Go, Flight!

All I ever wanted to be was an astronaut. My dad is a pilot, and I’ve been flying with him since my infancy. I’ve been staring at the night sky for thirty years, dreaming, wondering, praying, falling in love. I’ve seen miracles and a thousand shooting stars, satellites, the International Space Station, the moons of Jupiter and unidentified flying objects, and that’ s not just wishful thinking. I was born in Rocket City, U.S.A., and my grandmother used to work for NASA. I had been to the U.S. Space and Rocket Center scores of times before I ever worked there. My first job was sweeping the hangar floor for my dad at our little airport, just down the road from a U.S. Air Force base and the second coolest people I knew.

My dreams of space flight and manned exploration were a cocktail of imagination, love, faith, patriotism, glory and fiction, speed, wonder, adventure, history and progress, photon torpedoes, the Bell X-1, Sopwith Camels, Magellan and Columbus, helicopters, war, the smell of jet fuel on a hot tarmac, adoration for my father and a general dissatisfaction with gravity and the human condition.

When I was ten years old, on January 28, 1986, my dreams took a jolt. We were summoned from class to learn that Challenger exploded on its launch, carrying the first civilian passenger into space. Ten year olds make jokes about Needing Another Seven Astronauts, because we couldn’t understand death, but I knew that my favorite space shuttle was gone. I learned that heady dreams necessarily risk complicated danger. Challenger’s last flight did not temper my heart’s desire to fly but only stoked my inspiration. Here were real heroes, dying in glory for the good of mankind.

Two years later, I went to U.S. Space Camp with my best friend with big dreams and the swagger of boys who know what they're talking about. I was mightily disappointed in my young grieving heart when he got to command the orbiter while I was assigned to be Flight Director. They assigned me to be in charge of the entire simulated mission, but I was heartbroken to be in Mission Control and not on board.

Ten years later, ten years ago, I became a counselor at U.S. Space Camp. In our counselor training, before we took charge of kids with big dreams and swagger, my old grief resurfaced with a surprising and embarrassing intensity. I had told that story of my boyhood disappointment as we trained for another mission, and when our assignments came down, they had assigned me to be in charge of Mission Control again. Curse my leadership and competence! A very graceful friend named Betsy had been assigned to command the orbiter, but, seeing the pain in my face, agreed to swap jobs with me. Do you think I was grateful? Do you think I hesitated to take her up on it? Just ask my daughter.

In the summer of 1996, after finally commanding the Columbia on a mission to repair a satellite in low earth orbit, the Good Lord introduced me to a real dream and true adventure. One of my colleagues at Space Camp was a girl named after a bird, and we had our first kiss at the base of the Saturn 1-B in Rocket Park when we had to run from a skunk. Five years later, she married me, and she still wears a lovely, ratty blue sweatshirt with a space shuttle over her heart. We haven’t been to space yet, but we experience wonder, glory, speed and adventure everyday in a rapidly expanding universe, and we both still cry when we watch a shuttle launch.

Hail, Challenger!