followed all the stories
about them I could. I built a huge model of the Vanguard rocket you could open
up to reveal the fuel tanks and piping. And then I watched it crash again and
again on television news footage.
I watched Alan Shepard's sub-orbital flight. I had been bitterly disappointed
when the Russians beat us into space, but I was able to use my uncle's short
wave receiver and hear the signals from sputnik as it orbited overhead.
I was in college when Apollo went to the moon. It wasn't "cool" in the 60s to be
into the space program. It was, after all, a waste or resources. The rhetoric
was filled with arguments colored by anger over Vietnam. I watched anyway. I
cared.
I was in the Navy when the last of the Apollo flights departed from the moon. I
had just reported to the PARCHE in Pascagoula and I didn't heed the call that
said it was only a day's drive there and back. I could have gotten the time to
go see the launch. I did not even try.
A few years later we docked at Cape Canaveral as a part of our weapons trials
and we took a tour of the old launch sites and the vehicle assembly building.
Saw the vast crawler that had taken the Saturn Five's out to the launch pad.
Mostly I was shocked by the diminuative size of the rusting launch facilities
that marked the early Mercury and Gemini programs. The technology in the launch
control facilities was truly ancient. Somehow, at that moment, my dreams
receded. Of course I was already in love with PARCHE then, completely captivated
by her and she ruled my life. She had become the space program because she was a
living thing of men and metal of which I was a part.
But I was always watching the skies. Years later when Sky Lab was about to
plunge to earth we stood in a field south of Davis and watched it pass overhead,
a bright star crossing the evening sky. And later still, in the light blue sky
of dawn, I watched the shuttle re-enter, a brilliant purple-white dot of light
drawing behind it a ruler-straight glowing line as it streaked across the sky in
just minutes on its way to a landing at the Cape. I heard no sound. But there
were tears in my eyes as I watched it, knowing there were men and women in that
hurtling piece of machinery, and I felt the yearning again, to fly, to Go! Go!
Goooooooooooo!.
There were tears again when I saw the Shuttle in flight. I was in Orlando for a
USA Swimming Convention just outside of Disney World. I watched the launch on
the TV but then they showed a picture, taken from an Orlando TV news chopper,
showing the shuttle in the sky. I ran out into the parking lot and there it was
rising on a plumb of glowing orange smoke from the solid rocket boosters. Tears
ran down my face and I could only say what everyone else says when they see it
rise: "Go....Go....Gooooooooooooooooo"
I watched the boosters separate and fall away, the pin-point trio of lights from
the shuttle's main engines lifting her higher and higher into the gathering
darkness, leaving behind the spent boosters to tumble into the ocean. I watched
until I couldn't see her any more, until she vanished downrange and upward into
space.
So on Saturday morning I turned on the radio and heard a voice on NPR and
instantly knew something serious was had happened. And moments later knew it was
about the shuttle, and moments later on the TV the pieces of the shuttle were
being spread across the sky - a pyre of dreams and lives.
I wept. It was as if a part of me were dying. And yet I also recognized the
glory in the path. They risked their lives - they took their chances, balanced
the danger because they responded to the same allure of what was Out There that
I did. They could have been me. They WERE me -- they were my desire to orbit the
earth, to look down at the blue earth and upward to the bright, unwinking stars.
And I know if offered the chance I would go tomorrow to fly into space, to ride
on orbit chasing the sunrise while the earth passed by.
Because I was always looking upward. Because that desire to Go is still so much
a part of me.
I grieve for the men and women we have lost this weekend. And I grieve for that
part of me, now lost, that blazed across the sky.
But I know the next time the International Space Station flies overhead I will
go out into the farmland, or to my back yard, and I will watch it, seeing it
appear out of the gloom to the west, rising, growing ever brighter until it is a
golden star, brigther than Jupiter, looking up at the three crewmembers orbiting
in her, and feel the joy and excitement at what we can do.
Go! Go! Goooooooooooooooo!
9:20:29 AM 
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