Fare Thee Well, Old Friend

"The Boldest Flight In History."

On April 12, 1981, I was looking forward to my eighteenth birthday, working on getting my drivers' license, about to graduate from high school and enjoying my last few weeks as a Sr. And I was absolutely fascinated with the Space Shuttle.

STS-1 Launch, April 12, 1981

Nobody at that time really grasped the importance, longevity or impact that the shuttle program would have. Some may have imagined it, but I don't think anyone really appreciated how fantastic or how productive the program would be. I remember thinking that the space shuttle was about to take off and start something new and exciting - a reusable spacecraft that could be launched and land over and over again. At that time, I was starting a whole bunch of new things. After the initial mission, I remember hoping that all of the stuff I was involved in would be as successful.

I was one of many who was mad at NASA for not naming the first space shuttle Enterprise after Capt. Kirk's magnificent starship. I had been a Star Trek fan for as long as I could remember. (There was an Enterprise space shuttle, but it never saw space flight or had engines attached. I wanted he first real space shuttle to be known as the Enterprise.)

As the program matured, I followed it every chance I got. I was watching live TV when Challenger exploded, and I will remember that tragic incident just like I will forever remember 9/11 or the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing. Same for the breakup of Columbia a few years later.

So, as the program draws to an extremely successful close, and all of us who long to know more about that which is currently out of reach wait patiently for the next step, I want to express how much the space shuttle program has meant to me, how much I have enjoyed following it over the years and how much respect I have for NASA, congress, the scientific community and the American people for keeping the program going as long as it did.

It's really been a cool ride, and I am very glad to have witnessed some of it.