Growing up as a kid in the 1980's, the space shuttle program was the basis for my dreams of space exploration. I would watch launches on television, had a Commodore 64 game, Project Space Station, where you ran the space program, and was a member of the Young Astronauts at school.
I always wanted to go to Florida to watch a launch. The closest I got was in November of 2009, watching Space Shuttle Atlantis, STS-129, launch from Kennedy while I was on an airplane at 37,000 feet off the west coast of Florida on a flight from Atlanta to Key West.
Now that the program is over, what is there for kids to dream about? I have taken my kids to see two of the shuttles on display, but I think I'm much more excited about them than they are.
We saw Endeavour in Los Angeles at the California Science Center in summer of 2014.
Yesterday, we saw Discovery at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.
While I would certainly go see Enterprise if in New York, let's face it, she is a wanna-be space shuttle. Therefore, I consider my childhood complete in having seen the remaining 3 of the 5 orbiters to have gone into space.
No comments:
Post a Comment