God Speed Space Shuttle

The last shuttle is scheduled to lift off this morning. Once again, I am living history.
It makes me think back to the last Apollo launch in the 70's. Although the shuttle never gave me the same thrill as watching those Apollo missions on television.

Growing up during the space race was exciting. We didn't live in Florida then, but I do remember watching the launches on our black and white Zenith. The warm summer night that Neil Armstrong walked on the moon is etched in my memory. We were allowed to stay up past our bedtime to watch the snowy images and listen to Walter Cronkite become momentarily speechless. Afterwards we ate ice cream cones on the back porch and stared up at the moon. My brother tried to convince us he could see the flag flying with his naked eye.

I remember the day I watched the first shuttle launch on my boyfriend's color set. It was cool, but it just didn't give me the same thrill as the Apollo program.

A few years later, I was teaching when we were handed a learning packet to use in Science. We were going to follow the "teacher in space" curriculum when Crista McAullife became the first teacher in space.

Two weeks later I looked out of my bathroom window and thought that my lesson plans would need to change, there would be no launch on a bitterly cold morning like this one. My class had just left the playground when I heard the cries of teachers and paras- they saw fire raining from the sky. Within minutes someone's radio reported that Challenger had blown up.

We had never lost a crew in space, how could that happen? We had become complacent, bored almost with the launches. We would never take this dangerous travel for granted again, right?

But, it happened again. When Columbia blew apart on re-entry I thought my kids were joking. As we watched the footage I kept repeating, "not again, not again."

I've lived in cities where the launch could be seen easily from my own backyard. I admit I grew jaded after years of space shuttle missions. Thirty years of circling the earth and hanging out at the space station became boring, and even the newspapers did not give missions the front page space it used to demand.

The same thing happened to the Apollo program. The public got bored and lost interest, until it came to an end.