There was no email from NASA in my inbox yesterday.
No invitation from #NASATweetup #STS135.
Earthbound again.
This spring I was fortunate enough to get tickets to the launch of STS-134, the last flight of the shuttle Endeavour. I made not one but two pilgrimages to Kennedy Space Center. At T-minus 2 hours on the second trip, after we had settled on the grass at the Visitors' Center, the call was made to scrub the launch and the astronauts' transfer van made what some called the first u-turn in NASA history.
There was no money for a third attempt to see it. We had blown the budget on the trip we had planned for the original launch date of April 19, buying nonrefundable plane tickets and thus turned that missed opportunity into a vacation by donating our dollars to Disney.
Cheap flights around the new date allowed us a tiny window of opportunity for the first actual attempt but as you now know, that trip netted us a view of the world-famous Canaveral u-ey on the Jumbotron. And a wild ride on a sketchy shuttle van from Orlando to Merritt Island. But that's another story.
I was not there for the May liftoff. But I did get the T-shirt.
In 1961, a fellow New Hampshirite named Alan B. Shepard, flew a vehicle named Freedom 7 was powered by a Redstone rocket 116 miles high into a suborbital space flight. Astronaut Shepard was catapulted into the record books as the first American in space and simultaneously became the catalyst for my lifelong interest and borderline obsession with NASA and the space program.
But it's not looking good for this Coyote. The call probably will never come that includes the words, "We really want you to come along on this mission." Still holding a tiny shard of hope in my heart, I'm almost sure that the closest I'll get to "the final frontier" is watching "The Right Stuff" or "Apollo 13" yet again.
The heady feeling of weightlessness? That will have to come from either the special effects wizards at Walt Disney World or from driving a little too fast over a bumpy New Hampshire backroad without a seat belt.
Tonight I'll stand under the constellation Orion once more and dream. Feel free to join me there.
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Comments
They should give some sort of priority to the people they disappointed for previous launches—non-expiring rain checks from prior launches should apply. They can't control when the launch is, but they could certainly better acknowledge the personal energy and sacrifice people put in to get even as close as you tried to get. It's just obvious that they don't see how painful it is to people to be disappointed that way. To dangle the possibility of another chance in front of you and then yank it away is almost cruel.
Thank goodness Orion is beyond their reach to withhold.
have you signed up for the commercial flights into space? I think Branson is serious about doing this, and I know the flights are expensive, but it almost seems worth mortgaging your house for a chance to go, doesn't it?
I'm sorry about the launch.
bad news about this aborted take off....dashed hopes are expensive to swallow sometimes....
It's a long time since I was in New Hampshire; a shorter time since my one and only launch disappointment -- which was on the west coast where I was living at the time. Not an astronuat launch but a tracking satellite launch related to my brother's work. He took his two kids out of school (in Wisconsin) and brought them to California to visit me and watch the launch. That launch, too, was postponed and all of us were disappointed but the good part was that we had a nice visit and the kids were Officially On Hookey for a couple of days.
I sure hope you get another chance!! And how about you signing up for a commercial flight into space???? WHEW. That kinda skeers me!
All best,
podunkmarte
I am sorry you had to suffer the disappointment. I know many of us hope for new programs.
Rated.
FLW, I have not signed up for any of those. They are really costly and from what I've read are suborbital. Perhaps once my daughter graduates and develops some sort of cool technology involving lasers and optics, she'll be able to get me on the guest list somewhere. Until then, tuition payments have more weight in the budget.
Thanks, Mission! I am grateful that I got to meet a lot of cool people while we were there: a woman whose dad was a rocket scientist in the '60's, folks that had witnessed launches and acted one out for me (fun) and just knowing that I was not alone in my fascination for exploration.
podunkmarte, I'm glad to see you here! It's just amazing to me that anyone can get that heavy an object not just to liftoff, but to soar. It's important to me that we keep encouraging the dreamers and inventors to let their imaginations do the same.
Gary, I'm sure you can imagine the enormous pride here when a son of our state was chosen to be first. In moments of stress I like to repeat his cockpit prayer (probably apocryphal), "Please God, don't let me f*ck up."
Owl, I have room for you out in the yard. I'll even let you use my NASA camp chair. It's great to not be alone out there!
GeeBee, I'll pack a lunch if you let me go to the landing with you! Gourmet, even.
Rob, I think it was far more disappointing to my daughter, or perhaps she just hasn't lived long enough to know that those feelings will come around again and again before we leave this mortal coil. But it's true that I would have be far more unhappy if I had not tried to be there.
Susan, thanks for the long-distance commiseration. I know that the Orion vehicle has received the green light for further development and we did get to see a mock-up of it. I think that there's enough room in there for both of us to go...
Pilgrim, thanks. Your comment brought tears of happiness to my star-filled eyes.
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
Pilot Officer Gillespie Magee
No 412 squadron, RCAF
Killed 11 December 1941
Thinking of you 'specially;
podunkmarte
Well, "heartless" I think most anyone by now would agree, I'm not; but sometimes a bit ?"dense"? when it comes to how best to say things or not at the moment try, yes. :-)
So this is just another hello note and ... while I'm at it ... I do so love your Feynmann quote on your home page!!
"Hang in", Coyote!
podunkmarte