analyze – i has it

The space program will go on.  I know that, but so much of me is left behind with the ending of the Space Shuttle Program.  I am excited for what comes next, but I have so many memories in the past seventeen years that I can’t move forward without a large empty longing for what was.

Seventeen years, not thirty.  I’m not old enough to have been around for all thirty years of the Space Shuttle program, and I didn’t know about the Space Shuttle Program until I was around ten.  We moved into a house that had a permanent satellite dish in the yard.  The dish was so big, that it had to stay with the house when the previous owners left. It turns out there are free channels that you could get on satellite back then and one of them was NASA TV.

This was in the winter of 1994 / 1995.  The Space Shuttle program was going strong.  It had been nine years since the Challenger disaster and America was starting to believe that we could do space travel regularly.  The United States had just started a partnership with Russia to actually send Space Shuttles to Russian’s orbiting space station called MIR.

I don’t remember which launch was the first one I watched.  It must have been somewhere around STS-63 in Feb of 1995.  As an Eleven year old, I remember following the different US astronauts that stayed on MIR for extended periods of time, riding up on one Space Shuttle, and then back down on another.  I remember taking cardboard boxes as kids and making rockets in the Family Room.  We would lay on our backs with our legs up on the piano bench and boxes with dials and numbers scribbled on them lying next to us.  We would do the countdown and finally, blastoff.  My grandparents bought me a complete Lego Space Shuttle kit and I would act out the entire countdown experience with the Lego men.  I even took a complete roll of pictures on Dad’s camera of my Lego space shuttle, only to get the pictures back and see that they were all out of focus (he was not happy).

I have warm memories of those early flights.  I would literally camp in front of the TV for the full three hours of the countdown coverage if at all possible.  To most of you, this would be pretty dull television.  Up until liftoff there are no explosions, no fast moving TV shots, very little drama in fact.  The crew goes through the exact same set of steps that every crew goes through.  When TV coverage begins they are just finishing up tanking, and the crew is just having breakfast, then the crew suites up.  There is a team that checks the launch vehicle for ice problems.  The crew gets into the Astrovan and drives to the launch pad.  They spend over an hour getting into the Orbiter and then there’s an hour of communication checks and the crew verifies that all the switches are set for launch inside the cockpit.  Finally after all that time, the Shuttle Launch Director would give the go for launch and the final nine minutes would click away.  Then I would see what most of the rest of the world would tune in to see, the two minutes of launch up until the Solid Rocket Booster fall off.  Then everyone else tuned out, but there was another seven minutes after that before the Shuttle was in orbit.  Finally, after eight and a half minutes of powerful flight, the main engines cut off, and the Space Shuttle is in orbit.

This sequence happened every time, again and again.  But I loved every second of it.  I could predict what was about to happen.  I could listen to the cryptic communications between all of the ground crews as they got ready to launch and after a few launches I could tell you whether things were going well, or not.  Even before the announcer (George Diller) told us what was going on, I could tell if things were progressing towards a launch, or if we were headed towards a scrub.  There was a certain thrill during every launch attempt.  Would they launch, or would they have to stand down for another attempt?  A problem has come up: Can the team figure out a resolution in time to get off the ground?  Will they have to scrub?  Will they have to stand down for several days?  Maybe even roll back to the Vehicle Assembly Building?

I loved every minute of every countdown.  I knew what date every launch was set for and kept track on my school calendar.  In the days leading up to a launch I would watch the morning status briefings.  I knew the participants by name.  Shuttle Launch Director Mike Leinbach, and Shuttle Weather Officer Kathy Winters were my favorite two to watch.  They would give detailed reports on how things were going technically, and what the weather looked like for launch day.  Then launch day I would plan my whole day around the launch time.  If the launch was in the morning and we were doing school, I would do my school in the Family room as I watched the countdown.  If the launch was in the middle of the night I would set my alarm and sleep on the couch.  I even devised a way to fit my wristwatch in between my teeth headgear and my ear so that the alarm would blare right into my ear.

Some of my clearest memories of the Space Shuttle program involve a Thanksgiving launch.  I’m not sure which one it was, but I remember the Johnsons were over and I had convinced Mom to let me be slightly anti-social and watch the countdown on and off.  Then we got the whole family down in the family room for the final countdown.  Uncle Craig shouted “Booom” as a joke after liftoff and made all of us jump.  I also remember our Home School visitor teacher was scheduled to come during a countdown and I convinced her to work the launch in around her visitation.  She even stayed for the launch.  The most exciting countdown that I remember during those years was one which halted at 31 seconds to let the liquid fuel pressure stabilize.  A few minutes holding, and they were ready to pick the count back up.  That was the first off-nominal launch countdown that I remember.

But it wasn’t just the Space Shuttle that I enjoyed.  I loved everything about space.  I would print off the NASA Calendar which outlined everything about space from rocket Launches to Comets to Meteor Showers and when they would be visible.  I followed the launch of the Mars Pathfinder mission and watched the few Mars missions followed.  I enjoyed the countdowns of the satellite rockets nearly as much as the Space Shuttle.  I particularly enjoyed the Delta II rocket because of its nine strap-on boosters which fall away in quick succession about two minutes into flight.

As I got into Jr. High and High School, NASA changed their satellite TV format and we could no longer pick them up on our receiver.  We didn’t have high speed internet yet, and NASA hadn’t switched over to an online broadcast, so my ability to watch the launches fell off.  My interest faded as well as school and life began to be more important to me.  I thought I was growing up and that my love for space would slowly die away as I got older.

It was during this time that we lost the Space Shuttle Columbia.  I was sad, almost embarrassed, that I had not witnessed it live.  It almost felt like I had let the crew down because I hadn’t watched the mission.  It took this loss to realize that I loved the Space Shuttle Program now just as much as I ever did in the 90’s.

I was thrilled a year and a half later to see Discovery take to the skies again.  I was so glad that America and NASA had pushed past the disaster and had returned to the skies.  But we lost more than the crew in 2003 to the Colombia disaster.  The Nation’s view of the Space Shuttle Program changed over time.  The Space Shuttle was no longer viewed as a necessity.  And it was now viewed as dangerous.  Questions were asked: Why are we flying a dangerous vehicle spending money on things we don’t need?  In 2005, the Space Shuttle Program was discontinued.  The president instructed NASA to complete construction of the International Space Station, and then to retire the Space Shuttle.  This was to happen no later than the year 2010.  Suddenly my interest for the Space Shuttle program grew tenfold.  I only had five years left before the program would end.  I couldn’t image not having a Space Shuttle program.  It had been such a special part of my childhood.

I followed the missions more closely through college.  It was harder to fit them in around my classes, and I had less drive to get up in the middle of the night (especially if it involved waking up my roommate with my alarm), but I followed the missions in the news.  I was thrilled that we were still building the Space Station.  We were going to have a permanent presence in space.  I loved that we were partnering with so many nations, and how we were doing things that were not possible just as a single US nation.

At the end of college I was given an amazing gift by my parents and grandparents; the opportunity to go to Florida and see a Space Shuttle launch live.  It was so special, so incredible.  The first trip down, we didn’t get to see a launch, but it was amazing just to see the Space Port of the United States.  It was so advanced, and yet it was run by normal humans just like me.  The Space Station itself was being built in nothing more than a glorified warehouse.  This didn’t discourage me; it made me appreciate so much more that normal people were the ones who were putting the Shuttle into space.  These weren’t super-humans; they were everyday people like me.

It took a few more launch attempts before I saw a launch live, and during that time we experienced the final launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery.  This awakened in me the realization of what it was going to be like on the last launch of the Space Shuttle.  There were only two more to go.  Only twice more would I be able to sit through a live countdown.  Only twice more would I hear George Diller (the voice of the Space Shuttle countdown).  Only twice more would I see the vehicle that is the Space Shuttle lift off the ground and rise majestically into the sky.  Only two more missions, two more dockings, two more un-dockings, two more deorbits, and two more calls of “Wheel Stop.”

I saw the 2^nd to last launch live, what was the Final launch of Space Shuttle Endeavour.  It was an emotionally charged moment.  I was so proud of what our nation had done, but I knew it was just another last; the last flight of Endeavour, the last major part brought to the Space Station, the last full crew to ride on the Space Shuttle.  And I silently mourned for my favorite orbiter, Endeavour.  If I ever wanted to see her again, it would be in a Museum in California.

And then, only two months later, we were getting into the final countdown preparations for Atlantis, what would be THE last space shuttle launch.  I watched the pre-launch new conferences as I had done for seventeen years.  I watched Kathy give the very poor forecasts for launch day and couldn’t decide if I wanted it to delay so we had one more countdown, or if I just wanted it to go so we could have a final on-time launch.  Launch day came and I couldn’t go to work.  I couldn’t watch the last launch from my cubicle.  The launch was in the morning, so I would only have to miss a half day.  I listened to George give his final commentary.  The weather improved all morning, and I became convinced we were going to launch.  The close out crews all gave their farewells; there were numerous final goodbyes by the various members of the launch team.

Then we had one last bit of excitement to remember Atlantis by.  At 31 seconds the clocks held and the millions of people watching held their breath.  The gaseous arm had retracted, but the sensors had not triggered telling the computer that the arm had, in fact, fully retracted.  Two minutes later, mission control was able to get a camera pointed at the arm and verified that it was all the way back.  They gave the go, and with just minutes to spare before the window closed, Atlantis roared off the pad one final time.

I’ll never forget that climb to orbit.  She cleared the pad, rolled over and headed up into a partly cloudy sky.  As she passed through Mach 1 and a wonderful shock wave formed around the whole vehicle, she shot through the clouds.  A camera on the belly of the orbiter captured the climb up through the separation of the SRB’s and then on up until the eight and a half minute mark.

As Atlantis rolled over on its final ride to orbit and the Main Engine flame went from white to blue to black, the weight of it all settled on me.  Never again will I see this, this is the end of a huge part of my life.  The future is exciting, but the Space Shuttle is what I love.  I will miss it; remember it fondly, forever…