Out to Launch

I’ve been a fan of the U.S. space program since I was a kid. My cousin took a job as a secretary at the Johnson Space Center soon after it opened. She used to bring me all kinds of photos of the early Mercury astronauts and their vehicles. Then followed the Gemini and Apollo programs. One entire wall of my bedroom was covered with the reminders of the guys with the “right stuff.”

When NASA launched those early missions, my mother allowed me to stay home from school and witness the event on TV. With those earliest flights, I got to stay home and witness the entire mission, since they were so brief. She would write me an excuse and send me to school late.

I visit the rocket park at JSC now and see those Redstone rockets and they look like toys compared to the huge Saturn V’s or the shuttle stack. I wonder how anyone could allow themselves to be strapped to the top of such contraptions.

When human beings took their first steps onto the lunar surface, I was a high school student, traveling home from a church mission trip to Great Falls, Montana, on a Greyhound. I remember hearing the news that we had actually set foot on the moon.

I never really dreamed that I’d find myself living in the community in which men and women spent their time making those amazing flights happen, or that some of those souls would be dear friends of mine. But here I am.

I have never gotten to witness a space shuttle launch, but I’ve tried and tomorrow I will try again. This will be my third attempt. The first time was back in 1990 when Guy Gardner was the pilot for STS-35. I flew to the Cape in a private plane with some friends only to have the mission scrubbed for several months. A couple of weeks ago I drove out for the launch of STS-115: two full days with my wife and daughter in our 1996 Town & Country, lightening strikes the shuttle, Ernesto decides to attend the launch, mission scrubbed, and two full days of driving back to Houston.

Today I’m going to try again. I’ll fly Southwest Airlines to Orlando this afternoon and hope to see the Atlantis off on her voyage a little after noon tomorrow. I think that if at the last moment NASA decided that they needed one more rider on board, I’d raise my hand and volunteer immediately. I guess I’d be a pastornaut. I’d have a lot of explaining to Melinda to do later.