On Friday, July 8, 2011 at 11:29 AM EDT, I watched something that I will never see again.With thousands looking on from vantage points near Cape Canaveral millions more streaming online, the space shuttle Atlantis blasted into space on its final mission--the 135th and last mission for the space shuttle program.
As Atlantis soared into the Florida sky, my mind traveled back to April 12, 1981 where, 30 years ago, I stared raptly at the television in my parents' living room and watched as the Columbia kicked off the era of reusable space vehicles. I was almost giddy with the excitement of that moment. This was the first mission in a brand new phase of America's manned space program, one that I was watching unfold before my very eyes.
As a kid born in the mid-1960s, the space program was in high gear by the time I entered the world. The Gemini Program was in full-swing at that point, and Ed White became the first American to perform a spacewalk when I was only three months old. I was two when tragedy struck and Ed White (along with Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee) perished in the first major tragedy to strike the space program, the Apollo 1 fire. I actually first became aware of what NASA was up to a couple of years later. I still remember angrily stomping around the house complaining that whatever it was I wanted to watch on TV wasn't on because of the "stupid Moon." (Hey...I was four. How could I know how significant Apollo 11 was?)
