Milestone Flight

[krpalmer]

After much less of a wait than wound up separating the previous two space shuttle launches, Endeavour is now in orbit. This time around, I got to watch it on the television news; it helps, of course, that there's a Canadian astronaut on this mission. At the same time, though, I did start wondering amid the inescapable personal tension about all of the comments squeezed in over the live feed from the anchors and commentators and guest astronauts; there can be a certain simplicity to the online streaming video...

The news that I started hearing a few days before the launch played up that Dave Williams might get to make three spacewalks, a record for a Canadian astronaut. It was only after starting to hear that that I also heard there were no more Canadian astronauts officially scheduled for space shuttle launches, which perhaps left me more willing to see the television coverage. After that, though, I also managed to hear that Barbara Morgan, once the "Teacher in Space" backup and now a fully accredited astronaut, was also part of the crew. That managed to provoke even more melancholy thoughts, of how my family went to Florida at the very start of 1986 and I got to see space shuttle Challenger sitting on the launchpad off in the distance, and got annoyed at the thought that I might well not get to see Christa McAuliffe's lessons from space... I drifted on from there to guessing that it was just possible that someone entering kindergarten in the fall of 1985 might still be in graduate school. Then, I managed to think that it's also quite possible that some people in elementary school in 1986 might now have children of their own there. That was a little more heartening, somehow.

Comments

[lazypadawan.livejournal.com]

It's great the same back-up for the Challenger mission got to finally be the "teacher in space," albeit as an astronaut not just a civilian.

[krpalmer.livejournal.com]

In a way, I can see it as inspiring in its own way that someone coming from what might seem a humble career to some can become an astronaut themselves. I'm remembering now, though, that when Barbara Morgan joined the astronaut corps, there was some news at the time about "continuing the mission"... and that was nine years ago. That's perseverance all in itself.