Columbia and Discovery

"Once upon a time, there was a little boy who loved dinosaurs. They were awesome, gigantic creatures that no one living had ever seen. That didn't stop people from studying them or drawing them or important for a little kid) imagining them.

"Then one day, when he was over at a friend's house, he caught something on TV. It was an oddly white and black plane, landing somewhere in a desert. It wasn't necessarily very sleek or powerful-looking, but there was just something about it that caught his eye. It was Columbia, returning from her first flight in space and landing at Edwards Air Force Base. His friend's parents couldn't really tell him much about the Shuttle, except that it went to and came back from space.

"Dinosaurs were so yesterday after that. Now he read books about space, about astronomy and Apollo and the Voyager and Viking missions. He had the Columbia 33rpm record. Astronauts were his heroes because of what they did, although he didn't know much more about them as people. He could name Neil Armstrong and John Young, and that was it.

"A few years passed and he was in 5th grade. At the end of a cold winter school day the somber teachers came in and told the students that the Shuttle Challenger had been lost with all aboard. The students left for home in stunned silence, none of them sure what that meant. That night the little boy's parents had to tear him away from the TV news to make him eat dinner. For the first time in his life, the ten-year old boy watched the news religiously for weeks.

"A few months later, the little boy started wearing glasses. Astronauts didn't wear glasses, he figured, so he started telling people he wanted to be an aerospace engineer when he grew up. Those engineers did really cool stuff, after all! Plus, he could tell it impressed his parents' friends.

"A couple of years passed by and the boy was taller now. One sunny morning in September, he was at home, sick from school. He had longed stopped watching the news, he had other things to worry about such as girls and whether or not his friends liked him still. His mom was out picking up some groceries, so he turned on the TV to see if Voltron or Transformers were on.

"But instead of his favorite cartoons he found something much, much cooler. On every television channel. It was the Discovery, minutes away from launching into space. The first launch since Challenger. With a tense countdown concluded, Discovery leapt off the pad and raced for the blue sky above. The news commentators sounded immensely happy but they didn't have anything on the boy jumping around in his living room, cheering loudly."

The Space Shuttles Columbia and Discovery have long been my favorites, Columbia for sparking an interest in space when I was a kid and Discovery for rekindling it when I was beginning to be distracted by the usual teenager woes. I was called to work the day Columbia fell splintered to earth. It was hard enough that the astronauts were lost. It was made more personal to me with the realization I had, walking through the hallways near Mission Control, that this particular spaceship was probably the impetus that led me to where I was in life. I was very sad to see that ship lost.

Today, sitting next to Sarah as we watched today's countdown together in a room near our offices, I felt the familiar thrill in my chest from when I had last watched Discovery lead the return of America to space. This time I managed not to dance around the room... it would have blocked the view of the TV for the people in back.