On January 28th, 1986 I was a few months shy of my fifth birthday, being babysat by my friend Timmy's mom. This is the only real memory I have of my stay at Timmy's or of his mom, or even who Timmy even was. We were watching the Space Shuttle launch, the great and powerful Challenger lift off the platform with the two booster rockets and the huge Orange fuel tank attached. Then it suddenly was gone. Like that. Gone. And even at four years old I understood what that meant, what had happened, who was gone. It was the pretty teacher with the brown hair and big smile. It's seventeen years later and it is one of my earliest and most vivid memories. Then yesterday, it seemed repeated. Columbia, the flagship, the old reliable shuttle, was gone. It went from the majestic black and white space traveler I've watched in awe my whole life to a cloud of multicolored dust particles on a NOAA radar screen. How?
In elementary school it was drilled into our heads just how special and amazing the space shuttles were. The space shuttle program was started a year before I was born, so in a way we grew up together. I remember watching Discovery take off in 1988, the next launch after the Challenger disaster of two years prior. I remember when NASA had the "name the shuttle contest" for students all over the US (I did submit a name but I don't remember what it was) and thus Endeavor was born. I remember watching the "the training of an astronaut" movie reel in school. I had the patches, I had the space suit, I had the models, the Lego kit, everything. I never wanted to be an astronaut but I sure did want to know one. It was idealistic, it was pride, it was adventure, it was wonder, it was beyond comprehension--and it was a part of what made me who I am. It was saying not only wonders about the US or about science, but wonders about humans in general that we could send these explorers into the heavens and have them touch down again.
But Columbia, 39 miles over Texas? Where did it go? How did they let it happen again?
