Six
of my colleagues and I took a break from our meeting yesterday to go out by the
track field, standing in the shade to escape the 92° noon-day sun, hoping that
we’d see something amid the buildings and trees. We got lucky, as the pilot made not one, but
two passes directly over us. The first
fly-over acknowledged the California Science Center, the Endeavor’s ultimate destination
and retirement home immediately to the south of the campus, and the second
began the flight path to LAX.
As
I watched the actual landing on TV, I remembered watching the first shuttle
landing, the Columbia’s on April 14, 1981.
I was on a university campus then, too, I realized: standing with a
crush of other students and faculty in a common area at Georgetown Law’s McDonough
Hall. As we loudly cheered the landing
together, those of us present were bonded with a great sense of pride.
Listening
to the comments of the others as we waited, it seems that for many, they wanted
to watch this because it would their closest, and last, opportunity to see in
person a shuttle in flight, although not on its own steam. For me who grew up wanting to be an
astronaut, it was more like paying respects to the passing funeral cortege, the
Endeavor borne as if on a caisson, with two escort planes on either side, like
honor guards. It was saying goodbye to
our manned space program. As the shuttle
fleet has been dismantled and parceled out across the country over the past
several months, I have been quietly outraged that we would mothball the shuttle
program without a successor program. We
might have put the first man on the moon, but now the Russians and perhaps others
will carry on manned space flight.
I
was proud for everyone, including my dad, who has made our manned space program
what it is. I was sad for what it has
become.
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